Vietnam culture - The buffalo in Vietnamese culture

by Vietnam

As lunar New Year 2009 is the Year of the Buffalo, it will not be inappropriate to sit back and consider how much this zodiacal animal has pervaded the Vietnamese ethos and influenced language and expression. The Viet were traditionally an agricultural people living mainly off wet rice, which of course, constantly needs soft soil to grow. And since time immemorial, the water buffalo has helped farmers with the most physically demanding tasks: tilling the land and towing the harvest. From that starting point, it has come to represent the rustic Vietnamese nature and thus her entire culture. Though savings have become fancy in the modern era – securities, real estate and the like -- people used to save in the form of buffalos in the past. Rich families stocked healthy buffalos for trading and tilling. The proverb “con trau la dau co nghiep” (the buffalo is the prerequisite for starting a business) stems from this practice, suggesting this animal was the cornerstone for a prosperous society. It is not clearly known when the creature was first domesticated but buffalo fossils dating back tens of thousands of years have been found in caves in Lang Son, Hoa Binh Provinces in the north and Ha Tinh in the central region. Bovine bones have also been unearthed in Hai Phong, Hanoi, and Phu Tho. Archeologists think the Viet started to domesticate buffalos 5,000-6,000 years ago. Clay statues of buffalos are among the earliest artworks ever found in Vietnam, with many sculpted before the Common Era. Today well-off families like to hang buffalo heads and horns on walls as mementos of days past when their ancestors depended so much on these noble animals for survival. Just as the animal runs deep in the Vietnamese cultural fiber, so do associated festivals: “Le hoi dam trau” (buffalo-stabbing festival) and “le hoi choi trau” (buffalo-fighting festival) are celebrated up to this day, attracting thousands of tourists every year. As its name suggests, the buffalo-stabbing festival of the Ba Na ethnic group in the Central Highlands sees a sacrificial buffalo tied up and repeatedly stabbed to death after which its meat is offered to the gods and shared among revelers. Meant to celebrate a successful crop, the festival, though considered barbaric and ungrateful in nature by some, is one of the longest surviving in Vietnam, denoting the essence of the Vietnamese culture that centers on the buffalo and regards it as among the most worthy creatures for the gods. Images of a hapless buffalo tied to the post have been found engraved in many ancient bronze drums. Up north in Hai Phong, the “buffalo fighting festival” pits one animal against the other before they are all slaughtered for meat. Myths and history Most travelers to Hanoi know West Lake (Ho Tay) as an idyllic spot with luxurious restaurants. But few know its former name is Ho Trau Vang, or golden buffalo lake. Legend has it that after being cursed by a shaman, a golden buffalo ran from its hiding place in the Tien Du mountain of Bac Ninh Province to Hanoi where it stamped its feet and created a big hole. Hence the name. Besides myths, the creature has its standing in history too. Prior to becoming king, Dinh Bo Linh used to tend buffalos in the fields. Riding on one, the poor boy played general with other kids in mock battles. It is probably on buffalo backs that the future leader learned his military tactics. He went on to defeat all 12 rival lords to unify the country. There are other buffalo boys who made their mark, including Dao Duy Tu who became a feared military commander under Lord Nguyen Phuc Nguyen. King Le Dai Hanh would show off his mighty army of buffalos to awe diplomats from China’s Song dynasty whenever they paid a visit. The animals were also used as war machines. Drunk and with their tails set on fire, they would be herded en masse into enemy camps where they would set everything on fire. Of the 15 tribes that made up the Van Lang nation, there was one named Trau, or buffalo. In art, the buffalo is the most popular animal, with the image of a young boy playing the flute on the back of one being the iconic and idyllic image of rural Vietnam. Therefore, it is not by chance that this animal managed to find its way into the zodiac. Watch buffalo fighting at here By Le Kim-Translated by Hoang Bao,

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Bac Ha Market and Village

On Sunday, March 22, 2009, we drove to Bac Ha for the Sunday market... it's about 3 hours from Sapa and sections of the road are a little sketchy.
 
The drive there was interesting... lots of rice patties (of course), green tea, cabbage, corn, etc. We did see a wedding procession... our guide said that the weddings last 2 days... on the 1st day they visit the groom's parents and on the 2nd day they visit the bride's where the actual wedding takes place. The hotel manager had told me earlier that day (she was going to a wedding) that the Vietnamese use the Chinese calendar when picking a wedding date. Later I also found out that fortune-tellers are also consulted. We passed a crew painting the lines on the road... I couldn't help but wonder why they bothered when no one actually paid attention to them! They used a machine on wheels. There was a small fire going under the machine but the machine itself was pushed by one man... very archaic looking but I guess it beats doing it by hand! Many hilltribe people walking on the road and men working in the fields. As we descended from Sapa we saw that the rice fields had new growth and plenty of water whereas Sapa was dry and they had not yet planted the rice. Saw children on the road... many with no pants and many children with babies strapped to their backs... likely in charge of looking after a younger sibling.
 
The market was fun... it is frequented by the Flower H'mong tribe who dress in colourful and vibrant clothes. You'll find them selling clothes, tools, food, water buffalo, horses, chickens, and dogs.
 
After the market we went to a local village... it was a bit awkward watching all these tourists trekking through people's homes and I wondered how much money the village is given by the tour operators.

In the village we came upon two young girls who had picked some flowers... I stopped to smell the handful that the younger girl had and she broke one off and gave it to me... so sweet.
 
On the way home to Sapa we stopped in Lao Cai and took photos of the Chinese border across the river.
 
That evening I had supper with Lee (from Korea) who was on our tour bus to the market today. He speaks little English but we managed ok... he said this is really the 1st time he's ever used it! He used to be a teacher but now owns a tea shop. I asked if he was married and he hung his head and told me he was divorced. He seemed very ashamed and I tried to reassure him it was ok... such a culture difference. I asked him if he had kids and he quietly told me he had 2 grown children and seemed very sad about it. He seemed like such a nice man... I wondered what the story was but between his reluctance to talk about it and our limited communicating abilities, I didn't ask.
 
After supper I met Jana for a drink and her new friend Basile (from Switzerland) also joined us. They both commented that I 'speak very good English' which I thought was so funny... I think they meant I speak clearly so it was easy for them to understand me.
 
Things I mostly remember about this day:
* People working in the water filled rice patties
* The many doors and windows we passed that I wished I could photograph
* Colourful skirts hanging on clothes lines
* Children playing on the side of the road
* Babies looking after babies
* A man giving a piggyback ride to a bottomless child
* The worn faces of the Flower H'mong women in the market
* Dogs in crates waiting to be sold... their fate unknown...
source: travelpod.com

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Thu Bon river - Hoi An - Vietnam

Hội An is certainly THE turistic place in Vietnam. Food is excellent, ladies can have clothes made for them (of course men too...but do you think are the main customers), architecture is beautiful, the market is full of life (and of smells), you feel perfectly safe, you can get cooking classes, etc... It's really a beautiful place. A fun place.

Here, we can see a woman, in her handmade traditional vietnamese boat, with her traditional vietnamese hat, fishing/picking up snails on the banks of the Thu Bon river. In the background, you can see boats, traditional houses and under those big trees start the market I told you about!

have a good weekend!

Marc trekearth.com

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HaLong Bay photo

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Ho Chi Minh City - Vietnam

Thirty years after the end of the war, the incredibly resilient nation of Vietnam, and the Vietnamese people, is beginning to emerge from the shadows. Vietnam is a country deeply scarred by war and yet its outlook is forgiving and forward–looking. Its people believe last century’s occupations, battles and political influences have enriched the nation.
Washed ashore above the Mekong Delta, some 40km north of the South China Sea, Ho Chi Minh City, known also as Saigon, is a city on the march, a boom–town where the rule of the dollar is absolute. It is a testament to its war–torn past. Its history has made it resilient, effervescent, charged with initiative and roaring with trade.

The centre of Ho Chi Minh is compact and ideal for wandering around. It boasts fine restaurants, immaculate hotels and glitzy bars amidst its colonial villas and venerable pagodas.

There are many interesting places to visit including the markets, cathedral, river–port, Presidential Palace (perfectly preserved for some unknown reason!) and the nearby park which also houses a museum of Vietnamese History and Culture and a small zoo.
Ho Chi Minh City started life as a fishing village known as Prei Nokor and during the Angkor period (the 15th century) it flourished as an entrpot for Cambodian boats pushing down the Mekong River. Cargo ships still to this day jostle with rice barges and fragile sampans (an Oriental boat propelled by a sail or oars), whilst porters sweat in the humidity loading the boats.

During the 18th century, the Khmers by now had been ousted, Prei Nokor was renamed as Saigon and was made a temporary capital between 1772 and 1802, after which the Emperor Gia Long used it as his regional administrative centre.

The French seized Saigon in 1861 and set about a huge public works programme by building roads and draining marsh land. The war against the French lasted thirty years after which Saigon was finally designated the capital of the Republic of South Vietnam.
American troops withdrew in 1973 and two years later Saigon had been renamed as Ho Chi Minh City.

This is a port that is steamy hot and searlingly stylish. The streets are lined with imaginative one–off boutiques, design stores and busy cafes where you will be able to meet the local people on an informal basis. Dong Khoi and Le Thanh Ton streets are favourites for elegant silk clothing, hand embroidered scarves, and lacquerware. (Many stores will provide a service of organising a container to ship purchases home) In many ways Ho Chi Minh City is far more cosmopolitan and hedonistic than the capital, Hanoi.

Ho Chi Minh is also full to bursting point with people for whom progress hasn’t yet translated into food, lodging and employment, so begging, stealing and prostitution are very much in evidence. Petty crime, unfortunately, has increased in the last few years so much care should be taken when walking the streets or travelling on bicycles or motorbikes, especially after dark and around tourist nightspots.

For more information on Vietnam, or any South East Asian topic, please visit http://www.Sticky-Rice.com

Author: Henry Vacher

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New Vietnam gallery on Flickr

New Vietnam gallery on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/vietnam/pool/

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Hoi An - Hue - Ninh Binh

Japanese Covered Bridge - Hoi An

Upon arrival in Hoi An at 6am, we were mobbed by touts. We managed to shake most of them off and go in search of a room for some much needed rest. Arriving early has its benefits, as it means you get a free choice of basically every hotel because sooner or later someone will check out. We managed to bag a nice but cheap room with a pool and massive breakfast which was ready for us an hour after our arrival. After a somewhat long sleep we set out to explore the town.

Hoi An, as we soon learnt, is very touristy. The main attraction is the pretty old town, which now unfortunately just seems to be streets lined with tailors and shops selling tourist junk. Consequently, we felt Hoi An lost a lot of the charm it otherwise had. Not all was lost however, as we were soon to discover how excellent (and cheap) the local food was. As a result, we spent a large portion of time in Hoi An hanging out in the restaurants stuffing our faces with ‘cau lao’, a variety of dumplings and assorted cakes. The pool was also heavily utilised.

On our

Hoi An

second day in Hoi An, we rose early to try and check out some of the sights within the old town. At 8am it was already scorching but we pushed on anyway. For fairly steep A$7.50, you can visit one house, one assembly hall, one museum, a cultural performance, the Japanese covered bridge and a place of worship. After visiting everything in about an hour we decided it was not only disappointing but a waste of money. Each sight really was nothing special, the museum was very small and poorly kept, you can see the entirety of the bridge from the outside and the owner of the house pestered us for Australian money for his ‘collection’ (we thought we had left that scam in India!) and seemed quite offended when we told him we had none (which was true... what use do I have for Australian money in Vietnam?!). So we booked our ticket to Hue for the next day and back it was to the pool for the remainder of the day.

A short 3 hour (but with 3 ‘rest stops’ on the way of course) morning bus ride assured our arrival in Hue by lunch time. It

Hoi An

appeared once more that taxis didn’t exist in this town, thus a balancing act was needed to be performed to get all our bags (which are now quite numerous) and ourselves onto a motorbike to deliver us to our hotel. Unfortunately shortly after our arrival it started to rain, despite the blue skies a mere hour before, so we booked ourselves in to a motorbike tour for the next day, ate some Indian food and retreated to our room.

Bright and early the following morning, two happy men on motorbikes picked us up. We were even given helmets to wear - a novelty thus far on our travels. So off we went riding through the city streets and then the rice paddies and villages in the Hue countryside, stopping off at several sights on the way including a Japanese covered bridge, a war bunker, a couple of temples/pagodas and the Tomb of Tu Duc (so-so considering the steep entry fee). Motorbikes really are THE way to see Vietnam, especially when teamed with a knowledgeable driver who can point out things on the way and take you through the smaller back streets of the villages, as opposed to just zooming

Hoi An

down the highway. It was definitely a fun way to spend the morning.

After lunch before our overnight bus we checked out the Citadel. The Citadel from the outside is an impressive looking structure with an entrance fee to match. Inside however, it is an absolute dump. We were extremely disappointed, as what we found inside was a bare skeleton of what looked like something once worth visiting. Evidently the entry fee was not going into looking after the site, which mostly consist of an overgrown series of fields and gardens, an abandoned construction site and the remains of a giant plastic dragon and rooster (?!!?). We left the Citadel a lot sooner than expected and headed back to our room where we had organised a late checkout (they made us pay half the nights rate and only let us stay for 4 hours extra) to shower and pack before our overnight bus to Ninh Binh.

Unable to find a seat with any of the well known tour companies with only a day’s notice, we had to settle for booking a bus ticket with a random operator down the street. We elected to get a sitting bus rather

Hoi An

than a sleeper, mainly because it was cheaper but also because we don’t like the sleepers anyway. We were picked up and dropped at the bus stop which was where things started to turn pear shaped. Being the only foreigners there, we were approached by a ‘helpful’ man who proceeded to tell us that the sitting bus stopped outside of Ninh Binh at 4am in the morning and we wouldn’t be able to get transport into the town at that time in the morning. He also told us the bus wasn’t leaving until a lot later, so instead we should get the sleeper bus which would arrive in Ninh Binh at 7am in the morning and drop us off at our hotel. He insisted that this would be the best deal for us and that all we had to do was pay him $5USD each and we could get the sleeper bus instead.

Now, we aren’t complete muppets and knew he must have been lying about something. Paying an extra $5USD was well in excess of the price it should have cost to get a sleeper and when we questioned several times, he avoided answering. We knew he was

Hoi An

lying about the cost of getting the sleeper but couldn’t figure out if he had just made up the bit about the sitting bus not stopping in town. No one around spoke any English, so in the end we decided we would rather cough up the extra cash to make sure we arrived in town, just on the off chance he was telling the truth.

The bus trip was horrible, made only worse by our anger at being ripped off. It wasn’t however until several hours later we realised the full extent of how much we had been scammed (more on that later). Spending most of the trip airborne due to bad roads combined with being seated at the rear of the bus meant not much sleep was actually had and many bruises were gained. It also meant much to my horror, that it was not physically possible to get oneself to the onboard bathroom when I needed to use it. Much to my relief we stopped at a petrol station in the early hours of the morning (a man with a cigarette in his mouth filled up the bus... I was waiting for everything to go BOOM and

Hoi An

for it to all be over) where I was finally able to get up and make my way to the bathroom, however it now appeared that the aisles were full of people asleep on the floor of the bus. In a state of absolute desperation I had to clamber my way to the bathroom, stepping on several people in the process and very narrowly missing a baby’s head (how at this stage I was longing for a tourist sleeper bus).

A couple of hours later, Merric and I were bumping up and down in a daze when a man came and poked us and told us we were in Ninh Binh and we had to get off the bus. Very confused as it was still dark, I checked our watch only to find that was in fact 4 in the morning and we were very much NOT in the middle of the town. The man who had scammed us was conveniently no longer on the bus and we were pushed out with 10 seconds notice so much so that I hadn’t even got a chance to pack my stuff and clamber over the millions of people asleep in the

Hoi An

aisle before the bus started driving off, Merric outside, me still on board. After some loud yelling on my part the bus stopped to actually let me climb over the people on the ground so as I could get out. It wasn’t until I got off the bus that I realised I had left my small bag with all my money, my camera and both our passports on the bus which was now speeding off into the distance. By some stroke of luck there was a man on a motorbike nearby who happened to speak English who shot off after the bus to make it stop, leaving Merric and I (by this time I was hysterical) alone on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere at 4am. It was at this time it also started to rain... heavily.

Thankfully, 10 minutes later he came back after managing to stop the bus and my bag was returned to me. The man and a friend who he enlisted took us to a hotel which had been recommended to us and were rewarded with a very large tip. The owners of the hotel who turned out to be wonderful

White Rose - Hoi An

people came down half asleep and took good care of us whilst we recovered from our ordeal. It was the second time in my four months of travelling that I wanted to go home (the first was when I had my head in a toilet bowl during my 4th bout of food poisoning). The rest of the day neither of us even wanted to leave the hotel because we hated Vietnam so much.

Feeling slightly better the following day, we organised to hire motorbikes and drivers to take us around the areas surrounding Ninh Binh (the town itself is rather nothing). What a day! We had an absolutely fantastic time, in fact it was one of the best days we have had on this trip and a stark contrast to the previous few days. It really was what we needed to feel good about Vietnam again. The day started early with a trip to Tam Coc otherwise known as ‘Halong Bay on rice paddies’. As we were there so early, none of the touts had had time to set up and bus loads of day trippers from Hanoi had not arrived yet. As a result, we had the whole

Hoi An

place to ourselves. It was amazing. We hired a boat and paddled down the river in amongst the rice paddies and huge limestone karsts. The weather, despite being overcast and rainy didn’t put a dampener on the day and if anything, made it somewhat eerie. We jumped back on the bikes and checked out a few temples in between riding through backstreets and rice paddies. En route, we also managed a climb up Mua Groti, providing us with fantastic views over the whole region. Despite seeing some amazing sights, the best things about the trip were that we only saw 3 other white people the whole day and that the drivers which our hotel had organised were genuinely nice people who didn’t try and rip us off or take us to shops and gave us lots of tea.

Unfortunately the following day, it was time to leave Ninh Binh and continue moving up northward to Hanoi. We really enjoyed ourselves and I think the place we stayed had a lot to do with it. For anyone heading that way, I thoroughly recommend Ngoc An Hotel. The people there were so friendly and willing to help. They even helped us

Hoi An

get the local bus to Hanoi as opposed to booking us on a tourist bus for which they would have received a commission. Oh and a giant breakfast was included with the price of the room every morning which didn’t hurt.

That’s all for now,

Kate (TRAVELBLOG.ORG)

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