One Billion Dong?
Surely, now it's one billion and one Dong?
</coat>
Two Vietnamese police officers who helped a female drug smuggler avoid an appointment with the firing squad by allowing her to get pregnant while on death row have been jailed, AP reports. Nguyen Thi Oanh, now 40, was convicted of possessing more than one billion dong ($63,000) of heroin and sentenced to death. However, she …
Imagine a "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" over there... you start off at 100 dong (about £0.003, i.e. a third of a penny), work you way up the easy questions to 1000 dong (a whole THREE PENCE!) then up to where most people seem to get stuck at 32000 dong (woah nearly a pound there, 96p). Or if you're very lucky you can get the MILLION! (30 quid).
This was common practice in England a few hundred years ago. People condemned to death were generally taken pity on and given a lot of freedom (relatively speaking) during their last few days. Women convicts would frequently offer themselves to anyone who might get them pregnant, thus saving their life.
Yes, I know you only need one day - well a few minutes, actually. Okay, okay, a few seconds to get pregnant, but it certainly would take a damn sight longer than that for it to actually show, even if you have a pregnancy test and I don't believe they had those pee-sticks a few hundred years ago. So either these women had more than a few days to wander around before they were going to be executed or they just stuffed a cushion up their jumper and all the gullible men fell for it. It's not unknown for it to happen - even now.
As for Vietnam, it has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. But perhaps it also has the greatest number of unmarried mothers...
Been here a baker's dozen years, in SighGone, and i'd've never imagined a slapstick session going more than 5 quips without some sot tossing in his "two dong's worth". That's mine.
Mặc AD Marshall, Founder, Sole Member, HøLUG, Ho [Chi Minh City] Linux User Group, http://h0lug.sourceforge.net/
As per editorial policy at "The Organ of the Party Committee of the Communist Party of Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh City", Saigon Liberation, http://www.saigon-gpdaily.com.vn/, i should've writ, "... SighGone, Việt Nam..."
Just for completeness and edification's sake, i should've writ, "... a slapstick session on the Đồng..."
GBP 1.00 = Việt Nam Đồng (VND) 32,311 or so.
Source: Saigon Liberation