VNPostal announce innovative new service that actually delivers mail

Hai Bà Trưng, Hanoi – Speaking to the assembled press who’d gathered before VNPostal's Hanoi headquarters, CEO and founder Nguyen Thư Trộm today announced the delivery company’s bold new strategy that involves actually delivering mail.

“While many stakeholders were confused, alarmed and even angry at my proposed new direction for VNPostal, even the most cursory of glances at our competitors will highlight the value of ensuring mail reaches its intended destination,” Nguyen said in a conference this morning.

“Of course, for years now VNPostal has enjoyed unprecedented success with our incredibly popular mail-snatching services,” he continued, “But in today’s ever evolving market, there is a clear need for us to adapt, to listen to the accusations of flagrant theft and to, at very least, attempt to branch out into the world of postal delivery services.”

The company recently celebrated its 14^th birthday last month and marked the occasion by feeding former CEO Nguyen Gói Gáo to a pack of wild geese in his native Bắc Kạn Province.

This ceremonial sacrificial ousting saw share prices plummet as the company desperately attempted to rebrand itself as a deliverer of mail, parcels, post and packages – a direction that many critics felt was too radical a change.

Defying the nay-sayers, VNPostal’s appointment of Nguyen Thư Trộm to the company's helm has heralded a comeback to rival that of Jesus H. Christ. New Nguyen’s decision to partner with controversial ride-hailing app Snatch left many baffled as to whether the postal service would survive the brutal summer, but now, with the unveiling of a revolutionary new service that guarantees customers’ mail arriving at specified locations within allotted timeframes, there appears to be no limit to the company’s potential.

Resident white man with vague credentials pointing to a background in finance or some such shit, Ronald Livingston, noted that this is a real turnaround for a company that “last year was about as useful and popular as a Mắm tôm flavoured condom.”

Speaking with The Durian via carrier rat, Livingston explained that the added value for customers and stakeholders alike should see an uptick in people choosing to trust another human being with the transportation of sentimentally valuable objects.

“The decision to actually transport customers’ goods and do so without pilfering, pocketing, pinching or plundering is one that I think a lot of customers will appreciate,” read his message that appeared to be hastily scrawled on a napkin and delivered via the anus of a live rat.

“For too long shareholders and investors have been wary of VNPostal’s policy of abandoning parcels deemed financially worthless in the gutters – this new approach to doorbells, phone numbers and a basic sense of customer-relations is an absolute game-changer not just for VNPostal, but for the whole industry here in Vietnam,” it continued.

At press time The Durian editorial team was praying that VNPostal’s new policy doesn’t result in subpoenas and other legal challenges successfully reaching our underground lair/newsroom.  

Report: Fear of squat-drop toilet outweighs urge to shit

Trúc Bạch, Hanoi – Citing his general lack of anal aim and poor choice of beige trousers, human flashcard holder and occasional speaker of English, Garfield Wanstead has today confessed that his overriding fear of his local Bia Hoi’s squat-drop toilets heavily outweigh his current urge to shit.

The white-skinned casual user of English grammar has made Hanoi home for the past year and a half, but despite spending 18 months earning an utterly preposterous salary for his admittedly limited ability at uttering his native language, Wanstead remains adamant that squat-drop toilets are too savage for him, even now, when his sphincter is dilating with anticipation.

Burbling out excuses in a broken slur of what most automated hotlines wouldn’t recognise as English, Wanstead attempted to state that “I just know I’m going to fall right back into a heap of my own steaming turd if I try it, I’ll just wait till I get home.”

“It’s not like I’m gonna shit myself,” laughed a visibly nervous Wanstead who remained standing for the duration of this interview, “It’s not even the toilet, it’s the lack of soap, y’know?” whinged the man whose anus was twitchier than the Eye of Sauron.

Despite the immense faecal pressure availing itself on his lower intestines, sources close to Wanstead confirmed that his purple complexion was simply “his means of dealing with the environment he’d chosen to inhabit” and probably had nothing to do with the turtle’s head that was currently touching cloth around his nether regions.

Bia Hoi 4 U Fam offers no door, no toilet paper and a leaky bum gun in its squat-drop stalls, but does this make Wanstead a lil white bitch in Asia? According to experts, yes.

Dr Funagi Yoobend of the regional think-tank on sewage management in Southeast Asia, Pacific Rims, claims that Wanstead’s apparent fear of the squat-drop stems from the nightmare brewing in his innards.

“What Garfield [Wanstead] is most likely experiencing after such a meek level of alcohol consumption is known medically as the ‘beeriod’” he explained via telephone, “Currently I imagine his rump will be quivering with a fiery urge to expel the excess waste built up inside him, this, the body will seek to rid itself of by releasing a hot jet of ass-piss directly into a hole in the ground.

“The implications of not dropping an anal Hiroshima or Nagasaki in this Bia Hoi squat-drop are far worse for Garfield biologically, but the trepidation he’s experiencing is completely normal, although ordinarily it’s only subjects new to Vietnam that exhibit such lil bitchness – a specimen as attuned to the local toiletry culture as Garfield ought to know better than to wear beige trousers.”

Feigning not to hear any of Dr Yoobend’s remarks over the speakerphone our reporter was using to conduct the interview, Wanstead rescinded the notion that he was in any way uncomfortable with the use of squat-drop toilets, but insisted that he didn’t need to go go right now. He proceeded to drink several more beers, with the sheepish smile of a wild animal living in captivity.

At press time Wanstead was seen wading waist-deep into Trúc Bạch Lake as Bia Hoi 4 U Fam shouted for last calls. The Durian is gearing up to cover another mass extinction of Hanoi’s fish in the early hours of tomorrow morning following Wanstead’s rectal chemical warfare.

Begpacker still thinks he’s cooler than friends back home

Hoàn Kiếm, Hanoi – Following days without a single donation to his self-proclaimed “Shoestring Super-Soul Tour of Love” a visibly malnourished Todd Bryson remained fully confident in his ability to traverse the world living off the kindness of strangers like a 29-year-old dreadlocked leech.

Voyaging from his native England penniless on the premise that human kindness, cosmic energy and good vibes would keep his dream of travelling the world alive, Bryson has been stranded alone in Hanoi for almost two weeks. In spite of his distinct lack of abode, access to a shower or even an unsullied pair of underwear, Bryson remains adamant that he is still, by far and away, the coolest of his friends back home.

“Man, I feel bad for them,” he laughed, “Stuck in that nine till five grind, suited and booted like monkeys in ties, slaves to the money – they don’t know what they’re missing!” claimed the man who recently spent four hours trying to find an uninhabited alleyway to shit in.

“Honestly, like, it’s just so freeing to be out of the system man,” Bryson continued as lice crawled over his eyeball, “Money’s just a manmade construct and life is this great adventure that they’re just missing out on, out here I’m totally free, free to stew in my own urine for as long as I want.”

Documenting this great adventure via Instagram, Bryson confesses that he is keen to omit the parts of his spiritual quest where he traded sex acts for food, but remains positive that if people just open their hearts, wallets and sometimes trousers to his way of life, they’d see that’s it’s pretty rad.

“Like, I love those guys back home – all of them, but like Doug’s getting fucking married, what a pawn to the Judaeo-Christian dogma of Western society, y’know?” he asked, despite not having felt the warmth of human contact that wasn’t a police officer for the duration of his travels.

“And sure, Ben’s got that great job at Google or whatever, but like, he’s just become this cog in the machine now – he’s a total sell-out, slobbering on the big corporate dong like a dog,” shouted Bryson, seemingly unaware that not only were most Vietnamese dogs currently living better than him, but his friend Ben will never taste a real dong for the sake of survival.

Stating that he felt sometimes that he’d just lost touch with everyone when they had “sold their souls to the imperialist machine of corporatocracy” Bryson noted that even among other backpackers, he felt he was the only authentic traveller, because he had no money, so the world was his hostel.

“Nah, fucking phoneys, the lot of them – just like them all back home, God I bet they wish they’d had the balls to live free like me, now look at them with their mortgages, wives, career prospects, futures and contentment, but they’re just cowards!” exclaimed Bryson, before the smell of a freshly cooked bánh mì turned him into a rabid animal and he ended the interview bounding off on all fours in search of rats.

Speaking with The Durian over Skype, Ben Costello, former university roommate of Bryson and successful IT engineer stated “We very much hope that he is ok and will come home to get the help he so clearly needs.”

At press time, Bryson’s body was reportedly handed over to the British Embassy for repatriation after he was deservedly kicked to death over the use of Comic Sans on his sign. He is survived by four fleas.

Local gecko actually depraved pervert

Long Biên, Hanoi – It has emerged today that the adorable little gecko critter who’s been shaking his cutie-booty all over local man, Barry Kedger’s bedroom wall and ceiling is in fact a debased pervert of the most depraved order.

The gecko, identified as that kind of green-brown-yellow kind with the big all-seeing eyes, was rumbled following a series of posts onto Kedger’s social media accounts.

Speaking with The Durian, bearded purveyor of Tinderellas and occasional teacher of cover classes, Kedger revealed it all began innocently enough.

“Well, I first started noticing it [the nymphomaniac gecko] in the mornings, just as I was getting ready to go out of the shower and it’s like I could feel it’s unblinking eyes on my naked skin, y’know?”

Noting that geckos are considered something of a tropical novelty in his native Luton, UK, Kedger confessed to being drawn to the gecko initially.

“He just had this cute little shuffle to him and I kinda liked having him around – my last pet got reclaimed by debt collectors, so I was really lured in.”

Posting on Facebook last week, Kedger wrote “Looks like I’ve got a new roommate!! Hope he pays rent on time lololol #VietmaneeseLyfe #WonderLust #GotMeAGecko.”

Things began to take a sinister turn when Kedger noticed the gecko, affectionately known as Godzilla, following him into the bathroom during his irregular bathing rituals. Kedger’s suspicions peaked when he was enjoying a moment of deep, self-reflection, which Kedger assured our reporter was best enjoyed naked with the company of RedTube on a Google Incognito browser.

Unable to shake the feeling he was being spied on by more than just the regular big data harvesting internet giants, Kedger took to Facebook once more to express concern about his new roommate’s voyeuristic proclivities.

“Actually afraid to get naked in my own room now,” he wrote “Godzilla’s been getting himself into some weird spots during some of my more intimate moments – if I didn’t know better I’d think he’s giving me the eye! #GetYourCoatLove #WhoCanBlameHim #DadBod.”

But behind the kooky hashtags that surely signal Kedger as a man of quirky taste and unique refinement, the bearded part-time teacher confided in our reporter that he was bordering on paranoid at the time of posting.

Events all came to a head this past weekend, when after dabbling in some cheap Bolivian marching powder at one of Hanoi’s top nightlife emporiums, BirdTrap, Kedger found himself enjoying the carnal pleasures afforded to us mere earth-dwellers with none other than a woman whose name he has allegedly forgotten.

“Ahh mate, it was banging – like literally,” he laughed, “Stacey or Claire or whatever, well, I was going at it behind, but then from over the top of her shoulder, what do I see?” asked Kedger seemingly not rhetorically.

He proceeded to confirm that it was indeed the gecko formerly known as Godzilla, who had reportedly worked his way down the wall to the headboard of the bed and proceeded to lock eyes with Kedger.

“Honestly, I struggled after that – you can all tell me it was just the monkey-dust, but there was something lusty in those blank, black eyes that just got in my head, I had to tell Rachel to leave, it was well embarrassing,” mourned a baleful Kedger as he stared into his glass of bia hoi.

It was following the interruption of Kedger’s attempt to make the beast with two backs that he was approached healing crystal enthusiast, Lindsay “Astral” Peckerman offering her services as Hanoi’s top and only gecko-whisperer.

While details remain sketchy on the events that transpired while the Peckerman and the gecko were alone in Kedger’s room, there was no sign of either of them when Kedger finally found the courage to enter his bedroom.

At press time Peckerman and Godzilla were allegedly sighted en route to Vegas for a shotgun marriage, as revealed by Peckerman’s Instagram post which claimed Godzilla was in fact a vessel for the soul of Ted Bundy and that they were in love.

Please, no more on this story, we don’t want it to develop.

Modern-day Moses parts sea of motorbikes

Hoàn Kiếm, Hanoi – A group of Western tourists have today witnessed what they described as a “miracle” when a modern-day Moses strolled casually into traffic, appearing to part the sea of motorbikes that sped around him from all directions.

Onlooker and professional seeker of faces in toast, Bob Grotto, reported the incident to Hanoi’s Ministry of Miraculous Obscurity, after he and his family watched at first in horror and then in disbelief as a man strode straight into a vehicular onslaught typical of the Old Quarter.

Grotto, 47, stated “He had this weird light shining around him, like you knew that – contrary to all the evidence around him – he wouldn’t get as much as a scratch on him.”

“Just when you think the good Lord has provided us bountifully in the saving grace of President Trump and his benevolent imprisonment of children, then this goes and happens!” added Grotto before detailing that this was indeed his first time out of his native Virginia, USA.

The report filed with the Ministry of Miraculous Obscurity noted that the purported miracle-maker was a white male, aged anywhere between 25 and 45-years-old and “alarmingly hirsute for this time of year.”

It is believed that the combination of the man’s facial hair and aptitude for crossing roads in Hanoi led to Grotto and his family to cross the Long Biên Bridge in search of snakes to handle. While Grotto’s wife, Sandra, was later hospitalised after being repeatedly bitten, the Ministry of Miraculous Obscurity is said to be investigating.

The man who sparked all of today’s liturgical lunacy was later identified by The Durian’s chief social butterfly as Dave “That Bloke with the Beard” Parker.

Further correspondence with the Ministry confirmed that the report detailed an allusion to a “burning bush” that was later established to be marijuana.

Parker, a 28-year-old British ESL teacher, had been on his way to blaze with his regular dealer at the time of his alleged miraculous performance.

When reached for comment, Parker denied all knowledge of his prophetic deeds or of marijuana’s legal status in Vietnam.

“What the fuck are you on about? I’ve got a class to get to and I’m baked as fuck,” said the man off to make $25 for an hour of educating children on the virtues of ice cream.

Today’s misdiagnosis of an everyday occurrence for a modern miracle comes fresh off the back of last month’s biblical blunder following an American expat convinced he could turn water into rice wine. He is reportedly still undergoing treatment to recover his eyesight.

Vietnam to change spelling of bánh mì to báhn mì

Ba Đình, Hanoi – In an effort to further expand international tourism arrivals and lure the coveted demographics of foodie bloggers, Instagram influencers and wellness gurus whose noses still smell like Gwyneth Paltrow's bleached anus, Vietnam has announced that, starting immediately, the spelling of bánh mì will be changed to báhn mì.

Phuong Ha, Vice Director of the Tourists' Wants and Tourist Support (TWATS), spoke to The Durian by phone from Banh Mi Ngon in Hoi An, one of the country’s most well-known sandwich shops.

“I’m here explaining to the owner that they’ll have to change their sign and all of their menus,” she said.

“Of course, this will be quite the undertaking for the countless báhn mì vendors nationwide and surely reckons a mighty meaty blow to our collective linguistic heritage, but it must be done - without drawing the anti-vaxxer, Mumsnet demographic out of their chia seed encrusted suburban lairs, we’re way back down the tourism value chain, stuck with pasty teenyboppers who think sporting a bandana and inadvertently creating a sex-tape in a shared dorm with CCTV constitute a spiritual awakening.”

“We’ve already endured so, so many bloggers trying to blag free accommodation in an Old Quarter hostel,” she added, “Just for once it’d be nice to have someone who wanted to pay for things, even if they want to speak to the manager about how fair trade the ice in their cocktail is or whether the mattress is gluten-free.”

Ha shared that she and other TWATS officials have already noticed an uptick in restaurants and bloggers overseas utilising the name báhn mì, instead of bánh mì.

“At first we were very confused,” she went on.

“How could you confuse the German word for ‘train’ with the Vietnamese word for ‘bread’? Some people didn’t even understand the concept of the dish, let alone the spelling. There were restaurants serving bánh mì bowls! There are even recipes for bánh mì tacos! Trời ơi!” she shouted with a hearty laugh that masked the pain of bearing witness to her culture being dismantled and bastardised by an endless horde of bearded, tattooed white men intent on cooking on the internet.

“Of course, we’re very proud of our language – it’s an indispensable part of our culture, albeit one that few visitors bother to learn,” Ha says. “But then we realised that if foreigners piggybacking on our culinary culture couldn’t pronounce the names of our food properly, then it wasn’t spreading a good image for Vietnam and we so badly want foreign tourists to come experience our delicious cuisine and world-class cable cars.”

After much internal debate, the TWATS association decided to propose the spelling change to the central government, and the letter swap was quickly approved.

Prominent American food blogger, part-time YouTuber and full-time shelf-stacker Steve Hickory was ecstatic when he heard the news. “I’m far too busy maintaining my YouTube channel to bother checking the correct spelling of dishes from other countries, and I think my phone autocorrected ‘bánh’ to ‘báhn’ anyway,” he said in an Instagram direct message.

“For me, food is like, y’know, this kinda lens through which we look into another culture, food is just so important to me, but content is king these days – hustling, DM’ing hotels for free rooms and arguing online about layers of cultural authenticity takes time,” continued the human equivalent of the juice that leaks out of garbage bags.

“This will make it so much easier for bloggers like me to mangle foreign names without being flamed on social media and I applaud Vietnam for this ground-breaking move. I hope other countries follow suit – I was just in Mexico and couldn’t spell chilaquiles for the life of me. Like and subscribe!”

At this point it is unclear whether the name change will be enforced for Vietnam’s rich array of lesser-known bánh dishes, including bánh đúc, bánh bao or bánh căn. We might’ve even broken the new rule just by typing that sentence, but thankfully The Durian has a watertight legal team of specially trained pigs who’ve repeatedly demonstrated their ability to devour a jury faster than any judge can sentence us.

Local man’s phone wallpaper just local man’s face

Đống Đa, Hanoi – While interviewing local man, Mặty McMặt-Mặt about something trivial enough to be printed in Vietnam, a reporter for The Durian today stumbled across something far more newsworthy upon realising that Mặty’s phone wallpaper is simply a photo of Mặty staring back at himself.

Dropping whatever inferior topic that The Durian sent him to cover, our fearless reporter dove right into this salacious news-cycle-consuming story with the reckless abandon of a fat nephew attacking a wedding cake.

“I dunno, I never really thought about it, but there is something comforting about seeing myself staring back at me,” explained Mặty, whose physical face blushed slightly, giving our reporter a clear indication of who was the real Mặty and who was merely phone Mặty.

“It’s just never really bothered me and there’s something depressing about all those beautiful scenic images of places I’ve never been to, especially when you work in telecoms,” he added balefully.

Witnesses at the scene reported that Mặty was gazing contemplatively at his phone, from which Mặty unflinchingly stared back as our reporter dutifully ordered the beers necessary to make a story out of this.

“I guess if I had a girlfriend, a pet, close family ties or even a precious moment from my 32 years of life that I’d like to savour every day, then perhaps I wouldn’t just have my own gormless mug staring back at me, but as things stand, it’s just good to see proof of my own existence,” sighed the unmarried, generally lonesome IT engineer with no hobbies.

When probed further on this, Mặty noted that there was that one time that Kha Banh and his gang pushed in front of him at an American fast food outlet, but confessed that, actually, the experience was mildly traumatising and he had no wish to relive it every single time he picked up his phone.

While The Durian, experts and, indeed, anyone with eyes in their head can see the prevalence of Vietnamese phone owners who choose to decorate their phones with lacklustre photos of their own face, no clear link has yet been found between such behaviour and the crushing sensation of leading an utterly, devastatingly bland life.

More on this story when something worthy of a Facebook profile picture transpires during the remnants of Mặty's unfulfilling life.

EU-Vietnam Trade Deal fails to regulate imported backpackers

Hoàn Kiếm, Hanoi – In what has been dubbed a historic trade deal between one of the largest trading blocs and a developing country, last week saw the EU Trade Ambassador finally finish signing a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with Vietnam.

The deal, which has been years in the making with a further year spent signing each page in triplicate – in accordance with Vietnam’s proclivity for bureaucracy – aims to take an EU-certified knife to tariffs, slashing export duties on approximately 99 percent of goods imported to Europe.

However, sources familiar with the deal claim that it all very nearly fell apart on several occasions due to Vietnam’s demand that the EU apply their own standards to exported backpackers flooding the Vietnamese market.

“This is a milestone agreement,” EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström told press at a briefing in Hanoi, “It heralds a new era of cooperation and trade between the EU and the great nation of Vietnam, but under no circumstances will we be regulating the flow of ukulele-toting shoeless cretins on parental-funded spiritual journeys across Vietnam.”

Commissioner Malmström’s comments were met with a confused and faltering applause as the realisation dawned on the nation’s press that this deal ensured a free-flow of human slurry into Vietnam.

“It is neither within our interests or budget to perform the rigorous quality checks required for us to guarantee that crusty European backpackers won’t parade their warty genitalia around in public, pass out drunkenly in a puddle of their own rapidly cooling filth, or act like total fucking skidmarks on pub crawls organised by their $2-a-night hostels – although we do expect to see an uptick in quality when the UK finally fucks the fuck off out of the EU,” reasoned Malmström.

Last year alone Vietnam braced its shores against a painfully hip, seemingly shower-proof horde of 2.1 million backpackers from Europe, leaving the nation’s tour operators and bed bugs rubbing their hands in anticipation for growth in 2019.

“Yeah, sure it’s great and all, probably gonna improve the livelihoods of the Vietnamese people, cool, but when are we going to talk about the bearded, beer-chugging, fire-breathing white elephant in the room that is low-grade backpackers?” shouted one local government aide who wished to remain anonymous for reasons that are obvious to anyone with even a cursory understanding of history.

“Man, they bent us over and fucked us without an EU regulation condom,” added the intoxicated civil servant.

Critics of the deal were disappointed with the EU’s apparent lack of testicles, with representatives of member states citing Vietnam’s “tarnished human rights records, neutered press freedoms, minimal transparency, lack of democracy and the silencing of activists both on and offline,” as obstacles to overcome.

In rebuttal, representatives of the EU trade commission said they felt that the sheer pestilence, stinginess and all-round ignorance offered by European backpackers more than balanced the deal out.

As the EU-Vietnam deal awaits ratification later this year, some 6300 miles away in the UK, Brexit negotiators were looking on in abject despair.

Hot water announces hostile takeover of cold tap

The entirety of Hanoi – Hot water has today announced it now has a controlling stake in all unrefrigerated fluids across the city, successfully concluding the almost annual hostile takeover of Hanoi’s water pipes once again.

As this week’s heatwave reduces Caucasian residents to grimy puddles of poorly dressed gunk, the hits just keep coming for those among us unsuited to sweltering extinction-grade temperatures as a spokesman for hot water briefed the nation’s perspiring press.

“As some of you were perhaps aware, this move has been a long time in the making,” explained Jim Chalmers, a visibly sunburnt yet distinctly generic press officer representing the business interests of hot water.

“Naturally, we’ve had to keep it secret until conditions were right, but now, given the concentration and isotropic composition of CO2 has been shaped by mankind’s hubris, we’re proud to announce that cold taps are now thoroughly under our control,” continued Chalmers with a smile as his ass-cheeks formed a sweaty waterfall.

“Of course, we couldn’t have done it without a little help,” winked Chalmers, with a clear and unrepentant nod to humanity’s self-destructive reliance on fossil fuels and our collective inability to now prevent a mass species die-off.

The controlling stake in Hanoi’s waterworks and ultimately the fate of all living things enables hot water and its stakeholders to ensure that the city will be unable to experience a cold shower until such a time when share prices in hot water inevitably fall.

Experts have warned that due to brainless consumption of natural resources, hot water’s merciless reign of unrelenting prickly heat may last as long as October this year.

Today’s events do not exist in a vacuum, fluid analysts warn. Predictions inked in blood and bound in flesh by think-tank Wet Dreams suggest this takeover is merely phase one of an aggressive acquisition campaign, with some going so far as to believe that hot water is eager to stake a claim in the refrigerated market.

“If this trend continues without regulation, no Revive, no Pocari Sweat – not even a goddamn Beer Hanoi will be safe,” claimed Drew Dyke as he called upon the Vietnamese government to heed warnings about monopolistic monsters denying us all the right to drink a beer in the shower to escape this heat.

With concerns now mounting as to the seemingly unstoppable heat, many humans of Hanoi have simply given up and sealed themselves in their freezers. Police found a suicide note pinned to the door of a freezer in a Ba Dinh residence over the weekend and one local man is being treated with dialysis after inserting a family pack of iced lollies into his orifices. It is believed the man is in a critical, albeit delicious condition.

The Durian hopes all of our readers somehow stay cool throughout this nightmarish glimpse into the unending hellscape that inevitably awaits lest we change our ways.