Free Republic

LITTLE SAIGON – Las Vegas casinos employ a deceptive bargain: They offer free drinks to gamblers, knowing the booze will impair judgment and loosen wallets. The latest incarnation of underground gambling in Little Saigon takes a harsher tack – free meth. Gambling has long been endemic in the Vietnamese American community in Orange County, a thinly veiled cultural touchstone. Friends and family gather at houses to win one another’s money during the Lunar New Year. Indian tribes’ casinos set up booths at Little Saigon festivals to lure potential customers to their establishments. For years, the so-called bikini coffee shops in...

Vietnamese foodie guide: Critic Brad A. Johnson dishes about the 25 best things to eat in Little Saigon The scent of Little Saigon hits me in the face. An intoxicating perfume of jackfruit and bananas and the vanilla-y scent of pandanus leaves wraps itself around me in a warm, tight embrace. It’s a sunny Friday afternoon, and the line to purchase something cold and sweet at Thach Che Hien Khanh in Garden Grove stretches out the front door and down the sidewalk, past a vendor of exotic fruits and knickknacks — chopsticks, paper lanterns, plastic Buddhas, various figurines of the...

WESTMINSTER, Calif. - Here in the teeming markets and cafes of Little Saigon, the shifting political loyalties of Vietnamese American voters are evident when conversation turns to November's presidential election. Westminister and neighboring Garden Grove, which make up the nation's largest Vietnamese community, have long been Republican strongholds, but generational changes and misgivings over President Bush's policies have weakened GOP support among Vietnamese Americans. Still, despite concerns about Bush, the Iraq war and a lackluster economy, few are rushing to embrace his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, who has made his Vietnam War military service a centerpiece of his presidential...

Kerry's new Vietnam fix Refugees of communist takeover won't forget, forgive his past By Jan Golab "If you want to be president, you have to talk to everybody in America, and that is what we are going to do," Sen. John Kerry declared last July, when he spoke before the NAACP. It was a dig against President George W. Bush, who had declined an invitation to speak to that organization. But there's no way Kerry will ever speak to America's 1.2 million Vietnamese-Americans, most of whom live in California. Many of California's Vietnamese-Americans will be in Washington, D.C., today to...

DATELINE: SAIGON -- Little Saigon that is. In the largest Vietnamese enclave outside of Vietnam they remember the Vietnam War as the American War. Spanning the three Orange County, California cities of Westminster, Garden Grove and Santa Ana, the residents of this communist-free (by legislation) stronghold have little use for War Hero candidate John Kerry. Chock full of beauty schools, cafes, and ubiquitous Pho restaurants (the classic Vietnamese soup), the pre-communist national flag proudly waves next to the Stars and Stripes above the Veterans memorial at Westminster City Hall. In "America's Most Republican County" (350 elected officials; registration 48.5% Rep./30.6%...

Who says that the modern American campus is not committed to flying the flag these days? At Cal State's Fullerton campus, so strong is this commitment that it has now sparked a protest from students. Only one hitch: The flag at the center of this flap belongs to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Perhaps only at a modern California university could plans to include a flag as a symbol of diversity end up being protested by the very students it is meant to represent. The 80 flags that are supposed to be flown at this month's commencement are meant to...