Is saigon now called ho chi minh city

The famous Kim Long Ginger Jam in Hue has a distinct, spicy flavor. The ginger can neither be too old (as the final product will then lack smooth texture), nor can it be too young, because it will not have its characteristic pungency. First, the ginger is peeled and sliced. Thin ginger slices are soaked in cold water with squeezed lemon juice for about 30 minutes in order to clean them, then mixed with sugar. The ginger is then cooked in sugar syrup on wood fires for about an hour until the slices become more firm and the sugar is neatly wrapped around each slice. To make this happen, the mixture has to be continuously stirred with chopsticks, so that it does not get burnt. The ginger jam is then placed on a tray where it is cooled. Here, the jam-maker uses thin bamboo sticks to separate the ginger slices as they can easily stick together when hot. What makes the Kim Long ginger jam special is that every step is done by hand, and it has no other ingredient except ginger and sugar – no additives are used. Regular buyers love the Kim Long ginger jam for its pure spicy-sweet flavour. Currently, the Kim Long Ward has about 20 households making the jam in the traditional way. Besides serving locals during Tet holiday, Kim Long ginger jam is also ordered year-round by dealers in cities across central Vietnam and also Ho Chi Minh City. …

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Local residents can get 1kg of rice for each kg of plastics or recyclable waste, and each of them can exchange a maximum amount of 10kg of waste. Since the programme was rolled out in early September, authorities have collected more than 1 tonnes of trash for recycling. Pham Ngoc Minh, Vice President of the district’s Fatherland Front Committee, said apart from environmental protection, the programme aims to support local residents amidst COVID-19. The exchange is held weekly and will last until December, she said, adding that the programme is financed by organisations and businesses in HCM City. According to the official, more than 4 tonnes of rice have been mobilised for the programme so far. Along with rice, residents can get other necessities like cooking oil and salt, and plants. Not only residents in District 1 but also those in other localities can also join the programme, Minh said. …

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It had taken just 30 minutes for Cong, deputy head of the laboratory and diagnostic imaging department at the Binh Thanh District medical center, to finish preparing swabbing kits, protective clothing and necessary documents. It was still dark as the 36-year-old Cong, along with four colleagues, began conducting random Covid-19 tests in areas around the Mien Dong (Eastern Region) Bus Station in Saigon for the 12th day. From 5 a.m. to 7 a.m., they worked with local medics to take 100 samples of people from Hanoi and the provinces of Gia Lai, Kon Tum and Dak Lak in the Central Highlands. Then the group quickly returned to their office to start other work. Medics take random swab samples at the Mien Dong Bus Station every morning, February 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Thu Anh. One of them took the samples to the Thu Duc Hospital for carrying out RT-PCR tests. Some received people coming from Covid-19 hotspots to check their medical declarations and take their swab samples. Others traveled to two quarantine facilities in Wards 21 and 28 to take swab samples of those under centralized quarantine. After a long day, at around 6 p.m., they started traveling with medics in the district to take random swab samples at local restaurants. It was midnight when the medics returned to their office yet again. The team members have been traveling from place to place and working around the clock for a month, Cong said they initially collected test samples at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport; and after an infection chain was found, they moved on to locked down neighborhoods and worked with the residents there. In collecting samples at bus stations, they had to work from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., said Ho Minh Hoang, head of the medical center in Binh Thanh District’s Ward 26. This means the team members had to be up at 3 a.m. to prepare, which was exhausting. Hoang and Cong later suggested that the HCMC Center for Disease Control (CDC) and bus stations allow …

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