Couples find bliss in spouse exchange HANOI - Two couples are living in bliss - if not in sin - in southern Vietnam after swapping spouses in a move left unchallenged by local authorities, the state press reported yesterday. Bao Thi Lieu and Nguyen Thi Chien, girlfriends since childhood, switched their husbands in the mid-1990s after working with the other's spouse on a rubber plantation, according to the Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper. The article, which ran under the headline "Wife Swap!" and carried photographs of the cheery families, is a risque departure from the normally sedate stories in communist Vietnam's official media. The paper laid out the story of Ms Chien and Ms Lieu, who each found themselves working with the other's spouse in what Ms Chien called the "lonely rubber forests". "I don't know if it's destiny, but management assigned me to work in a team with Mr Phung, and my then-husband Nhan was in the same team with Lieu, my current husband's former wife," Ms Chien was quoted as saying. The women have since moved in with the other's husband, with both giving birth to children from the new unions. "I can't believe it," the chairwoman of the plantation workers' union, who identified herself as Miss Huong, barked when she learned of the story. Officials in Dong Nai province are reportedly turning a blind eye to the indelicate scenario. "The authorities are not going to challenge their current situation," said Nguyen Van Hung, chairman of Suoi Tre commune, where the couples live. Mr Hung recommended they divorce and remarry their new spouses, however. Divorce is rare but on the increase in Vietnam, where polygamy is illegal but where some men have a second, unofficial wife. Deutsche Presse Agentur, March 31, 2000.