Special Tet tours for visitors

HCM City-based travel agencies have unveiled special tours for foreigners who want to experience the atmosphere of the Lunar New Year or Tet.

Ben Thanh Tourist has launched a one-day tour to the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long that will take visitors to Vinh Sang Tourist Park and people's houses in Vinh Long to take a look at rural life and Tet celebrations. It costs US$45 per person for groups of ten.

Saigontourist Travel Service Co has launched a tour called Celebrate Tet with Saigonese for five hours which will take in Cho Lon by cyclo, the flower market, and other tourist destinations in HCM City. Foreign guests can also join local people in making banh tet (the cylindrical glutinous rice cake) and have a meal with a local family. The tour is priced at $30 while a tour of My Tho costs $45.

A toast to beer drinking record

The first Viet Nam Beer Festival organised by the Mekong Star JSC will attempt to break a beer drinking record in HCM City later this month.

On each day of the festival from January 21 to 23 at the Ministry Zone 7 Stadium, 5,000 guests are expected to come to enjoy the local and international beers, Vietnamese and western foods, DJs, and live music.

On the first night an attempt to break the Vietnamese record for the most people to offer a toast will be made.

Cebu Pacific adds VN flights

Philippine carrier Cebu Pacific has added two more fights to its HCM City-Manila service, and plans to turn it into a daily service next Friday.

The additions take the number of flights a week to six.

The carrier carried around 30,000 passengers to and from Viet Nam last year, and expects to increase that number in 2011, Candice Lyog, the airline's vice-president for marketing and distribution, said.

Cham culture to go on display

The Cham Cultural Exhibition Centre in Binh Thuan Province will host a week of cultural events from January 30 to February 8 for Tet (Lunar New Year).

The highlights of the events will be an exhibition of costumes worn by Cham royalty, their crowns, seals, swords, and betel nut-making accessories.

Visitors can also see musical instruments and objects used by the Cham people in festivals, farming equipment such as buffalo carts and fish traps, stone jewellery, stone statues of Apsaras — the heavenly nymph of Hindu mythology – the gods Ganesa and Avalokitesvara, and a lion, linga-yoni, and documents written in the Cham language.

Rija Nugar (New Year Festival) and folk art performances will be held every night.

Saigontourist offers yacht tour

Saigontourist Travel Service Co has announced a four-day tour to Nha Trang from HCM City which includes a yacht tour in Nha Trang on board the four-star yacht King.

In Nha Trang, the yacht tour will start at the wharf in front of King Bao Dai's palace before cruising to Tre, Mun, Mot, Mieu, and Tam islands.

Visitors will cruise around Mun for swimming in the ocean, coral reef diving, and fishing before stopping at the Tri Nguyen Aquarium. Tourists on board the $1 million yacht can also request to stop at sights along the way.

The first batch of tourists will leave HCM City on January 22 and there will be one every Saturday. More information about the tour that will cost VND3.4 millon to 5.7 million is available at www.dulichtet.com . —VNS

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Phase II of My Son restoration completed

Restored grandeur: Visitors at the My Son Holy Site. The Group G tower site has been restored with financial support from the Italian Government. — VNA/VNS Photo Van Son

HA NOI — The safeguarding of the My Son World Heritage Site took another step forward with the completion this month of the second phase of a preservation project, said Italian ambassador Lorenzo Angeloni.

The tripartite project between UNESCO, and the Italian and Vietnamese Governments focused on the preservation of Group G of monuments, the most important collection of remains at My Son Holy Site located in the central province of Quang Nam's Duy Xuyen District.

The group, consisting of five monuments, was selected for UNESCO preservation and sponsorship from the Italian Fund-In-Trust due to its unique decoration and materials and outstanding example of how a Cham sacred area was organised.

It lies on an elevated area never affected by seasonal flooding, and had never been restored, despite its considerable archae-ological importance.

Five key results of Phase II of the project were presented at a press conference held in Ha Noi yesterday.

Consolidation of the restoration of the G1 monument (the sanctuary), the most important of the Group G monuments was completed; with the lessons learnt from the Group G restoration to form a basis for future restoration of Cham brick monuments; and continued training of Vietnamese archaeologists, architects, conservationists and site managers in safeguarding cultural heritage in accordance with international World Heritage standards of conservation.

Training would include evaluation of the archaeological risk factors and vulnerability index of the monuments, which can be used as effective tools in the decision making for the long-term conservation of the World Heritage Site, according to Katherine Muller-Marin, representative and head of the UNESCO Ha Noi office.

She also highly appraised the catalogue of all Cham monuments in My Son which will provide the necessary database for the long-term protection of the site.

The project also helped develop a comprehensive site interpretation plan and design options of a plan for the entrance to the Group G site.

Besides these key results, the most significant success of phase II, was a project dedicated to replicating ancient Cham brickwork.

The success of this project was attributed to a local brick producer, technical staff and researchers from Institute for the Conservation of Monuments in co-operation with Italian experts from Lerici Foundation and University of Polytechnic of Milano.

"Although this research and experiments will continue, this has definitely contributed to taking the conservation work forward," said the ambassador.

In addition to the success gained in brick experimentation and production, the Guidelines for the restoration of Cham Towers with documented lessons learned from the G1 restoration in My Son would act as an important resource of knowledge and experience for conservators, particularly those working with ancient Cham monuments in central Viet Nam and other Hindu-influenced temples in the region.

The project was the first intervention since My Son was added to the World Heritage list in 1999 and only the second following the initial efforts by Polish and Vietnamese architects led by Kazimierz Kwiatkowski and Professor Hoang Dao Kinh in the early 1980s. A project which lacked the conditions to conduct more research into the materials and techniques used in the construction of the Cham monuments.

Phase I of the project began in 2003 and concluded in 2005 with the breakthrough discovery of an organic resin which was very similar to the ancient Cham material utilised as brick mortar.

The project cost 1.3 million euros (US$1.8million) from 2003-10.

"I'm convinced by the results of the project and I'm happy for the project to continue," said the ambassador. — VNS

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Phan Thiet set for charming Kate festival

Traditional Kate festival originated in Cham people

Photo: Tuoi Tre

The Cham people will organize their biggest and most important festival, Kate, next month with processions, rituals, and cultural activities at the Po Sah Inu Tower in Phan Thiet.

The highlights will include colorful traditional rituals like a palanquin procession carrying the costumes of Goddess Po Sah Inu and the Tong On ceremony to keep away “poisonous” winds. The Cham believe these winds can cause diseases and bring bad luck to families.

Then there will be a ceremony to bathe the lingam-yoni altar and make an offering of wine. The lingam is a phallic symbol of the Hindu god Shiva and the yoni represents the female.

The festival will also feature the paranung drum dance, other ethnic music and dance, and folk games.

For the benefit of tourists and other visitors, Champa artisans will demonstrate traditional brocade and ceramic production.

There will be a contest to make cakes like banh tet (cylindrical glutinous rice cake filled with green bean paste and fatty pork) and banh gung (ginger cake).

The Kate festival falls on the first day of the seventh month in the Cham calendar (September-October in the solar calendar). It is celebrated in honor of Po Sah Inu, who according to legend helped the Cham grow wet rice.

It also marks harvest and is an occasion for childless couples to entreat Po Sah Inu to bless them with children.

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Vietnam's minority Chams cling to Muslim faith

A Cham Muslim woman and her grand-daughter walk outside a mosque in Ho Chi Minh City.

Photo: AFP

The call to prayer from the minaret reaches out over tightly-packed alleys in a Ho Chi Minh City neighborhood as men in white knitted skullcaps and colorful sarongs walk to their local mosque.

The scene is more reminiscent of Malaysia, Indonesia or Brunei -- not Vietnam and its Chinese-influenced culture where Muslims are a tiny fraction of the population.

This small community in an area known as District 8 says it is the largest enclave of Cham Muslims in the metropolis informally still known as Saigon.

It has more than 1,300 residents, halal restaurants, a large mosque and a madrassa that regularly sends students to Malaysia for further study.

These and other Cham communities in southern and central Vietnam are all that remain of the Champa kingdom that ruled for centuries.

There are more than 100,000 Chams in the Buddhist-dominated country of 86 million, the government says.

"The Cham fell and lost their country. I feel like I live in another country and it's not my home," says a noodle-seller who gave her name only as Hachot, 49.

The Cham were a Hindu people who ruled parts of south and central Vietnam for hundreds of years and gradually converted to Islam.

But by the late 15th century the Vietnamese had pushed south and Champa was in decline.

Today, the kingdom's most visible legacy is the My Son temple ruin near Danang city. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and popular with tourists.

These days more than 80 percent of Cham are adherents of Islam, researchers say.

According to government data, Muslims are the smallest of six major religious groups in the country, with Buddhism the largest.

Religious activity remains under state control in Vietnam but worship among a variety of faiths is flourishing. However, the Muslims have kept a lower profile than Catholics and Buddhists.

"We just follow this religion. We don't care about politics," says Haji Mou-sa, 52, deputy manager of the local madrassa. He is fluent in Malay and knows some Arabic.

Mou-sa says Ho Chi Minh City has more than a dozen imams, all trained in Vietnam. Foreign imams also visit, especially from Malaysia, and the Koran has been translated into Vietnamese.

A slight man in a collarless shirt, sarong, and metal-rimmed glasses, he has lived in District 8 since the 1960s, when Chams first began moving to the area.

Many came from the Mekong Delta province of An Giang, where Chau Doc city is still home to a significant Cham Muslim population.

In the beginning, the District 8 Cham homes were made from wood and thatch. Electricity came to the area in 1990, and much later a bridge was built connecting the once-isolated area to downtown, leading to improved roads and rapid development of the surrounding area.

According to residents, there are 16 mosques in Ho Chi Minh City, some of them built with assistance from Muslim nations.

A plaque in the Cham neighborhood's Masjid Jamiul Anwar says it was rebuilt in 2006 with funds from the United Arab Emirates and the Red Crescent.

Although they get support from the Middle East, Cham relations remain strongest with Malaysia and Indonesia, thanks partly to shared cultural and religious values.

"Malaysians came here and supported schools and better jobs," Hachot recalls. The ties started more than 20 years ago after Vietnam began a policy of gradual economic openness.

She says she does not feel a part of wider Vietnamese society, even though the government helped to rebuild her house some years ago.

Attitudes of the majority Kinh ethnic group towards the Cham vary, Hachot says.

"Some Kinh say the Cham are dirty," she says, and they object to the Muslims' shunning of pork. "Other people don't care."

Many older Muslim residents make pilgrimages to Mecca, and most Cham have Arabic names on their government-issued identity cards.

Mohamath Zukry, 22, moved from his small town in An Giang more than 18 months ago to study and live at the madrassa. He plans to go to Malaysia to finish his religious education, and to study information technology.

Less devout Mack Aly, 29, a real estate agent who lives outside the Cham neighbourhood, says he still enjoys an alcoholic drink with his friends, and dates a non-Muslim woman.

"In Vietnam religion is not so strong. I won't eat pork. But I don't pray five times a day. And I drink and smoke," he explains at an upscale coffee shop.

Aly and his family have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by the Muslim diaspora. His brother works in Egypt and his sister in Indonesia.

Headscarves, long skirts and sleeves are common in Cham neighborhoods but women leave their heads uncovered when they go to work, and may opt for jeans. They say this is partly out of a fear of discrimination by co-workers.

Ngo Van Dong, 50, is among a small number of Kinh who have converted, despite initial opposition from his family who thought the religion "weird." The mechanic says he adopted Islam more out of love for his Cham wife than religious piety. Over time, he came to understand his adopted faith better.

Like their fellow Muslims around the world, the Cham in District 8 are marking the holy fasting month of Ramadan until about September 9.

They commonly also enjoy Vietnam's biggest celebration, the Tet Lunar New Year in February, although they do not engage in the spiritual rituals that accompany it.

"But we still have fun," says Dong.

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