Trick or treat for Halloween in Hanoi

Halloween in Hanoi will be a screamer this year when 6000 Vietnamese students and international friends make themselves into monsters for a party at West Lake Park in Hanoi from 8 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on October 31.

Scary costumes, ghost houses, magic performances, hip hop dancing, sideshows and folk and rockshows will make it a fun fright-night.

There will be a pumpkin lantern making contest and a Halloween house design and decorating competition between about 20 university teams. The program will also include lucky draws and comedy shows by artist Xuan Bac, Tu Long and Ngu Cung band.

Halloween, October 31, is an annual holiday in the US. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints’ Day, but is on Wednesday largely as a secular celebration. It has become popular in Vietnam in recent years.

Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, carving jack-o’-lanterns, ghost tours, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, committing pranks, telling ghost stories or other frightening tales, and watching horror films.

For tickets, go to HeartLink Company, 9 Giap Nhat Street, Hanoi, tel: 3858 9385, website: www.heartlink.vn.

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A Home For Visitors To Halong

Saigon-Halong Hotel, based in the northern province of Quang Ninh’s Halong City, has diverse services for visitors to the area

A member of HCM City-based Saigontourist Holding Company, Saigon-Halong Hotel is among the biggest tourist services providers in Halong, where there is Halong Bay, one of Vietnam’s world natural heritage sites.
The four-star hotel is located in downtown Halong. It has a panoramic view of Halong Bay and is in the proximity of boat quays, beaches and night markets.

Full services

Saigon-Halong Hotel consists of a 15-floor building and five villas on a pine hill. It has a total of 222 rooms, including 17 rooms at the villas. The rooms are divided into six different categories: Villa Superior, Villa Family, Superior, Deluxe, Executive Suite and Presidential Suite. They all face the pine hill and Halong Bay.

Saigon-Halong Hotel has five restaurants. Two of them—Elegant and Panorama—are located inside the hotel. The rest—Rung Thong (Pine Forest), Ga Thoc (Chicken with Paddy) and Saigon-Halong Restaurant Ship—are outside the hotel and specialize in serving European-Asian cuisine and Halong specialties.

The Elegant Restaurant, located on the ground floor of the hotel, serves European-Asian cuisine and breakfast buffet every day to a maximum of 150 guests. The Panorama Restaurant, on the 14th floor and as the only restaurant in the town to have a full view of Halong Bay, has 250 seats and is suitable for parties, receptions and conferences. It serves breakfast buffet every day and is also an ideal spot for travelers to watch the sunrise and sunset on the world-famous bay.

The Rung Thong Restaurant stands near the swimming pool and bears the architecture of a house on stilts. It can serve fastfood and drinks to 40 guests. The Ga Thoc Restaurant, located in front of the hotel, can serve up to 70 people with chicken specialties.

Saigon-Halong Hotel’s bars serve spirits, soft drinks, fastfood, cocktails, cigarettes and first-class cigars. Impression Lobby Bar on the ground floor of the hotel has 200 seats and is appropriate for rendezvous and relaxation. Saigon Bar, on the first floor and near the grand conference room, has 150 seats and is for guests to take a small party during a meeting break. Camellia Massage Bar, on the second floor, can serve up to 132 guests with massage and karaoke services. Poolside Bar has 30 seats and serves food and drinks for guests at the swimming pool.

The hotel has seven meeting rooms, which are named after Vietnam’s localities—Danang, Sapa, Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang, Saigon and Halong. All the rooms are furnished with modern equipment such as screens, projectors, computers, sound and lighting systems and interpretation cabins. The biggest room can seat nearly 1,000 people.
In addition, entertainment services are also available at the hotel. They include a swimming pool, fitness center, sauna, massage, jacuzzi, karaoke and billiards. There, guests can also find other kinds of services such as child care, package tours, car rent, ship rent and currency exchange.

Discovering Halong Bay from the restaurant ship

The Saigon-Halong Restaurant Ship, owned and put into operation late last year by the Saigon-Halong Hotel, has three decks and 100 seats. The first and second decks are for serving food while the third deck is for tourists to take drinks and enjoy the night scene of Halong City.

This restaurant ship is the unique in town to serve dinner buffet every day. Tourists on board the ship can have dinner while enjoying traditional music performances and watching Halong Bay. In addition, the ship can organize a seminar or conference in conjunction with a tour of Halong Bay in the daytime upon request.

In the daytime, the Saigon-Halong Restaurant Ship serves tourists wanting to discover the beauty of Halong Bay. It starts the tour from Halong Boat Quay, bringing guests around the bay and part of Bai Tu Long Bay nearby. From the ship, tourists can see islands in existence for millions of years, which look like a dragon, an old man who sits fishing, two cocks fighting with each other, two sails, and so forth.

During the voyage, tourists are brought to Canh Doc Islet to visit Thien Cung and Dau Go caves. These two caves are 100 meters apart and are accessed by twisted ways with rock steps. The high, upright walls of Thien Cung Cave are covered with stalactites that create diverse images such as humans, animals and flowers.

On board the ship, guests also enjoy European, Asian and Vietnamese dishes, especially fresh and delicious seafood specialties of Halong.

Night boat trips to discover the beauty of Halong City and Bai Chay Bridge in the sea breeze are a distinctive strength of the Saigon-Halong Restaurant Ship, which other tourist boats in the town do not have. The first deck serves buffets, the second serves dishes from set menus and à-la-carte dishes, and the third is where tourists take a drink together with their friends or relatives.

Saigon-Halong Hotel

Add: Halong St., Bai Chay Ward, Halong Town, Quang Ninh Province
Tel: 033.3845845, fax: 033.3845849, email: sahahotel@hn.vnn.vn

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Heritage, Tourism And Conservation

The royal citadel in Hue City, a world cultural heritage site

In the wake of the reopening to visitors of the Royal Citadel in Hanoi, the Weekly looks at the partnership between the preservation of Vietnam’s heritage sites and cultural tourism

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee on July 31 this year recognized Vietnam’s Thang Long Royal Citadel as a world cultural heritage site. The site won the recognition thanks to its three outstanding characteristics, its age, the continuity of the citadel as a power center and the variety of relics it contains.

This is the newest member of Vietnam’s 10 natural, cultural and intangible cultural world heritage sites. It is now on the list of cultural experiences that tourists will look at when they are deciding how they will spend their time and money on their Vietnam holiday. However, according to travel companies, authorities need to improve tourism services and information around the heritage sites.

Grueling heritage tours

Nguyen Van My, general director of Lua Viet Travel Co. and Tavitour, shares with the Weekly that in the past, Thang Long Royal Citadel was one of the options included in tours to the northern region, but few tourists visited the citadel because they did not have enough information. “We have plans to add more tour programs to Hanoi,” My says. “But, we still have the same problem as other agencies. Although the citadel has just been recognized by UNESCO, there is little information available for tourists.”

Dinh Van Loc, director of Danang City-based Viet Da Travel, agrees that more information needs to get out there. Loc says that the recognition will increase the profile of the capital, but the main part of the citadel is only open to public by the end of this month. “There is no plan and no information to serve tourists in the future. We haven’t promoted it much to foreign tourists.”

Meanwhile, HCM City-based tour operator Vietravel is holding a promotion program to destinations in Vietnam, including heritage sites, following the 2010 National Tourism Promotion program, but it is waiting for more information to add more programs next year.

My, Loc and representatives from other travel companies are also waiting for more information from authorities so that they can add to their tours the newest UNESCO world cultural heritage.

The travel companies all agree that world heritage sites across Vietnam are valuable lures for tourism, but good services and products linking the heritage sites with other destinations and cultural attractions are few and far between.

This is the reason why tour operators just spend half of a day or a day at a heritage site during trans-Viet tours. My Son Sanctuary, another UNESCO-listed world heritage site in the central province of Quang Nam, is an example. After a short walking tour of the most interesting stone carvings and architecture, the tourists re-board the bus and leave My Son to visit another place of interest. Apart from the heritage site itself, My Son has little to offer in the way of souvenirs or food and refreshments.

The royal complex of Hue City, Hoi An Town of Quang Nam Province and Phong Nha-Ke Bang in Quang Binh Province are very well known to tourists, but they are still lacking the information that brings the stories of these amazing pieces of Vietnam’s history to life.

“I think heritage sites in Vietnam are only using 20-40% of their tourism potential,” Nguyen Van My says. “I hope that the Thang Long heritage will be a new choice,” Dinh Van Loc says. “But, the authorities should develop other vestiges and cultural values originated from the feudal period to create a heritage link for visitors.”

Heritage is the nucleus

My says one of the feasible ways to solve the problem is to look at the heritage as the nucleus in the atom while all the surrounding landscapes, cultural sites and attractions are the electrons buzzing around. Besides long-term investment in heritage sites, it is necessary to develop human resources who have the knowledge and heart to communicate the story of the sites to tourists.

The valuable but extremely fragile heritage sites will experience some decay with exposure to the elements and the processions of visitors, so authorities should be vigilant about their preservation. Travel companies should also be aware that they and tourists themselves have a part to play in seeing that no damage comes to the sites. “Each staff is a promoter,” the Vietravel representative says.

Le Thanh Vinh, director of the Institute for the Conservation of Monuments, says heritage conservation and tourism development go hand in hand. When the heritage sites are conserved well, they will attract more tourists and boost tourism development, especially cultural tourism. The other side of the coin is that tourism development will contribute to popularizing the cultural heritage sites and build their reputation. So, harmonizing tourism and conservation is a must, including organizing services in the areas around them.

In her visit to Vietnam early this month, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova congratulated Vietnam for winning the World Cultural Heritage title for the Thang Long Royal Citadel. UNESCO has always stood by and supported Vietnam in its development cause, the UN development agency’s chief told VOV News. During her stay, Bokova underlined that the memorandum of understanding she had signed with Nguyen Thanh Son, chairman of the Vietnam National Commission for UNESCO, would reinforce the strong ties between Vietnam and the organization through concrete programmatic work plans for the next five years.

The agreement recognizes Vietnam’s progress in the “Delivering as One” UN reform process and charts major areas of collaboration in UNESCO’s support to Vietnam between 2010 and 2016. These include improving the quality and relevance of education at all levels and enhancing biosphere reserves, climate change mitigation and adaptation, science education and evidence-based policymaking for social transformations.

With the support of UNESCO and contribution of the community, the tourism sector can improve the information and services in and around heritage sites. More visitors would mean more revenue to protect and develop the cultural value of the sites.

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Ship battles through Tammy Nguyen’s eyes

An Australian visitor identified as Alan looks at an installation work by Tammy Nguyen on the opening day of My Diary From That Battle of 10,000 Ships at L’usine - Photo: My Tran

My Diary From That Battle of 10,000 Ships is the name of an exhibition by Vietnamese American Tammy Nguyen that opened last night at L’usine, 151/1 Dong Khoi Street in HCMC’s District 1.

Organized by the San Art, the exhibition is about a series of installations that unite drawings, paintings and embroideries.

Using paper and silk, and thread-work and ink, Nguyen offers a window upon a battle at sea. The ships made of ink travel across large pieces of paper accompanied by figures reminiscent of calligraphic pictograms. These warriors rage across an ocean, losing limbs, skin and bones.

These pieces of bodies are transformed as anatomical drawings, protected by swathes of stitched thread woven like a healing armor over their disfigurations. These contorted human remnants rest within carved wooden altars, referring not only to that spiritual place of rest, but also the harnessing of an inner emotional endurance.

“I choose simple materials but when they are put inside mirrors, they will create 3D effects for viewers, make sense and give an impression of the sorrow and loss of battles, not at sea but in life,” said Nguyen.

This is Tammy Nguyen’s imagined diary of battle. These ships are not only the variety found at sea, but also the battles she faces in contemporary life.

Born in 1984 and trained at Cooper Union School of Art, New York, Nguyen moved to HCMC on a Fulbright Grant in 2007 to further studies in the traditional techniques of lacquer.

The artist continues to take her fascination with painting, printmaking and construction into new heights of experimentation.

The exhibition runs till November 18.

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Feature films deal with social issues and humanity

Hong Kong movie star Nick Cheung poses for a photo at the opening ceremony of the Vietnam International Film Festival in Hanoi - Photo: VietnamPlus

Feature movies at the first Vietnam International Film Festival that opened at Hanoi’s National Convention Center on Sunday delve into social issues and humanity, according to Australian director Phillip Noyce.

Noyce, who is well known for The Quiet American, is quoted by the local news site VietnamPlus as saying the criteria for judging and selecting feature films are related to social and humanity aspects plus novelty, attractiveness, creativity and surprise.

Anthur and the War of Two Worlds of France was screened at the opening ceremony which was attended by more than 2,000 invited guests including local and international movie stars and producers.

The festival is showing 10 feature films from eight countries and territories, 12 short films and documentaries which are all introduced to the public for the first time. They will go on screen at the Megastar Cineplex, National Cinema Center and Platinum Cineplex.

The five-day event is aimed at promoting Asian cinematography and international cultural exchanges and cooperation, especially in Southeast Asia.

There will be eight awards including best feature film, best short film, best documentary, best director, best actor and actress, an award from the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) and an award to be selected by journalists.

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A quiet island get-away near Nha Trang

A view of Chuong Beach on Binh Ba island in Nha Trang City - Photo: Q. Vuong

The white sandy beaches and coral reefs of Binh Ba island are only a short motorbike and boat ride from Cam Ranh Township in the central coast province of Khanh Hoa.

The coral island presents a change of pace from the province’s bustling capital, the beach resort town of Nha Trang.

To get to the island, go to Cam Ranh bus station and take a motorbike taxi for VND10,000 to Ba Ngoi Wharf. From the wharf, there is a boat to Binh Ba at 10 a.m. for VND10,000 per person and VND5,000 per student. There are two boats that head back to the mainland - at 5 a.m. and 12 p.m.

Nom Beach is a quiet little stretch of smooth sand and very blue water. Along the beach are some rocks, where it is nice to sit and watch the waves. Locals use the beach in summer for bathing and often go there at night when the moon is full for small parties.

The path from Nom Beach to Chuong Beach passes wild flowers, colorful snails and rocky outcrops with small caves. If you take your snorkel and goggles to Chuong Beach, you can see many colorful corals in the sea. There are also a lot of bird nests on the island making it interesting for nature enthusiasts.

A short hike up the hill there are ruins of an old French military base. The top of the hill has beautiful sunset views.

Most of the island residents are fishermen. Shrimp is the main catch.

There are very few if any facilities for tourists on Binh Ba, so it’s important to prepare a good picnic lunch or take a tent if you want to stay the night. Otherwise you can eat at some small restaurants and ask one of the locals if you could stay the night. The beach, however, is a great place to camp and have a barbecue.

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Venezuelan Cultural Week opens in Hanoi

The Venezuela Embassy in Vietnam in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Monday opened the Venezuelan Cultural Week in Vietnam at the National Library, 31 Trang Thi Street, Hanoi, reports VietnamPlus.

The event highlights folk music and dance shows by traditional Venezuelan troupes, thus giving Vietnamese audiences a look into the people and country of Venezuela. Followed by the opening ceremony were the inauguration of photo and fine arts exhibitions.

On show are 30 works by photographer Rafael Salvatore, which depict the Venezuelan people and their daily activities. Meanwhile, the fine arts exhibition demonstrates the dexterous hands of Venezuelan artisans. Those are products made of Moriche palm trees of Waraco aboriginal people, Larsense fabric or Balsa region’s wood.

The Venezuelan authorities also took this occasion to introduce to Vietnamese readers the book “La Cita de la Historia” (Rendezvous of History) published by the Monte Asvila Editorial Latinoamericana Publishing House. The book also mentions General Vo Nguyen Giap.

The event runs until October 23.

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