Watching TV in VN

Last night we had some downtime, so I flipped around the TV stations provided by our hotel.  There are a total of 4 stations in English; one is an offshoot of National Geographic, one shows older movies with subtitles, one is Fox Life showing Simpsons re-runs,  and the fourth is French Channel 24, which provides news in English, using very British hosts - I haven't quite figured that one out.

The other 20+ stations are all in Vietnamese (as expected) and fit all the genres you would expect in the states.  There are a couple of home shopping channels, kids programs, news, dramas etc.  Its amazing how much you can pick up from just the soundtracks.




I also found that Vietnam has its own professional basketball league - the VBA.  I watched an exciting end to a game between the Danang Dragons and the Can Tho Catfish.  For more information on the league, there is an excellent wikipedia site:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Basketball_Association

Each team is allowed only 1 foreign player, which can make for some interesting match-ups.  Also, it appears the refs don't call  lot of fouls.



The other show I quite enjoyed was a game show that looked like a combination of "Who wants to be a Millionaire"and the Plinko game from "Price is Right".  From what I could tell, the contestant was given a question that could be answered by one of three pictures.  There was some consultation with a second person (his wife?) in a sound booth.  If the contestant answered correctly, he received a ball, which was the released down the board until it landed on a dollar amount.

The contestant I watched did quite well (I thought) and ended his turn with 169,000,000 VND.  When I converted it to dollars ($7,348) it wasn't quite as good as it initially seemed, but still a winning effort.