Tet fun minority style at Ethnology Museum

A swing game which will be played at the Ethnology Museum in Hanoi Photo: The organizers

Discover Vietnam’s minority tribes in person at the Ethnology Museum at Nguyen Van Huyen Street in Hanoi during Tet from February 6 to 8.

For the first time, Raglai people from Ninh Thuan Province, Dao and Na Mieo from Lang Son Province will all come to introduce their colorful culture, music, dances and indigenous festivals to Hanoi. Visitors will be able to see Lion dances of Nung people, gong performances of Raglai and the bamboo dance of Thai people on the same stage.

Other attractions include water puppet shows, calligraphy demonstrations and artists from Dong Ho painting village who will show you how to paint the folk characters that have made their village famous.

Many ethnic folk games will be played. Kids can have fun with traditional toys such as pin wheel, to he (figurines fashioned from colored rice dough), flowers and fruits made of dough, 12 animal designations made of clay. Guests can enjoy many kinds of food.

Related Articles

• Intel to fund high-tech computer lab at RMIT
• Construction Ministry plans investment trust
• Wozniacki cruises to win at Montreal Cup
• Young stars raise profile of Vietnam chess
• Buyers lap up Con Dao Six Senses villas

Peanut gets residence at Palace

Veteran rockers, Peanut, perform at the Palace Hotel Saigon - Photo: Courtesy of Saigontourist

Calibre Charner restaurant at the Palace Saigon Hotel has signed veteran local rockers, Peanut, as the nightly resident band.

The band that started more than 40 years ago in 1967 has made a recent comeback playing its own brand of classic rock. The four members, Bernard Tam (solo guitarist, singer and who can play guitar by teeth), Francois Thien (drummer), Michel Chi (Guitar bass, singer) and Patrick Trung (keyboard, singer), are brothers.

Covers from the 60s, 70s and 80s include Come together, Don’t let me down (Beatles), How deep is your love, I started a joke (Bee Gees), The house of the rising sun, We gotta get out of this place (The Animals), I can’t get no satisfaction (The Rolling Stones), Smoke on the water (Deep Purple) and Hotel California (Eagles).

The band is accompanied by a singer from the Philippines and four Vietnamese singers. They will perform from 8:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.

On February 1, the band will perform from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., in front of the hotel in a Tet performance on Nguyen Hue Flower Street.

Calibre Charner is part of a relaxation, healthcare and beauty complex featuring restaurant, café, bar, karaoke, spa, gym and hair salon. Located in downtown Nguyen Hue Boulevard and surrounded by trade centers, buildings, banks and fashion shops, cafés, Calibre Charner, open 7a.m. to midnight, is an ideal venue for businessmen and tourists to take the view of Saigon life.

The menu includes breakfast with noodle soup with ox tails, Hue style noodle soup with beef, Nam Vang noodle soup and broken rice.

It has two set dinner menus for Tet on Lunar New Year’s Eve priced at US$59 per person.

On the fifth floor of the hotel will be a seafood buffet from February 2 to February 6. Tickets are priced at VND550,000 per adult on Lunar New Year’s Eve and VND350,000 per adult on February 3 to 6.

The Palace Hotel Saigon, 55-66 Nguyen Hue Boulevard, HCMC’s District 1. Tel: 3829 2860.

Related Articles

• Solar giant's factory plan for City gets thumbs-up
• V-League season promises drama, greater professionalism

Fun with banh chung at Sea Horse Resort

Spring fair in Phan Thiet

A team makes a banh chung at Tuesday’s festival at the Sea Horse Resort in Phan Thiet - Photo: Khai Nguyen

Hundreds of holidayers in Phan Thiet cheered on their favorite team at a banh chung wrapping contest at a festival at Sea Horse Resort on Tuesday night.

The contest to make the square glutinous rice cake filled with green bean paste and pork fat was part of a banh chung festival held by the resort. Twenty three teams, many of them tourists from Russia, Germany, Estonia and Rumania, competed.

In 15 minutes, the teams had to wrap all the ingredients of a banh chung in banana leaves and tie it with string under guidance of the resort staff.

All the teams finished the cake on time but the most beautiful banh chung belonged to three teams from Russia.

A Vietnamese overseas lady, Le Thu Nguyet, said, “I am Vietnamese but this is the first time I have made a banh chung. It is a joyful experience after 23 years away from my country.”

All the cakes were boiled to serve guests. “Touring Vietnam, I can
discover many landscapes and learn interesting things interesting about culture, food and history,” said Billy Karksson,a tourist from Sweden.

The festival is held at the resort every year so visitors can know about the traditional Vietnamese Tet festival.

*Binh Thuan Province will hold its Spring Fair at Nguyen Tat Thanh Square in Phan Thiet City from January 22 to 27 with about 150 booths.

Organizers hope the fair will add extra color to the province’s Tet celebrations and bring luck to
enterprises to promote their businesses and find partners.

The fair will feature food, cosmetics, household utensils, souvenirs, fine arts products and home decorations.

Nightly music shows, children’s games, promotions and discount programs promise to make it a fun event.

Related Articles

• US$5b in seafood exports targeted
• US$5b in seafood exports targeted
• Blue seas and unspoiled beaches
• Intel to fund high-tech computer lab at RMIT
• Vietnam’s tra fish export to Egypt still down

Tombs and clouds on Truong Son Road

A view of East Truong Son

We reached Pleiku City in the Central Highland when night started to fall. The mountainous city was magnificent with lights everywhere and high buildings. We found a hotel to sleep to be ready for Truong Son Road, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, next day.

Early in the morning, after visiting Bien Ho (Sea Lake), a tourist destination that is five kilometers from the center of the City, we left Pleiku in a light drizzle for neighboring Kontum Town.

Truong Son Road is sinuous track that gets thinner as it climbs. Along the road are many weirdly named passes such as Lo Xo, Prom, P’Rao.

Scattering along the road are many graveyards of soldiers and locals, making us feel very somber. One member of my group, whose father died there in the war time but his body was never recovered, burned incense at some tombs hoping that one was his father’s.

This bridge on Truong Son Road crosses a waterfall - Photos: Pham Manh Anh

The rain continued so the trail was blanked in water and fog. Winding roads looked like silk scarves across the hills and everything looked dreamy and vaporous.

Along the road there were no residential areas, just some small villages spread far apart. The villagers pan for gold, or cut wood. There was no sign of cars, buses or trucks.

We stopped by Lo Xo Pass where clouds clung to the mountain sides. We all took out cameras and took photos as if we were standing in front of a watercolor painting that we were afraid would vanish.

We went back to the car as the FM radio broadcast that the monsoon would come the next day. It was time to leave but we all agreed to return next year.

Related Articles

• Mothers share sorrow of war
• Prime Minister discusses relations, co-operation with Lao counterpart
• Party chief receives Lao and Chinese envoys
• Tevez on target as Man City beat Liverpool 3-0
• Banks scramble for mid-level managers

Int’l yacht festival promotes yachting tourism

Yacht teams from 20 countries and territories in the world will take
part in the 2011 International Yacht Festival which will be held in Mui
Ne, in the central province of Binh Thuan from March 17-20.

Themed
“Yacht, Sea, Sand and Sun,” the second yacht festival will include
interesting sports, tourism and entertainment activities such as a yacht
exhibition, a yacht performance by professional athletes, plus
international music performances with the participation of artists from
the Czech Republic, the Republic of Korea, Australia and Russia
and arts performances from Vietnam.

There will be a
seminar on building a brand name for Vietnamese sea activities, along
with advertising and developing yachting amusements in Vietnam.

At
a press briefing in Hanoi on Jan. 20, Deputy Chairman of the Binh
Thuan provincial People’s Committee Nguyen Van Thu said the organisation
of the festival is to popularise Mui Ne beach attractions to domestic
and foreign tourists and develop Vietnam’s sea tourism.

The
event is also a chance for international yacht groups to consider
investing and building yacht production plants for export in Binh Thuan
to provide for the Asian market.

Boasting a 192 km coastal
line, Binh Thuan province boasts abundant sea resources with beautiful
beaches, historical and cultural monuments and captivating traditional
festivals which are suitable for sea tourism development.

The International Yacht Association ranks Mui Ne as one of the best beaches for sailing in Asia.

Mui
Ne welcomed 2.5 million tourists, 15 percent of whom were foreigners,
in 2010. Binh Thuan province aims to attract 3.5 million visitors –
including 500,000 foreigners – to the beach by 2015./.

Related Articles

• Vietnam Air accepts web check-in for int’l flights
• City promotes prepaid bus cards
• HCMC begins to think about giving up meat
• Culture Vulture
• Local tour operators honored in Thailand

Travel firms offer Tet tours for tourists

As the Tet (Lunar New Year) Festival is approaching, tourist companies
are eagerly preparing to launch tours to serve not only local
holidaymakers but also tens of thousands of foreign visitors.

Doan
Thi Thanh Tra, Head of the Saigontourist Travel Service Corporation’s
Marketing Department, said that as of January 26 (the 23rd day of the
12th lunar month) the company will begin to receive groups of foreign
tourists who want to experience the Vietnamese people’s biggest
traditional festival.

More than 8,500 visitors have booked tours
to Vietnam for the occasion and this is the 8th consecutive year that
Saigontourist has organised tours to serve holidaymakers from abroad as
well as foreigners who are working and living in the country.

If
booking a tour to Ho Chi Minh City, visitors will have a chance to enjoy
the flowers at the Tao Dan Park and learn about the spiritual lives of
the local people by visiting pagodas, where they can pray for good luck
during the Year of the Cat.

Visitors will have an interesting
experience by going on a sightseeing tour of Cho Lon market by pedicab
or visiting local families, enjoying traditional dishes and receiving
gifts for good luck from the owners.

Meanwhile, tours to the
Mekong Delta offer holidaymakers an opportunity to experience the
typical Tet atmosphere of the local residents, with exciting floating
markets and Don ca tai tu (music of the talented) singing. They can join
in with the hosts to pack banh tet (cylindric glutinous rice cakes) and
banh chung (glutinous rice cake).

In addition, Saigontourist’s
restaurants, hotels and tourist sites have also prepared menus with
typical and traditional dishes to serve domestic and foreign visitors
during the festival.

Other travel firms are planning to launch
their own tours, alongside the traditional ones, to attract tourists
during the holidays.

Duong Mai Lan, from the Vietravel Company’s
Marketing Department, said that most of visitors have chosen the central
ancient town of Hoi An, the central city of Da Nang and the Mekong
Delta as destinations.

Tours in the North will bring
holidaymakers to the capital city of Hanoi, the UNESCO-recognised
natural heritage Ha Long Bay, the northern mountainous town of Sapa, and
the Huong (Perfume) pagoda.

Tourists can travel along the Hong
(Red) river by ship and visit a number of riverside tourist sites such
as Tien Dung-Chu Dong Tu Temple and Bat Trang pottery village.

According
to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), the country
is targeting welcoming 5.3 million foreign visitors and serving 30
million domestic holidaymakers in 2011.

The tourism sector will
strive to earn revenue of more than 110 trillion VND (5.5 billion USD),
equivalent to 4.6 percent of the country’s estimated gross domestic
product (GDP).

To reach these targets, the VNAT has mapped out
plans to attract one million tourists from each of the key markets,
namely Thailand, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Europe./.

Related Articles

• Local tour operators honored in Thailand
• HCMC to relay grand sale program to November
• Visit hell then heaven
• Mothers share sorrow of war
• IFC: Vietnam needs to increase PPP to support economy

Kontum’s unofficial ethnology museum

Dakbla Restaurant in Kon Tum Province, which is famous for its waterfalls and ethnic villages, is an interesting place to recharge the batteries with a meal and a coffee, because of the restaurant’s collection of antiques and cultural artifacts of the local ethnic people.

Many artifacts are on display at the restaurant. They are objects that are used in the daily life of local ethnic people, giving tourists an insight into communities such as Bahna, Ede, Gia Rai and M’Nong.

Ho Cong Van, the owner of the restaurant, has collected the artifacts since the 80s when he taught literacy to the tribes. There are shields of Xedang people, bamboo chairs and animal leather of Gie Rieng people, masks of the Ede as well as many gongs, hunting knives, old statues and a shirt made of tree bark.

Seen from outside, the restaurant, at 168 Nguyen Hue Street, Kontum Town in the highland province, looks like other normal restaurants. Dakbla is the name of the river that passes through town. Visitors to Kontum often hire wooden boats to explore the river and surrounds. - Photos: Kinh Luan

Related Articles

• Kontum’s unofficial ethnology museum
• Greenback firmer on signs of rising demand