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Hi there! Yeah I am super happy you are interested in both TK and Hán-Nôm studies.

Re: The use in the context of military strategies. I am not sure if there is specific academic research on that. So little information survives. It is was for sure the written language of governing structures so its extension to military seems reasonable. I have heard it discussed a number of times.

Here is one of the best resources for academic stuff. John Phan is just about the only young professor in the world who is a Nôm expert. https://columbia.academia.edu/JohnPhan

Also, http://www.nomfoundation.org/ is a great resource.

What you wrote in this part "In regards to Truyện Kiều, ..." is, I believe, very accurate. Nguyễn Du also wrote poetry under the pseudonym Tố Như. There you really get a sense of the anguish in his life - but also his resolution to accept and move on. His poems are spectacular. Here is a huge resource https://www.thivien.net/Nguy%E1%BB%85n-Du/author-ZRyB2U-4oqfhcjZ7xrf1_A

As far as English goes, make sure you read this one. https://www.amazon.com/Tale-Ki%C3%AAu-bilingual-Nguyen-Truy%C3%AAn/dp/0300040512/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2TUG02AULY27S&keywords=truyen+kieu&qid=1571648091&sprefix=truyen+%2Caps%2C354&sr=8-2

Huỳnh Sanh Thông was a master. Had I made a couple different academic choices I could have studied with him at Yale. But then my life would have unfolded totally differently and I probable been stuck being a professor which is what I was so anxious to escape in the first place.

Anyway best of luck with stuff !!! I am so happy for you.

-ARR

fresh olives are quite hard to come by here. I am pretty sure alfonso olives are unavailable.

3M N95 8511 masks

haas avocados

pecans / candied pecans

maple sugar candy

whoopie pies

blueberries are available but quite pricey, definitely appreciated

corndogs

candy from trader joes

people are really into this type of chicken jerky here: https://news.zing.vn/cach-lam-ga-kho-xe-cay-don-gian-trong-5-buoc-post725891.html

so if you got them beef jerky they'd like it

I've had success with the maple sugar candy (it is, of course, expensive...). I am 100% sure it is not available in vietnam, so definitely unique. https://www.amazon.com/Mansfield-Vermont-Maple-Candies-Certified/dp/B003XXK0GK

oh I don't think fruit leather is widely available, you could try that.

All of the random american chocolates (3 musketeers, twizzlers, etc) are available at import stores & there are a number of those in saigon. The most well known is https://www.facebook.com/storephuongha/ .

jack daniels is relatively available here. The most widely available foreign whiskeys are johnny walker & chivas. Buffalo Trace isn't as well known (& is suitable for VN tastes), you could get some buffalo trace miniatures (bottle looks cool too since it has a buffalo on it)

TL;DR - I would go with beef jerky, maple sugar candy, or a combo of both. You just need to package the individual maple sugar candies yourself (one per person should be enough).

Obviously it depends on how much you want to spend/what she likes. Just to give you some ideas, my relatives in Vietnam love:

• American snacks: [these] (https://www.amazon.com/Almond-Roca-ROC5240-42oz-Canister/dp/B0001AO8DY) for example. Don't go for the super popular ones (Oreos, Pringles, etc.), as they have those in Vietnam as well.
  
• For girls, drugstore make up like Cover Girl, Maybelline. Viets are more familiar with those brands than the more expensive stuff at Sephora. Safest bet is to go with mascara, maybe an eyeshadow palette/blush.
  
• Kinda weird but every single girl I know in Vietnam loves Victoria's Secret. Obviously this depends on what your relationship is. This is more of a FYI fun fact than an actual recommendation.
  
• Even weirder - zip lock bags, Saran wrap, storage items for the kitchen.
  
• If you know that she has an iPhone, actual Apple licensed products (portable chargers, phone cases, etc) are very sought after since the market there is littered with knock off Chinese stuff.
  
• Multivitamins
  
• If she has a dog, pet products like [these] (http://www.pedigree.com/really-good-food/dentastix-treats-small-medium.aspx)

To understand the impact of the war on both Southern and Northern economies, start with French colonialism. It wasn't great for the Vietnamese people. But with the advent of WWII, French control disintegrated as they submitted to the Japanese, and things went from bad to worse. In 1945 the war ended and a power vacuum ensued. The Viet Minh took control of Hanoi in the North and began to fight for power with the French, based in Saigon to the south. An estimated 5 million people died of famine, war, and disease during these years (out of a population of about 24 million). The French eventually lost the North in '54, and set up a puppet government backed by the US and UK in Saigon. Flagrant corruption and religious persecution caused discontent with the Southern government, and the Viet Minh sent forces south to start a guerilla movement known as the Viet Cong. That's when the US jumped in under the pretense of stallin' communism.

As the US began losing the ground war in the mid 60s, they switched to carpet bombing, Agent Orange, and napalm. It's impossible to say how much exactly, but a staggeringly large percentage of land, especially in central Vietnam, eastern Laos, and northern Cambodia, was decimated by 7 million tons of bombs, 72 million liters of Agent Orange (covering nearly 10% of the Vietnamese countryside and jungle), and a modest 400,000 tons of napalm.

Eventually the North took control of the entire country as it is today. It's no surprise that the Communist party fought so hard for the land below the 17th parallel, whatever patriotic slogans they may have used--the Mekong delta alone produces half the country's rice, and rich businessmen in Saigon were scraping huge profits. When the Hanoi government took over in 1975, wealthy elites, intellectuals, and catholics fled the country or were killed/persecuted/removed from power. The Party annexed a vast majority of the economy into SOEs (state-owned enterprises) and sucked the economy dry yet again by corruption, misuse of state funds, and cronyism. Tack on a war in Cambodia, and it took Vietnam another 20 years ('75-'95) to even begin to recover. Older people here remember very well not having enough rice 20 years ago.

Think about what 30 years of war and famine does to a population. As Viktor Frankel so poignantly put it when describing Nazi concentration camps, the best examples of our species do not survive. Those who were altruistic, honest, and brave died first. Those who were not increased their chances of survival. Open persecution of anything deemed intellectual, individual, or capitalist for so many years has a stifling effect on an economy. Only in the last 15 years has Vietnam begun to pull itself out of an economy that meant severe poverty for a majority of people. As Hanoi's paranoia of all things foreign subsides and a small number of SOEs have been privatized, a growing middle class and new wealth in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) are raising living standards. Riding the wave of China's boom, Vietnamese people saw life improve at an almost surreal pace from 2002-2007. Today things have slowed down and inflation is getting out of hand, once again due in large part to the reluctance of the Party's plutocrats to tidy up the corruption.

Regardless of its often melancholy history, Vietnam is a beautiful country, full of bright, charming people. Visiting is easier and more pleasant than ever. Things are looking up here.

I highly recommend reading Jonathan Neale's A People's History of the Vietnam War. It goes into detail about the war and its effects through the 1980s. link

The costumes in the pic are kind of there but not there. But I applaud for your work. Just one thing to stand out is that the Vietnamese in the past like to walk on bare feet. Only Mandarins of sort would prefer wearing boots. And Yếm is the kind of bra for women. For costume reference,thisis a good starting place. She also has others pics if you dig around in her account. If you want to dig deeper into patterns, check out this one. Please noted that the patterns should be in CC licence but I forgot the actual group making it. (Im not the Original Author for this pattern, just sharing it).

And the book,Ngàn năm áo mũ is one of the most mainstream book about ancient Vietnamese fashion.

And for choosing the dynasty, Later Le is the most famous one and also the height of the empire with many attempts to restore much of its fashion trend. Nguyen is the most well-known if you want mainstream reception.

And yes, I would love to read about a fictional world that has Viet as a part of it!

I use Duolingo. It's the only app that I've found really useful. Clozemaster has Vietnamese, but it's... pretty worthless. Memrise is nice, but only for memorizing vocabulary. Really, I've found practice with native speakers is an absolute necessity, because it's impossible to pronounce things correctly without it. Even with a significantly better vocabulary than when I started, it frequently takes a couple of restatements of what I'm trying to say before my meaning is clear.

For understanding more about the language, I recommend the book A Vietnamese Reference Grammar. The "scriptorium method" is also quite good, combined with the inexpensive Tiếng Việt study books intended for Vietnamese schoolchildren that you can find in any Saigon bookstore.

As someone who loves to read books, I’ll say, there’s actually PLENTY of books written about today’s Vietnam. Most of them are travel books. Most of them mentions about Vietnam’s thriving economy today

Check out Insight Guides, Lonely Planet Discover Vietnam, and National Geographic Traveler

These are fantastic books that has lots of beautiful pictures and lots of great explanations about Vietnamese society, cuisine, history, and more

This (free) Kindle book was just posted on /r/KindleFreebies/ :

https://www.reddit.com/r/KindleFreebies/comments/4ca019/we_just_published_our_book_teaching_in_east_asia/

>We just published our book "Teaching in East Asia" sharing stories of millennials teaching in Asia and its now available for FREE download :) Please download a copy, share, and send your feedback. /u/DannyFlood

>* http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C6N5ACQ

http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Picture-Dictionary-English-Vietnamese-Vietnamese/dp/0194740196

Get a copy of this. Not to study, but just to have in the classroom. If she's playing or whatever and wants to know what a word is, she can just go pick up the book, find the picture, and then show you the word and you can tell her how to say it. If she can read Vietnamese, it will be a massive help. But even if not, the pictures alone are enough that you should be able to communicate with her and teach her phrases and words. She'll learn lots of play words and stuff from her classmates. The book is useful for lots of other stuff though, or just for having around as a reference for her to look at when she needs something on the spot.

If I were you, I would bring a big a big Nussknacker from Seiffen/Erzgeb.

Eagle medical oil, while not made in Germany, is widely used and always well received.
http://www.amazon.com/Eagle-Brand-Medicated-Oil-0-8/dp/B0009MMKSY

I guess the dude who wrote not to bring an ipad/iphone does not know those are not German. But it is pretty cool for Angela Merkel and her crew, that the PR people for Germany convinced him that they were. That said, he was right about not bringing too much.

Once you are engaged/married, fully expect to be asked to buy a new roof or something else very significant for the family if you are not asked for a dowry of some sort.

My family here freaks out about Adidas and other nice shoes that are not fakes, brought (in the box is a must) from outside the country, although the fascist undertones of bringing Puma sneakers can be difficult to explain.

Hope that helps
Tchuss

Your story reminded me of the book: Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

http://www.amazon.com/Catfish-Mandala-Two-Wheeled-Through-Landscape/dp/0312267177

If you don't know this book already, read it! It's really awesome. It's a free ticket to Vietnam until you get to go back :)

These two are quite interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/Its-Living-Work-Vietnam-Today/dp/9971696983

https://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-Rising-Dragon-Bill-Hayton/dp/030017814X

Working life/attitudes and economic growth actually tell you a lot about a country.

Also here's a long list of recommended books. Quite a few of them aren't war books.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/8440.Best_Books_on_Vietnam

Theyre actually pretty easy to find, but not together in one unit. I wont be living in Vietnam for another few months, so I dont know which ones are most popular. That being said, you could always buy a set of every major type. Vietnam uses Type A, C (also called E or F) and D.

I have never tried these converters, but this is the cheapest pack I found with all 3. Link

Otherwise, just keep looking for one or two units that have all A, C and D types.

The best modern history book:

Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: A New History (Penguin, 2016).

and...

If you'd like to take a deep dive, starting from 1,000 years ago:

Keith Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese, (Cambridge, 2013).

There was a fairly recent attempt by opposition groups in the south to get elected but I don't think it worked. Generally people see the Politburo as the key decider of political decision with the national parliament serving largely as a rubber stamp though it has more power then in the past. Saying that there is a wide degree of cynicism surrounding the voting system with the party choosing the candidates and voters going through the motions of voting.

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There been a limited attempt to develop a degree of grassroot democracy as a response to the peasant rebellion of the 90s. Through I don't know a great deal about it and at least in some of the groups it has been outright fraudulent.

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https://www.amazon.com/Political-Dynamics-Grassroots-Democracy-Vietnam/dp/1349954284

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http://sdonline.org/58/grassroots-democracy-in-rural-viet-nam-a-gramscian-analysis/

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Maybe skip to the section called

Relevant ideological, institutional and policy frameworks on grassroots democracy

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to get a relevant overview.

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I have no real good suggestion for where you should start with a discussion of Vietnamese politics but maybe try the first chapter of Politics in Vietnam which is available on libgen but it is perhaps overly academic. Vietnamese politics is famously opaque, fictionalised and corrupt but if you want to discuss recent controversies maybe look at the recent internet bill and the recent crackdown on dissidents.

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https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/01/01/19/vietnams-draconian-cybersecurity-bill-comes-into-effect

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Probably the best book look introduction to Vietnam is Vietnam: A Rising Dragon by Bill Hayton. The only book that can challenge is the dated Robert Templer’s Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam.

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Sorry that I couldn't be of more help.

Here is the mobile version of your link