VietNam Travel

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Photos of water puppetry on display

Audiences watch an outdoor water puppetry performance - Photo: Courtesy of Idécaf

A photographic exhibition on water puppetry by journalist Nguyen Hong Ha will be at the Institute for Cultural Exchange with France (Idécaf), 31 Thai Van Lung Street, HCMC’s District 1, November 2-4.

Ha will display over 50 photos with information about the traditional art-form that could date more than 2000 years.

Nguyen Hong Nga has won 21 local and 8 international artistic photo awards since 1988. She releases annual photo collection books every year in collaboration with Hai Au photography club.

According to folk legend, water puppetry had its origins during the dynasty of King An Duong Vuong back in 255BC. But the earliest documentary evidence is from the Ly dynasty in 1121.

Water puppetry is performed at festivals, holidays or Tet using lacquered wooden puppets on a stage made from a waist-deep pool of water. On Monday’s Vietnam water puppetry is a unique variation on the ancient Asian puppet tradition and is considered an intangible heritage of Vietnamese people.

In 1992, the municipal Thang Long Puppet Company returned 17 traditional water puppet stories to the stage attracting local and foreign tourists.

Hanoi meets Saigon for coffee

A guest takes a drink at the Cacophony café designed to resemble Hanoi street café culture - Photo: Tuong Vi

Saigon is the melting pot of Vietnam… It’s a mixture of cultures, customs, foods and peoples from every province and around the globe. There’s a place for everyone here to enjoy the tastes of home.

For the Hanoians in Saigon who miss their city, Cacophony café at 57H, Tu Xuong Street in District 3 is a nice reminder of their favorite street hangouts.

Cacophony coffee shop is built in an old French three story villa. Each floor has its own style. The ground floor is a place for those love it modern, with live acoustic music every night from Wednesday to Sunday including pop, rock, and country 9 to 10.45p.m.

The first floor is decorated to be a street corner of Saigon with red bricks and power poles and old black and white photos of the city.

The second floor is the pride of the Hanoian owners. Every detail invokes memories of the old town - the brickwork, the street signs and the old wooden doors. There are oil lamps hanging outside every house, low set tables with cushions and cuckoo cages on the roofs. Phung Thanh Hoa, the owner of the cafe that opened on the occasion of 1,000 years of Hanoi-Thang Long said photos can’t walk you down memory lane as well as the three dimensional experience of Cacophony café. It was designed with help from architecture and arts students.

Tran Khanh Hoang, manager of the cafe said cacophony means a discordant and meaningless mixture of sounds. They gave this name to the newly opened shop because of the mixture of sounds on the streets.

Playing misty for you

Lung Van Village, also known as the roof of the Muong minority people, in Hoa Binh Province

‘Clouded’ is a way of life in Lung Van Village.

Located more than 1.2 kilometers above the sea level, the commune that somewhat incongruously nestles in a valley is also called the roof of the Muong minority people in the northern province of Hoa Binh.

Getting there is a cloudy affair as well.

From Muong Khen Town in downtown Hoa Binh, one has to get past 13 kilometers of zigzagging, sloping hills to reach Lung Van.

There’s only one bus on this route in the afternoon, so most people choose to take a xe om (motorbike taxi).

Road No. 440 is a tough road, with many parts bordered by mountain cliffs. It gets so foggy at times that visibility is restricted to three or four meters in front. The bikes pass Dich Giao, Quyet Chien and Doc Mun communes as they take more than one hour to get to Lung Van.

Fresh green fields of chayote run along the road and lines of young corn stretch to the feet of mountains far away.

The road has been in service for three or four years. Earlier, people from Lung Van Village had to use horses and set out on a journey that took several days.

As you go a further up, a vast green plain spreads out under your feet. The clouds here are so thick you feel like you can hold them.

At this high altitude, it is distinctly cooler.

From Dich Giao, look along the sloping road, up a steep slope, and you catch your first glimpse of Lung Van, where people use thick blankets the whole year round as it’s always freezing.

GETTING THERE

Hoa Binh Province is around 75 kilometers from Hanoi. Take National Highway 70, then turn to National Highway 6. Bus and public bus are both available.

Lung Van children smile as they climb up a slope in their valley

The name of the valley gives a very clear hint as to its looks. Lung, taken from thung lung means valley and Van means cloud.

Almost bypassed by tourism, this is a “wild” place that will make all nature lovers go gaga over it.

People first lived in Lung Van at least a thousand years ago, when it was named Muong Cham but not much is known about the history of the place that also seems shrouded in the mists of time.

Below the layer of mysterious clouds, the place is green all around. The mountains, the terraced paddy fields, the lanes – they are all green. And the houses are tiny grey dots on the lush green carpet, scattered among trees and hung on the mountain sides. They show up and disappear as the clouds lift and lower their foggy curtains.

To discover the wilderness in the high valley, ask for the Po, Trau and Tien mountains that surround the valley. The place has several beautiful small caves which don’t even have names.

On the face of it, the valley is poor, so poor that most people never get a satisfactory meal, sometimes they don’t have rice to eat, but notwithstanding this plight, the residents call their home a fairy land that blesses them with extraordinary longevity.

Unofficial statistics estimate the village has a population of more than 2,000 people with 166 people aged over 80.

The oldest of them is Dinh Thi Heu. She’s 113 this year and still of sharp mind. Heu fetches water by herself to cook wine and tends to her garden every day. Her sixth son, whom Heu is living with, is 71 years old.

At Lung Van, guests will be introduced to Thich, a local police officer, who makes sure they can go around freely during their stay. In the village the primary means of transport is the feet.

If they manage to get the go-ahead for a sleep-over at a local’s house, visitors will be treated with corn wine and special dishes that Muong people only use to serve guests: chicken roasted with fermented bamboo shoots and pumpkin bud soup.

Usually, visitors are not just welcomed, but also asked to stay over.

The mists of time are lifting over Lung Van, which now has a school and a medical center.

But some of its traditions have been lost, like their attire of yesteryear that is only worn now by old women on festive occasions.

If you are lucky, or if you take the trouble to find out, you can get to meet Thien, 59, who has played music for 20 years and composed dozens of songs and hundreds of dances for the Muong people in the area.

He still sings about trau forests that give oil and fruits, the sound of the gong, of wooden bells, but now, there is a dreamy, nostalgic yearning for lost things in his voice.