Sex toys and sex enhancement medicines are available in Vietnam markets along the Vietnam-China border and over the Internet.
The Jinming Border Trade Market in Hekou (China), which borders Vietnam’s northwestern Lao Cai Province, is a big market for sex toys.
Its first floor, with an area of some 2,000 square meters, has more than 200 booths selling mainly sex toys and sex medicines – items outlawed in Vietnam.
Border markets
The booths display many kinds of nude rubber dolls in different postures.
As well as the exhibits, there are sex toys and sex organs in boxes – or hung outside to attract customers – as well as sex-supporting medicines.
Sinh, one of the shop owners, displays a series of items for your correspondent to choose from.
“Many people buy this,” he says, inserting batteries into a fake penis.
Then, he shows four different kinds of Viagra worth between 50 and 300 renminbis (VND90,000-VND600,000) which he says are not very good because they are counterfeit.
He advertises “Spring love,” a sex-supporting medicine he says is effective because “this special medicine contains the strength of the Chinese.”
Sinh says he supplies Viagra and “Spring love” to traders in Vietnam.
Compared with the Jinming Market, the Tan Thanh Border Economic Zone in the northeastern border Lang Son Province, which trades similar goods, has less hustle and bustle.
Entering a shop for electric appliances, we ask for sex toys for women.
The shop owner shows some suitable products as well as medicine for men with weak sex capability.
Quang, a salesman, presented a vial of brownish medicine worth VND500,000 (US$31.25).
This medicine, he says, has an immediate effect on women.
It’s supplied in large quantities to traders at Hang Chieu Market, a well-known sex toy-selling area in the old quarter of Hanoi.
“Happy” market in Hanoi
Hang Chieu Market is located at one end of Hang Chieu Street in Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem District.
The market covers a distance of about 100 meters.
At night time, dozens of women sit on plastic chairs to awaiting customers.
When your correspondent dropped by, several women asked if we wanted to buy medicine or condoms.
One of them took some different types of medicine out of her bag and explained their uses and effects as if she were a pharmacist.
Then she gave us a name card, saying she could supply goods directly to our place.
The “happy” market on Hang Chieu Street has operated for nearly 10 years.
Everyone knows that many products sold there, especially sex-stimulating medicines, are illegal.
Illicit trade with diverse customers Vo Thanh Thong, a resident of Ho Chi Minh City, is allegedly the head of a trans-Vietnam group that trades sex toys and sex-stimulating medicines.
Thong has set up a company, designed a website and used his blog to expand his sales network.
The website introduces sex-support tools, sex medicines, sex toys, and sex food.
In each category of goods, Thong supplies to both male and female customers dozens of different products such as fake penises, fake vaginas, rubber people and other sex enhancement tools.
He has Viagra and related drugs, such as Cialis and VPRX for men and for women, items such as “Rock-In” and female condoms.
All the products are packed for delivery to guarantee the privacy of customers.
According to Thong’s website, the company delivers goods to customers in HCMC, Hanoi, the Mekong Delta, Hai Phong and other northern provinces.
“I have many customers in the north,” Thong says.
“I sometimes send to Hanoi two to three parcels of medicines a week, mainly erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation medicines for men.”
Customers in the north are mostly rich old people who will become loyal customers if the goods have good quality, he added.
Sometimes, Thong has women customers.
They email the company wanting to buy dildos.
They usually use indirect addresses to receive their products.
In fact, many other websites like Thong’s sell sex-related things.
Recently, Le Van Loc, 51, and Thai Quoc Viet, 31, were arrested by HCMC police for selling sex toys over the Internet.
Viet confessed to building a website to sell sex toys and medicines for men and women.
He sold products of unclear origins which were advertised as products from the US and Europe.
To the customers who placed orders of more than VND300,000 ($18.75), he supplied goods to them by post or express cars.
We discovered most of the sex medicines sold at border markets, along Hanoi’s Hang Chieu Street and over the Internet are of unclear origins.
Sellers do not care about the quality of their goods, focusing instead on money and profit.
Consumers could suffer unexpected consequences if these medicines have side effects.
Source: Tuoi Tre