China-Vietnam party colors Mid-Autumn

The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi will host a Mid-Autumn celebration September 17-20 called “Vietnam-China Color”.

The festival organized by Museum of Yunnan ethics, Yunnan Opera Institute (China) and Chinese Embassy in Vietnam will feature Chinese Opera with excerpts from the film “Journey to the West.” It will be the first time Chinese opera has been held at the museum.

Also new to the venue, will be performances of boi singing, a traditional music of Vietnamese Southerners

In this year’s program, there will be many Vietnamese and Chinese traditional games, toys such as lanterns, kites and Chinese masks and popular shows like lion – dragon dances and water puppets. Traditional cake making classes will be held.

Other activities such as dress-ups in Vietnamese and Chinese traditional costumes, story tellers sharing the legends of the Mid-Autumn Festival and cultural films of Vietnam and China will be there.

Tickets are available at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology at Nguyen Van Huyen Street, Cau Giay District for VND25,000 per adult, VND30,000 per child and VND5,000 students.

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China-Vietnam party colors Mid-Autumn

The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi will host a Mid-Autumn celebration September 17-20 called “Vietnam-China Color”.

The festival organized by Museum of Yunnan ethics, Yunnan Opera Institute (China) and Chinese Embassy in Vietnam will feature Chinese Opera with excerpts from the film “Journey to the West.” It will be the first time Chinese opera has been held at the museum.

Also new to the venue, will be performances of boi singing, a traditional music of Vietnamese Southerners

In this year’s program, there will be many Vietnamese and Chinese traditional games, toys such as lanterns, kites and Chinese masks and popular shows like lion – dragon dances and water puppets. Traditional cake making classes will be held.

Other activities such as dress-ups in Vietnamese and Chinese traditional costumes, story tellers sharing the legends of the Mid-Autumn Festival and cultural films of Vietnam and China will be there.

Tickets are available at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology at Nguyen Van Huyen Street, Cau Giay District for VND25,000 per adult, VND30,000 per child and VND5,000 students.

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Saint O Band performs at Night Spot

The Saint O band is back in residence at the Night Spot

The Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers has welcomed back the international acclaimed band Saint O to perform at Night Spot on Level 23. The band will grace the city for the seventh consecutive year performing at the hotel from Sept. 1 till Jan. 8 from Tuesdays to Sundays.

The band has recently performed in Kyrgyzstan and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Their music comprises R&B, top 40 hits, funk, hip hop, soul, Jamaican reggae and the infectious salsa beat.

Led by Canadian drummer and master percussionist Jermaine St. Omer, the band’s members consist of Ron Hull also from Canada on guitar, Michael Thornton from the U.S. on bass guitar, Lira Urmanbetova from Kyrgyzstan on keyboard and lead vocal, and the female vocalists Line Alwi and Lee Taylor.

Sensational weekend package at Equatorial

Valid only for Vietnamese and expatriate residents who stay from Friday to Sunday, the sensational weekend package has special offers including complimentary daily city shuttle bus to the Opera House, Reunification Palace, Notre Dame Cathedral and Ben Thanh Market, 15% discount on food and beverages, use of Fitness Center and beautiful outdoor swimming pool for only about VND2.5 million a night. Free room upgrades are available if you book two nights. It also offers  flexibility and more time for relaxing with late check-out until 4 p.m. This special offer is valid until Sept. 30.

Oriental Buffet Dinner at Ramana Hotel

Effective from September 3, the four-star Ramana Hotel Saigon will serve an Oriental buffet dinner at The Cafe restaurant.

Only VND299,000++ (US$16++) per adult and VND150,000++ (US$8++) per child (under 10 years old); diners will have chances to travel their taste buds in an array of oriental dishes including jelly fish salad with shredded chicken, roasted chicken Cantonese style, BBQ pork spare rib in Cantonese style and many more. You can also have fresh seafood cooked your own way while enjoying The Café’s live band. For every group of 10 another one gets served free. The promotion is valid until end of October from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. every Thursday to Saturday at The Cafe restaurant.

The Ramana Hotel Saigon is at 323 Le Van Sy, District 3, HCMC. For reservation or inquires, email to fb@ramanasaigon.com

 American beef promotion at Duxton

The Grill Restaurant at the Duxton Hotel Saigon is adding has a sizzling new addition to the dinner buffet - American styled BBQ beef ribs with Tex Mex sauce. There is also U.S. beef sukiyaki hot pot along with sushi and sashimi.

For more imformation, contact the hotel at 63 Nguyen Hue Boulevard, District 1, tel:  3822 2999

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The enigma of Dong Thap

Tourists on board one of the skiffs at Xeo Quyt after being taken around the narrow canals

One of the many reasons I love Vietnam is the motorbike culture. Give me a motorbike over a car any day. Ask anyone that’s read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and they’ll tell you, it’s the simple joy of traveling without viewing the scenery through a windscreen that makes motorcycling anywhere fantastic. But when the scenery is as good as deep in the Mekong Delta the experience is epic.

The house in Sa Dec where French author Marguerite Duras lived between 1928 and 1932 and the scene of her famous book “The Lovers”. It used to be used by government but is now open to tourists - Photos: Hoang Tham

The road to Dong Thap Province is fairly wide and in good condition. Once out of the tangled tapestry of the Saigon traffic and the industrial satellite towns, the road opens up and you can afford to glance more than momentarily at the world going past. But it’s still extremely random out there so don’t get too relaxed.

But still the highway is the highway and it presents a fairly homogenous culture anywhere you go with limited offerings of coffee, coke and soups. So I decided to dive down some narrow tracks whenever I needed some food, drink or time to refresh. The results were heart warming. Less than 50 meters off the noisy arteries of this country, life goes on as though the locals don’t know that trucks and buses and foreigners exist.

One such place was a hut in the fields that specialized in selling wine and grilled rats. While at first skeptical I was soon sold on the tasty little creatures that were no doubt fresh from the back door.

Dong Thap is divided by a river. On one side is Sa Dec, a historic little town that would do well to convert some of its French colonial buildings into comfortable guesthouses. While the limited range of hotels in town are clean and comfortable they do little to evoke the town’s romantic history. Sa Dec is known for a famous love affair between French writer Marguerite Duras and the son of a rich Chinese family there in the 1920s, which was the subject of her 1984 book “The Lover”.

On the other side of the river is a much newer town forged out of the low lying delta wetlands. Cao Lanh does not have the nostalgia or the old Chinese temples that Sa Dec has, but it is a great jumping point for some of Dong Thap’s main wetland attractions, which are home to Vietnam’s rare red-headed cranes.

Gao Giong is one of these bird sanctuaries. Off the beaten track, the roads get pretty narrow before you get there, and if you dare it’s easy to get lost among the maze of narrow waterways and narrow concrete tracks that service the thousands that live in little houses along them. The wetlands have flat bottomed skiffs for tourists that take you even deeper into the delta – into a bird society. The cranes are noisy and everywhere you look. There is also an incredible tower that presents a panoramic view of Gao Giong and a rambling stilted restaurant above the marsh that serves the freshest grilled eels and catfish you have ever tasted

Also within an hour’s ride from Cao Lanh, Xeo Quyt is another story. Another maze of canals barely a shoulders breadth wide, it was planted by the revolutionists before the war to create a hiding place for the top brass. The fascinating tours here with English speaking guides create a very vivid impression of the war time, and the very wet comfortless conditions and bombings that the people endured for years.

I left Dong Thap with that wonderful sense that I had discovered something. Much more than the coconut candy factories of My Tho or the floating markets of Can Tho, I was satisfied that I had done more than just scratch the surface of the enigmatic Mekong Delta.

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Calendar display shows a year of good wishes

Chinese books discounted at Phuong Nam Bookstore

Phuong Nam Printing Company, will display their latest Tet calendars at the student club at HCMC Medical University from September 9 to 16.

The calendars are not just for telling the day and decorating the house but also to express good wishes for the New Year.

Calendars that contain wishes for success are Vuon toi thanh cong (Achieving success), Mua Vang (Golden season), Dong hoa mat troi (Sun flower field). Wishes for promotion are presented in Hoa vuon cao (High rising flower), Vuon len (Rising), Duong den tuong lai (Way to the Future) and Dieu bay (Flying kite) has wishes for a good future.

Wish for wealth are in Phat tai phat loc (Good talent and prosperity) and Loc xanh (Green bud).

Hoa vui (Happy flowers), Le hoi dan gian (Folk festival), Meo vui dua (Cats playing together) or Tro choi dan gian (Folk games) all have wishes for happiness. Visitors to the display at 2A Le Duan Boulevard in HCMC’s District 1 will see many other wishes for peace, love and good luck.

*Phuong Nam Book Company will have a clearance sale of Chinese books at the Phuong Nam Bookstore at 105 Tran Hung Dao B Street, HCMC’s District 5 from September 9 to 19.

Over 20,000 Chinese book titles in many subjects like history, literature, medicine, fiction stories, children books and dictionaries will be discounted. 10,000 titles will have prices reduced by VND5,000 to VND50,000.

In total VND3 billion worth of books will go on sale.

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Get fired up about pottery at Ceramic Festival

Visitors at the booth of Thanh Ha pottery

The “Ceramic Festival of Vietnam – Binh Duong in 2010” is underway at Go Dau Stadium in Thu Dau Mot Town in Binh Duong Province till September 8.

Artisans join a ceramic making contest- Photos: Uyen Vien

The festival has 600 booths of ceramics and fine arts from about 70 enterprises around the country. Twenty one traditional ceramics and pottery villages which have been making ceramics for hundreds of years are also represented. The villages include Bat Trang in Hanoi, Phu Lang in Bac Ninh, Chu Dau in Hai Duong, Phuoc Tich in Thua Thien-Hue, Thanh Ha in Quang Nam, Hoa Vinh in Phu Yen, Bau Truc in Ninh Thuan, Bien Hoa in Dong Nai, Lai Thieu in Binh Duong and Mang Thit in Vinh Long.

Ceramic makers are promoting their products to local and foreign customers at the festival, while discussing the balance between traditional pottery making and using modern technology.

At the festival, there will be a ceramic making contest, seminar and exhibitions on ceramics.

Seven pottery works have been registered for Vietnamese records, of which three works by Minh Long 1 Company including Cup Hon Viet (Vietnamese soul’s cup), Chen Ngoc Van Lang (Van Lang pearl bowl) and Cup Sen Vang (Golden Lotus Cup), the work Quoc Binh Thang Long (Thang Long peaceful nation) by Cuong Phat Company, Lu Thien Dia (Jar of heaven and earth) by Thanh Trung pottery firm, Den Gom (Pottery lamp) by Thuong Nguyen pottery company and Dia Cau (Globe) by Tan Toan Phat Company. All works are made by traditional methods.

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Chariot racing - Vietnam style

The Bay Nui region in An Giang Province where the bull racing takes place in early October this year - Photo: Mong Binh

Colorful costumes are being tailored and bulls are being trained and fed with fresh grass in the month prior to the Dolta Festival in the Mekong Delta.

In the Bay Nui (seven mountains) region in An Giang Province and surrounds, the locals are all talking about the annual Vietnamese version of a chariot race.

A competitor in a previous Dolta Festival bull race spurs on his team in front of the crowd - Photo: Courtesy of Victoria Chau Doc Hotel

Traditionally celebrated by the Khmer people in An Giang, the Dolta Festival is now widely attended by all ethnic groups around the province and beyond, and draws a slew of domestic and foreign travelers from near and far. It’s all for a good cause - to celebrate the planting of the autumn-winter crops.

As usual, the festive activities feature colorful parades, cultural shows, dancing and family dinners. But the most-awaited part of the festival is the bull races, which are open to contestants from An Giang and nearby provinces. This year’s races are already heating up the usually-quiet temple courtyard of Ta Miet in Tri Ton District.

According to the rules, each bull pair must drag a 1.2-meter-long rake with 50-centimeter teeth and two teams compete in each race. Two young nai (jockeys) control and use a rattan rod to drive their bull on over the 120 meter muddy track.

To further complicate their task, the bull teams must run forward in a straight line and are disqualified if they veer off the paddy field course. Red and green flags mark the start and finish lines.

Owners of bull teams from Tri Ton, Tinh Bien, Chau Thanh, Chau Phu and Thoai Son districts of An Giang Province as well as Hon Dat and Kien Luong districts of Kien Giang have registered to compete at the 19th annual races. The organizers also expect registrations from bull drivers from Cambodia’s Takeo region.

This exciting and often hilarious event is a spectacle with a crowd of locals and visitors banging pots and pans with cooking utensils to drum up the mood from morning till afternoon.

In celebration of this unique festival, Victoria Chau Doc Hotel will launch a fun-filled package from October 4 to 6. Priced at US$224 per person on a twin-share basis, the package covers a welcome drink and fruit basket upon arrival, two nights stay at the colonial-style hotel on the banks of the Bassac River, trips to the bull racing and Sacred Sam Mountain, a boat tour to the floating fish farm and unique Cham village, and a 45-minute Vietnamese massage. 

The boat tour will take you on a journey to discover the life and culture of families living on the banks of the river for a welcome chillout after race day.

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