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Nov 1, 2009 3

MOF- A nice Japanese style teashop in Saigon

Thanks to both Lawrence and Hiro, I now know there is a Japanese-style teashop in Saigon call MOF. MOF is owned by a Singaporean from what I was told. The cafe itself is nice an quiet.

MOF serves a large assortment of Japanese green tea including my favorite, genmaicha. If you are hungry, get yourself a nice reasonably priced bento box. MOF even offers desserts though on this particular day, I just settled for tea which was very good. I am a fan of green tea.

MOF is located on 30 Le Loi Blvd in District 1 of Saigon. There is motorbike parking available.

Pictures below:

MOF - Saigon Japanese Tea house and cafe

Jun 17, 2009 Comments Off

Bloggers in Vietnam (and World)

Updated on June 17, 2010

The following is a large list of Bloggers in Vietnam plus other blogs I follow daily. I tend to read blogs focusing either on Vietnam, Southeast Asia, IT, Linux and open source technology as well as global political economics.

Please tell me if you want your blog added to this list. SaigonNezumi.com reaches a large group of readers around the world.

Please note, I will indicate whether I have met the blogger or not. (FOSS) Means they are open source bloggers. (V) means the blogs are in the Vietnamese language, (R) for Russian.

Table of Content

Vietnam Bloggers
Cambodia Bloggers
China Bloggers
Japan Bloggers
Kyrgyzstan Bloggers
Laos Bloggers
Nepal Bloggers
Philippine Bloggers
Russia Bloggers
Singapore Bloggers
Thailand Bloggers
Australia Bloggers
Canada Bloggers
France Bloggers
UK Bloggers
US Bloggers

Canada Bloggers

Aaron Siego – (FOSS) KDE Developer
Blog no Wiki (David Temblebay) – (FOSS) met

Top

France Bloggers

Noodlepie

Top

UK Bloggers

Challenging you… (Jon Hoff) – met

Top

US Bloggers

Expat Pragmatist – Abdukhadir’s Sufi Muslim Blog
Flightblogger
Foreign Policy Passport Blog
FreeBSD OS
Funtoo (Daniel Robbins) – Creator of Gentoo Linux – (FOSS)
Hacker Class (Adam Beguelin) – met
Oliver Willis
Reznov (Chris Sekiya) – met/former high school classmate – (FOSS)
Revolutionary Politics
sunsetscreamer
VA to VN (D) – met

Top

Dec 22, 2008 2

Blogging Boom Faces Gov’t Blockages (Helen Clark – IPS News)

Helen Clark published her article in relation to the new blogging regulation for Vietnam last Friday. Originally, the blogging regulation was supposed to include all bloggers but has since focused just on bloggers who host blogs within Vietnam.

Anh Hung (Fresco 2.0), Chris Harvey (charvey in Vietnam), and I were interviewed by Helen Clark via telephone. This will be Anh Hung’s second interview. Over a week ago, he appeared in Geoffrey Caines’ SFGate article, Bloggers the new rebels in Vietnam.

It will be interesting to see how the law will be implemented next year. What about blogs not affected by the new Blog Law, will they just be filtered out? As we have seen with Geocities for many years, the Vietnamese government has the capability to filter out websites. It will be relatively easy to filter out ‘controversial’ blogs as well. We will just have to wait and see but as I told two other reporters, I think the Western media are a bigger threat to Vietnam bloggers than the new blog law

Excerpt of Helen Clark’s article:

Though blogging regulations have been discussed before the issue again came to prominence in November, with reports running in local media that the Ministry of Information and Communications was planning a law which would counteract “incorrect information” about Vietnam.

Read more here -> http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45171

or here -> http://www.google.com/search?&q=Blogging+Boom+Faces+Gov%27t+Blockages+Helen+Clark

Oh yeah, one little mistake. Helen mentioned that I ran Barcamp Saigon. Actually, I just formed it and helped obtain the venue though my network. The Barcamp Saigon organizers ran the event. Want to make sure they get the credit here, not me

Other Press Reports on the Blog Regulation

Edit 1:

Reuters published their report on the blogging regulation. A bit more negative in tone than Helen Clark’s article. John Ruwitch seemed to just quote online news sources without checking out the facts. As I mentioned earlier, nobody seems concerned about the new blog regulation except the Western media. They are blowing this out of proportion.

Read article here -> Vietnam Bans Submersive Blogs

Nov 13, 2008 14

Are Expat Bloggers in Vietnam affected by the Draft Blog Resolution?

VietnamNet Bridge just posted a piece on the current draft resolution to regulate ‘harmful’ blogs in Vietnam. The Vietnamese government has wanted to regulate blogs within Vietnam as an effort to control the number of sites from posting “…incorrect information about religion, political system, state and government of Viet Nam.”

Now it seems that the current draft regulation will be able to prosecute bloggers, including Expats, who reside in Vietnam but host their blogs outside of the country. When asked how Vietnam can manage blogs overseas, Nguyen Tu Quang responded:

…This is to more complicated. If the violation relates to two countries, police of both sides will work together or through Interpol to investigate the case. If however, the blogger only breaks Vietnamese law but not the laws of the country he/she resides in, there’s little we can do. However, we still can solve this technically. The most important thing is to raise consciousness among internet users. (Source: VietnamNet Bridge)

So even if a blogger who resides in Vietnam did not break the laws of the country where the blog is hosted, they may be prosecuted here in Vietnam. That is my interpretation at least.

I will be curious to see if the draft resolution will have a clause for Expat bloggers residing in Saigon.

Oct 3, 2008 6

Vietnamese Govt Watchdog to Regulate Blogs

The Vietnamese government announced that it created an agency to act as a watchdog in the regulation of blogs within Vietnam. With nearly 1.1 million blogs just inside Vietnam, I am curious to see how this agency, known as the Administration Agency for Radio, Television and Electronics Information (AARTE), will be able to regulate the large number of weblogs in this country. The article mentions that blogs located outside of Vietnam are beyond the current regulation but from past experience, these were the blogs the Vietnamese government wanted to focus on.

Here lies the problem for AARTE. If Vietnamese Bloggers know the government will not regulate blogs outside of Vietnam, would they not naturally create a blog on Yahoo 360 or Google Blogger? That’s what all Western Expats do to avoid the laws here in Vietnam. SaigonNezumi.com is located in the US, in Chicago to be exact.

Thus, if AARTE cannot control blogs outside of Vietnam under the current regulation, will they have the authority to block or filter out blogs they deem unacceptable? Hard to say but I think this will be a tough task for this agency.

I do agree that web is more open in Vietnam. Geocities, a banned site a year ago, is now available again. Geocities contains a large number of anti-Vietnamese government websites.

I am curious to see how this regulation will pan out. Even though my blog is located outside of Vietnam, will AARTE eventually ask the Saigon Bloggers to license our blogs in this country? Who knows, lets just wait and see what happens.