Seventh House has a feminine touch

Customers relax at the Seventh House coffee shop - Photo: Thanh Hang

I discovered the Seventh House  (Ngoi nha so 7) Coffee Shop one year ago and have since visited it alone or with my friends regularly. Words like “sophisticated” or “heartwarming” come close to describing it but the best description is definitely “feminine”. The word does not refer to pink wallpaper or “chick lit” novels, but the overall impression that it created on me.

‘Mysterious’ is the first feminine character of this café. Situated at the end of a small alley in HCMC, the coffee shop is a challenge to find the first time. Even though I know the way well, it’s hard to give directions to my friends. They think I’m joking when I explain, “The coffee shop is on Ngo Thoi Nhiem Street and down an alley across from the back gate of Marie Curie high school. There is a motorcycle-wash in front. Go straight to the end of the alley and go in the small white door.”

It’s not easy to approach a beautiful woman, but once you do, she’s a real fountain of pleasure. So it is with the Seventh House Coffee Shop. She is such a picky chick you will want to give up on her, but if you persist she’ll give you more than you expect.

Ring the doorbell and you enter a big room full of light from the giant windows above. Amazingly for a congested city, there is a small grassy field outside the house. I doubt that it belongs to the coffee shop owner. Sometimes a cat wanders over to a coconut tree there and rubs itself. Just imagine yourself lying on a soft cushion, drinking a strawberry smoothie, reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and observing a cat playing on the field, and you will know where the café’s femininity lies. And then the last sunlight will fade away outside, and there you will be listening to a love song coming from the guitar of a young boy sitting near you. This coffee shop really knows how to touch a woman’s heart - mystery, beauty, surprises and romance.

The Seventh House Coffee Shop is at 7 Ngo Thoi Nhiem Street, District 3.

Related Articles

• Seventh House has a feminine touch
• Thanh Hoa coach receives V-League touchline ban
• Poor housing project to be completed in 2011
• Chau Doc’s curried fish vermicelli: Bun nuoc ken
• Blue seas and unspoiled beaches

Seventh House has a feminine touch

Customers relax at the Seventh House coffee shop - Photo: Thanh Hang

I discovered the Seventh House  (Ngoi nha so 7) Coffee Shop one year ago and have since visited it alone or with my friends regularly. Words like “sophisticated” or “heartwarming” come close to describing it but the best description is definitely “feminine”. The word does not refer to pink wallpaper or “chick lit” novels, but the overall impression that it created on me.

‘Mysterious’ is the first feminine character of this café. Situated at the end of a small alley in HCMC, the coffee shop is a challenge to find the first time. Even though I know the way well, it’s hard to give directions to my friends. They think I’m joking when I explain, “The coffee shop is on Ngo Thoi Nhiem Street and down an alley across from the back gate of Marie Curie high school. There is a motorcycle-wash in front. Go straight to the end of the alley and go in the small white door.”

It’s not easy to approach a beautiful woman, but once you do, she’s a real fountain of pleasure. So it is with the Seventh House Coffee Shop. She is such a picky chick you will want to give up on her, but if you persist she’ll give you more than you expect.

Ring the doorbell and you enter a big room full of light from the giant windows above. Amazingly for a congested city, there is a small grassy field outside the house. I doubt that it belongs to the coffee shop owner. Sometimes a cat wanders over to a coconut tree there and rubs itself. Just imagine yourself lying on a soft cushion, drinking a strawberry smoothie, reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and observing a cat playing on the field, and you will know where the café’s femininity lies. And then the last sunlight will fade away outside, and there you will be listening to a love song coming from the guitar of a young boy sitting near you. This coffee shop really knows how to touch a woman’s heart - mystery, beauty, surprises and romance.

The Seventh House Coffee Shop is at 7 Ngo Thoi Nhiem Street, District 3.

Related Articles

• Seventh House has a feminine touch
• Thanh Hoa coach receives V-League touchline ban
• Poor housing project to be completed in 2011
• Chau Doc’s curried fish vermicelli: Bun nuoc ken
• Blue seas and unspoiled beaches

The Dao’s dance with devils

At the start of the ceremony, the leader of sorcerers begins with a dance to a slow beat

Spring means white man flowers cover Vietnam’s northern mountains, it also marks the time when Dao minority people hold fascinating festive activities to pray for fertile crops, prosperity and health for the New Year.

Nam An is a small village on a 1,000 meter high mountain in Ban Qua District in the northernmost province of the country, Ha Giang Province. There is a selection of different minority people living there but most are Dao. At Spring time, tourist can attend their festive activities, among which the Blessing and Fire jumping ceremony are the most interesting.

Old people said the Dao village deep in the jungle used to be frequented by devils and other dark powers. To protect them, villagers depended on a powerful man supported by sorcerers to meet the Almighty and ask him for blessings to fight against the demons. The blessing ceremony is the most important ritual that every Dao man has to take. 

During the ceremony that takes about two hours, the most prestigious man, who has the most power and experience in rituals against devils in the village leads four or five sorcerers or more. They call for the Almighty to come and offer blessings for a certain man, no matter what his age. The blessing will bring him faith and power in the fight against devils, protection for his family and village against plagues and pests.

A dancer jumps into the burning coals - Photos: Pham Thai

The man and his attendants wear colorful brocatelle, in red, their beautiful traditional costumes. With a sacrificed animal, the leader reads a long prayer in Chinese to call for the Almighty’s participation. The sound of the music gets louder, the men now dance in a big circle with their hands beating small Chieng, a traditional musical instrument. Finally, the rituals reach a crescendo with the fire jumping ceremony, when all the sorcerers and the newly blessed man jump bare foot into a fire and glowing coals, to prove their courage against devils.

Traditionally, the blessing ceremony could last three days with rituals, dancing, singing, drinking corn and rice wine, but it now takes only takes one day. Tourism has brought with it influences that have made many changes to the most sacred ceremony of the Dao people. Tourists on organized tours can now request a ceremony to be performed any time of year.

Related Articles

• The Dao’s dance with devils
• Firms guilty of social insurance avoidance
• Cambodian closure of camp welcomed
• North should ensure sustainable growth

Spanish-Vietnamese bicycle around the world

Guim Valls Teruel and Nguyen Thuy Anh will set out to complete their solar powered bicycle world tour from Hanoi this weekend - Photo: The organizers

A Spanish-Vietnamese couple, Guim Teruel and Nguyen Thuy Anh will become the first people to travel around the world using solar-energy powered bicycles, the Spanish Embassy in Hanoi announced on Monday.

The journey will promote renewable energies and the virtues of exercise.

Guim Teruel began his journey around the world alone, departing from Beijing in China. During his journey, he traveled 14,000km, passing through 11 countries and territories including China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia and Vietnam.

He arrived in Vietnam in 2009 and was interviewed by Nguyen Thuy Anh, a reporter from Vietnam Television’s Channel VTV6. They fell in love and later got married in 2010.

Teruel and his wife will continue the journey from Hanoi on February 18 to London in the U.K., traveling through 20 more countries including Laos, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Greece, Persia, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Poland.

During their journey, the couple will write articles and film short video-clips of the places they have visited and send them to Channel VTV6 to broadcast, Thuy Anh said.

Related Articles

• Spanish-Vietnamese bicycle around the world
• Young stars raise profile of Vietnam chess
• USDA forecasts strong corn import from Vietnam
• Visit hell then heaven
• Tiger Woods and wife divorce after sex scandal

Teen anime fans throng festival

A stage adaption of Katekyo Hitman Reborn, one of the hottest manga and anime in the otaku community in Vietnam - Photo: Thanh Hang

The HCMC community of otakus –  fans of anime and manga – gathered at their annual festival on Sunday at Le Thi Rieng Park, 835 Cach Mang Thang 8 Street, District 10.  At the one-day event called “Teen and Otaku Festival 2011” the young comics fans bought Anime and Manga artbooks, posters, and gifts at 25 stands.

Other activities included Cosplay competitions, music contest and performances and a Manga knowledge test.

The festival was standing-room-only at some of the stalls as young people crowded to buy merchandise of their favorite characters. Thao Nguyen, 16, explained that the colorful artbook she bought came with the Nabari No Ou manga, and said she thought that VND250,000 was totally worth it. Another young girl in costume who asked the Daily to refer to her by her nickname Fuko had another way to show her passion for Manga. “I’m cosplaying as Enma-Ai in Jigoku Shoujo. I started to cosplay two years ago at fourteen because I wanted to be my favorite character in every way, from the costume to the gestures,” she said.

Another part of the festival was a cosplay competition that was held throughout the day. In two categories of group and single performance, the contest challenged the cosplayers to demonstrate the talents of their character. Some sang the soundtrack from the anime, some did the traditional dance, while others made stage adaptations of the manga or anime.

Hosted by Vang Anh Cultural Company and thegioitruyentranh.vn, previous festivals had received good feedback from anime and manga lovers.

Related Articles

• Teen anime fans throng festival
• HCMC begins to think about giving up meat
• Culture Vulture
• Viet Nam donates books to Norway
• Ethnic minorities, poor to receive free legal aid

Local hiphoppers perform in Hanoi, HCMC, Paris, Berlin

A play called “Faces,” created in 2008 will be on in Hanoi and HCMC late this month, followed by performances in Paris and Berlin.

In the dance/theatre performance, German-French choreographers Raphael Hillebrand from Germany and Sébastien Ramirez from France work with nine dancers from three hiphop crews, Big Toe, Milky Way and Sacred Crew and two musicians from Hanoi.

“The dancer’s masks raise questions about modern-day society. Do people wear so many different masks that, in the end, they are afraid to see their real faces?”

Faces that is produced by Goethe Institute Vietnam and the French Cultural Exchange Center, L’Espace, and supported by Fonds Elysée asks questions about the youth such as: What is the biggest dream in my life? Where will my future go if I become a hiphop dancer? What is love?

The show suggests there are many ways to preserve traditional customs and pass them on to young people. It merges traditional and contemporary music and dance. Faces reveals Vietnam to be dynamic, opening and modern, but also traditional and culturally rich.

The performance will be staged at Tuoi Tre Theater, 11 Ngo Thi Nham Street in Hanoi at 8 p.m. on February 25 and at Ben Thanh Theater, 6 Mac Dinh Chi Street, HCMC’s District 1, HCMC at 8 p.m. on February 27.

Tickets are free at Goethe Institute in Hanoi and HCMC.

Related Articles

• Local hiphoppers perform in Hanoi, HCMC, Paris, Berlin
• Culture Vulture
• Banks scramble for mid-level managers
• Wrong diagnoses almost kill two in delta hospital
• Chau Doc’s curried fish vermicelli: Bun nuoc ken

A generally disappointing venture

A scene at the circus show Xin Chao! in September 23 Park in HCMC’s District 1 - Photo: The organizers

I am a fan of circuses, and the more traditional they are the better I like them. But Xin Chao!, though staged in the circus tent in Saigon’s September 23 Park on Pham Ngu Lao Street, is not a circus, but rather a pageant representing two episodes in Vietnam’s history plus an epilogue, all told in mime together with would-be-elegant costumes and lighting. There’s plenty of sound and fury, but in the end it doesn’t signify very much.

This show is neither a circus nor anything interestingly different. On the one hand you’re not going to learn much Vietnamese history from Xin Chao!, and on the other the thrills and splendour of the old circus are amost entirely absent. Various circus acts are incorporated to liven up what turns out to be a brief story (only Vietnam’s mythic origins and the ancient struggle with China are featured), but the music is unmemorable, whereas it’s the vibrant popular music that drives a traditional circus. Missing too is the circus’s sense of timing, and its characteristic panache.

 It might be argued that, with harmonised costumes and lighting, this show adds an artistic dimension to the old routines. But it’s pointless to try to incorporate a sense of beauty into the genre because circuses are beautiful already, as the works of many old painters (such as Picasso) testify. And acrobats are the purest form of theatre there is.

 Under a hundred patrons were present at Sunday’s performance, most of them foreigners. Indeed, the short last section of the show, supposedly representing Vietnam on Tuesday, could only be received with derision by any contemporary Vietnamese.

 More attractive, because more authentic, is the animal-based circus from Hanoi that shares the venue over the Tet period. Only small animals are used (though there is a sleepy crocodile and a rather large snake), and the truth is that this is primarily a show for children. But the many children present when I attended responded to the event with clearly genuine, and extremely vocal, enthusiasm.

 The prices for the two shows are very different - VND80,000 for the Hanoi circus and VND400,000 for Xin Chao! I could find no explanation for the difference except for the fact that more performers are involved in the latter. Neither of the shows, incidentally, is as enjoyable as that of the resident company, the excellent HCMC Circus, currently taking a break from its home turf.

Related Articles

• A generally disappointing venture
• Buyers lap up Con Dao Six Senses villas
• Prime Minister discusses relations, co-operation with Lao counterpart