Saturday, December 18, 2010

VN's first insect photo exhibition opens

HA NOI — The country's first ever photo exhibition of insects is on display in Ha Noi offering a closer look at Viet Nam's anthropological population.

Co-organised by the Viet Nam Nature Museum and the Italian Embassy, the exhibition has gathered over 200 photos of insects from across the country taken by researcher Vu Van Lien and Italian photographer Saolo Bambi.

Each panel features a characteristic of the insect life in an artistic style although they were initially taken purely for scientific research purposes.

There are also nine photos of typical forests throughout Viet Nam, located at various different altitudes from the southern island of Phu Quoc to Fansipan, the peak of Indochina, in the northernwestern province of Lao Cai.

The exhibition aims to celebrate 2010 as the first year of international biological diversity initiated by the United Nations.

"The exhibition also has a further purpose of promoting the protection of biological diversity as well as our living environment for now and for future generations," said Professor Chau Van Minh, chairman of the Viet Nam Science and Technology Institute.

The exhibition will be on display at Exhibition House, 45 Trang Tien Street, until tomorrow.

Concert features Tchaikovsky works

HCM CITY — The HCM City Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Opera (HBSO) will present an evening of Tchaikovsky's music this weekend.

Beginning with Slanovic March in B-flat minor, Op.31, a popular work which highlights the spirit of Russian people, the concert will continue with Symphony No 5 in E Minor, op.64, which was written in 1988.

The work includes four chapters that comprise Russian folk and European music. It has been performed many times by prestigious orchestras worldwide.

The evening will finish with ballet performances by HBSO's young dancers, including Phuc Hung, Hong Chau, Phi Diep and Diem Trang – four talents who have helped infuse new ideas into traditional Vietnamese dance.

They will perform five extracts from popular Russian and French dances like Diana&Acteon, Chopiniana, The Flowers and Le Corsaire.

The concert, conducted by Tran Vuong Thach, will begin at 8pm tomorrow at the HCM City Opera House, 7 Lam Son Square, District 1.

Tickets priced from VND20,000 (for students) to 200,000 (US$10) can be bought at the theatre.

Sculptures celebrate origins of life

HCM CITY — Nineteen sculptures symbolising rice, seeds, and embryos, which their creator Bui Hai Son considers the original source of humans, are on display at an exhibition in HCM City.

Originarium (in Latin characters), or "The Origin," on at the HCM City Fine Arts University's Applied Arts Gallery, displays sculptures in bronze, wood, glass, and some other materials.

Son's works are displayed in two separate sections – one features just sculptures and in the other several works have been put together to create installation works.

For instance, Nguon (The Origin) and Lua (Rice) are among the highlights in the first section while they have also been put together along with more works to form Phuong Nam (The South).

"I spent at least a year working on my pieces, which depict Vietnamese culture and lifestyle," Son said. Nguon, representing a grain of rice and made from wood and bronze, is three metres long.

His colleagues and he faced challenges in exhibiting their works because of the giant size of most of them, he said. "I wanted a big open space to display my works and finally settled for the Applied Arts Gallery."

Son, born in An Giang Province in 1957, graduated from the Fine Arts University in 1987. He has displayed his works in many group exhibitions and fine-arts festivals at home and abroad. Last year he was invited to the Miyazaki International Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture in Japan.

Originarium will be on show at 52 Phan Dang Luu Street, Binh Thanh District, until Monday. — vns


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First lesbian couple ties the knot

A video clip featuring their wedding party was posted on YouTube Thursday, and has attracted more than 10,000 page views.
In the 11-minute-long clip, Thuy Linh and Quang Minh, both 19, exchanged vows in a cozy restaurant Tuesday with the presence of their friends, mostly young people.
The ‘groom’’s mother was the only parent to attend the wedding.
The clip has become a hot topic in Vietnamese online forums, with some raising questions whether the couple was too hasty to get married at such a young age.
The two are freshmen at the Raffles University in Hanoi. Quang Minh, the ‘groom’, said she hoped their wedding would help other gay people to be courageous enough to express who they are.
“I live with my mom and my younger sister. My mom was shocked when she was first told about my sexuality but then she said the most importance thing is that I feel happy,” she said.
Thuy Linh, the bride, said she felt no wrong to live with her true nature.
Most young people conveyed the best wishes to the couple on online forums, saying it was the rights of the couple to decide their own way.
The couple planned to go abroad for study after finishing their courses in Vietnam.
Currently, Vietnamese laws ban same sex marriage.
 

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Friday, December 17, 2010

VN's first insect photo exhibition opens

HA NOI - The country's first ever photo exhibition of insects is on display in Ha Noi offering a closer look at Viet Nam's anthropological population.

Co-organised by the Viet Nam Nature Museum and the Italian Embassy, the exhibition has gathered over 200 photos of insects from across the country taken by researcher Vu Van Lien and Italian photographer Saolo Bambi.

Each panel features a characteristic of the insect life in an artistic style although they were initially taken purely for scientific research purposes.

There are also nine photos of typical forests throughout Viet Nam, located at various different altitudes from the southern island of Phu Quoc to Fansipan, the peak of Indochina, in the northern province of Lao Cai.

The exhibition aims to celebrate 2010 as the first year of international biological diversity initiated by the United Nations.

"The exhibition also has a further purpose of promoting the protection of biological diversity as well as our living environment for now and for future generations," said Professor Chau Van Minh, chairman of the Viet Nam Science and Technology Institute.

The exhibition will be on display at Exhibition House, 45 Trang Tien Street, until Sunday. - VNS

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Passing on folk dance skills

Move it: Dao dancers perform in a traditional festival. Dancing teachers complain that dance students should learn more about ethnic groups before learning their dances. — VNA/VNS Photo Phuong Hoa

Move it: Dao dancers perform in a traditional festival. Dancing teachers complain that dance students should learn more about ethnic groups before learning their dances. — VNA/VNS Photo Phuong Hoa

HA NOI — Ethnic folk dance training needs improvements including shortened training time and better background music, said professional dancers at a recent conference on ethnic folk dancing. Artist Tran Duc Vien, a retired dancing teacher, proposed to shorten existing dance training courses at art institutes throughout the country.

"The folk dance training schedule is too long now, which has led to a waste of time and finances," Vien said. "Concerned agencies should publish folk dances of ethnic groups in more systematically designed course books to be officially used at art institutes throughout the country."

The background music for folk dances should also be revised to be professional enough for teaching and performing, he said.

Dance teacher Pham Thanh Tung, from the Dance Department of the Military Culture and Arts College, complained on the present way of teaching folk dances in art institutes.

"Dance teachers now just tend to guide students to imitate their gestures," he said. "Students themselves have not yet been made aware of nor developed any profound understanding of the ethnic groups' culture reflected in their dances.

"I think young dance teachers like me should be equipped with knowledge of ethnic groups and the folk dances we teach so that we can give students general knowledge about the groups before teaching them the dances of those groups."

Other participants in the conference agreed that folk dances were increasingly important in preserving traditional cultural values, but the training was beset with shortcomings. According to artist Ha The Dung, director of the HCM City Dance College, the biggest hindrance was the limited number of folk dance trainers.

"Furthermore, the teaching materials are also insufficient. There are only folk dances for 18 ethnic groups collected out of 54 groups throughout the country," Dung said.

Artist Nguyen Van Quang, director of the Vet Nam Dance College, mentioned the difficulty in recruiting students for the field.

"Today's youth prefer other types of arts," he said. "Some meeting the criteria on appearance and talent just take the entrance exams for fun and are not serious about studying even if they pass." — VNS

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On golden pond

by Ha Nguyen

Tree-lined drive: The Ba Om Pond complex in the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh. — File Photos

Tree-lined drive: The Ba Om Pond complex in the Mekong Delta province of Tra Vinh. — File Photos

Fairyland: Ang Pagoda, a  marvellous Khmer pagoda,  welcomes a million visitors a year.

Fairyland: Ang Pagoda, a marvellous Khmer pagoda, welcomes a million visitors a year.

A group of my friends from the US recently travelled to the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta, home to Tra Vinh's legendary Ba Om Pond. While there, they visited Ang Pagoda which people claim is the best vantage point from which to enjoy the beautiful scenery of the pond.

Located on the outskirts of Tra Vinh Town, the pagoda complex is a fortress that offers travellers an escape from the heat and dust of Road 52.

One of the group, Duong Quang Chan, an overseas Vietnamese businessman, who has lived in the US for years, was returning on this occasion to seek out business opportunities and said he was considering a tourism project in Tra Vinh, which also happened to be his grandmother's birthplace.

"As we arrived at the complex, we were amazed by the century-old trees. From a distance, their strange stumps looked like giant snakes heading for the sky," said Chan.

The soft whispering of the trees combined with the low murmur of Buddhist monks reciting the scriptures from a distant pagoda to create a blissful atmosphere for those wanting to meditate, he said.

A local photographer Huynh Van Hung said that a great flood may have swept through the area long time ago, shaping it and marking the old trees,

Sitting on a hammock strung between two old stumps, Hung said visitors often come here to enjoy the view of peaceful Ba Om Pond, famed for its pure water.

Hung said although visitors have their own camera they still ask him to photograph the view.

Ba Om Pond is called a square pond, but is actually 300m wide and 500m long. The pond is carpeted with water lilies and lotus flowers which bloom white and purple every summer.

The legendary pond was formed as a result of a bet between young ethnic Khmer men and women. The exact date is unknown but according to the elderly monks known by the Tra Vinh Khmer as Luc Masters, the pond was formed about 500 to 600 years ago.

Nguyen Thu Anh, a guide at the Tra Vinh Khmer Museum, said that long ago Khmer society was matriarchal. Young women had to find partners and present betrothal gifts to the bridegroom's family. This habit made the young men selfish and they asked for gifts of ever increasing value.

Tiring of this, leader of a women's group, a lady called Om, sought approval from officials in the region for men to do what women had been doing for centuries. The clever official asked the two groups to dig one pond each. They were to be a kilometre apart. Whoever finished first would be the winner and could ask the other group to do their bidding.

This decision would benefit the entire region, as two big ponds contained a great deal of water, which was much needed in the dry season.

In a story that mirrors the fable of the turtle and the rabbit, the group led by Om pretended that they was not up to the task and tried to shelter from the sunshine. Om responded by asking some of these lazy women to lure the men by holding a party to last all day and night.

While half of her group were busy with the men, the others lit torches and dig all night. Their pond was finished by the next morning and took her name. The unfinished men's pond can still be seen at the site of Pras Tropeang Pagoda.

There is another legend which states that the two are natural ponds and that both were there before the Khmer settled in Tra Vinh. Indeed, many Khmer people still use the name Srar Cu (twin ponds) when talking about the ponds. The name Ba Om (Lady Om) is also one way of pronouncing the name of the vegetable which grows naturally around the pond. The cows in the region love this vegetable, and their flesh is very tasty as a result. Visitors can try this special beef in food stores in the region.

The Ba Om Pond complex was recognised as a national historical-cultural relic in 1996. It is popular site for Khmer festivals, especially the Ok Om Bok, which takes place in the middle of the tenth lunar month. At that time, the Khmer of the entire Mekong Delta gather there to host traditional customs and games.

Dang Phuoc Tho, director of the Provincial Cultural Centre, said the festival was held for people to express thanks to the moon for good weather and a good harvest.

Last lunar month nearly 30,000 local and foreign visitors watched a boat race on the Ba Om Pond as part of this festival. The event attracted 500 boatmen from the province and eight boats competed over 700m and 1,500m.

The boats, called ghe ngo, are pirogues crafted from tree trunks. They have a curved head and tail and are managed by skilful boatmen.

On the night of the festival, family members gather before the communal pagoda or in their houses, preparing a feast with farm produce like green rice flakes which are the speciality of the Khmer people, ripe bananas, fresh coconuts and mangoes. These are all offered to the moon.

As the moon rises, the ceremony begins. Family members sit on the ground, hands clasped. An elderly man expresses the village's gratitude and recites prayers for continued good crops and good health.

After the ceremony, everyone joins hands and looks at the moon. They receive green rice flakes from the elderly man and make a wish. People then release paper lanterns into the sky and banana-tree rafts decorated with colourful lights and loaded with offerings are set adrift on the river.

Tran Hoang Be, director of the Tra Vinh Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said the province plans to invest billions of dong to expand the Ba Om Pond culture-tourism complex to 84ha. It will include a Khmer museum, a sports centre, a service-trade and a tourism centre.

The aim is to attract more visitors to the area by preserving and improving the site's original landscape, said Be.

The site welcomes millions of visitors every year. — VNS

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Five-star resort opens on island

Con Dao Island will get its first five-star hotel when the Six Senses Resorts & Spas throw open their doors on Monday. The project was developed with investment from the Indochina Capital fund.

The hotel's 50 villas sit along a stretch of sandy beach, with stunning vistas of the sea and the curve of the bay, sheltered by green forested hills behind. All building materials were taken from natural, sustainable sources, using local materials where possible. Teak wood was reclaimed and includes over a thousand beautifully carved panels.

The resort's curved swimming pool, shaded by mature, wild mahogany trees, sits at the edge of the beach, which offers various water sports, including coracles, kayaking, snorkeling and diving in what is recognised as the best coral reef in Viet Nam, as well as boat trips to neighbouring islands.

Saigontourist eyes Japanese partners

The HCM City-based Saigontourist Holding Co is looking for Japanese partners for 12 new hotels and tourism complexes it plans to build. The company's general director, Nguyen Huu Tho, said Saigontourist is looking for both investment and management co-operation. Saigontourist also plans to buy hotels in Japan to expand its operations.

The company operates around 100 hotels, resorts, and restaurants around the country, and reported revenues of VND8.2 trillion (US$420.6 million) last year. It hopes to boost the figure to $1 billion by 2015 by which year it also plans to add 4,000 new rooms.

Central provinces unveil island tours

The tourism authorities of Quang Nam and Quang Ngai unveiled plans to launch a tour combining islands and inland destinations.

Do Tuan Cuong, deputy director of the Quang Nam Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said the tour, to be launched next year, will begin in Hoi An to explore Cham Islet before speed boats for two hours to Quang Ngai's Re Island.

HCM City luxury hotel rates fall

Room rates in three-star to five-star hotels in HCM City fell by 10 per cent this year on average to US$98 per night due to a sharp increase in supply, according to the city Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

The city has 68 international standard hotels with nearly 9,230 rooms. Newcomers include three four-star hotels, namely Oscar Sai Gon, Liberty Central, and Norfolk which have a total of 312 rooms, and nine three-star hotels with more than 580 rooms.

Tour operators offer discounts

To encourage people to travel during the Christmas season, travel agencies are offering tours at low prices, meaning they are unchanged from last year or are just 5-7 per cent up.

Ha Noi Redtours expects to serve around 1,000 outbound travellers and 500 clients who will undertake domestic and inbound tours. This represents an increase of 20 per cent compared to last year.

Vietravel said its business is likely to be 25 per cent higher than last year.

The most popular destinations for domestic travellers are Ha Noi, Sa Pa, and Ha Long Bay in the north and Ba Na, Da Lat, Phu Quoc Island, and Nha Trang in the central and southern regions. The most popular overseas destinations for Vietnamese travellers are in Asia, including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Russian carrier flies to Cam Ranh

A Vladivostok Air aeroplane carrying 80 passengers landed at Cam Ranh Airport in Khanh Hoa Province on Wednesday to mark the beginning of the Russian carrier's service from Vladivostok and Khabarovsk.

The carrier said it will operate seven flights each from the two far eastern Russian cities to the central Vietnamese destination between mid-December and March next year.

To create favourable conditions for the direct flights from Russia, the Central Airport Company said it has offered a 50 per cent discount on all ground services at Cam Ranh Airport. — VNS

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Pop singers rush to release new albums

HCM CITY — Many top singers are scrambling to release their traditional year-end album to mark the festive season and are receiving a warm welcome from fans.

Pop star Phuong Thanh released a solo album on Sunday, her first of the year, titled Nao Ai Co Biet (Nobody Knows). It has 10 romantic songs, all written by well-known composer Duc Tri.

"The album marks 10 years of collaboration between Tri and me," Thanh says.

The singer, who uses her melancholic voice to full effect, often sings about love and loneliness to strike a chord in listeners. She has never received professional training but managed to make her "God-gifted voice" unique.

"I try to immerse myself in the song to infuse them with feeling and spirit," she explains.

Her album was followed by Duc Tuan's Bay Gio… Bien Mua Dong (Now… Sea in Winter).

Tuan sings 10 romantic singles written by celebrated composer Duong Thu, the highlight being Xa Xam (Far Away) and O Lai Mua Dong (Stay with Winter).

Tuan is one of the few Vietnamese stars to sing classical and semi-classical music, not a popular genre among the youth.

"The album is my Christmas gift to fans," he says.

Last year he had won the Singer of the Year and Album of the Year awards at the prestigious annual Music Contribution Prize for his Music of the Night album in English and French.

Last week MV Productions released Cao Got (High Heels), an album featuring 15 songs starring well-known models and movie stars like Trang Nhung, Thao Nhi and Truc Diem.

Pop star My Le resorts to classical music for the first time in her latest album My Le in Symphony also released last week. Le's delicate style has won her acclaim among both young and older listeners.

Co Nhung Giac Mo (There're Dreams) released two weeks ago by upcoming singer Giang Hong Ngoc has also been well received. — VNS

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