Vietnam: Water puppet show (múa rối nước) in Ho Chi Minh City

If you can spare a night while in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam you might want to watch a Vietnamese water puppet show (múa rối nước). It's a craft that is uniquely Vietnamese. And if you have kids with you, they'll surely enjoy this wonderful element of Vietnamese culture.




I got to watch the water puppet show at Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theatre twice on two separate trips. The shows are about fifty minutes long with no intermissions. It could get a little bit boring for some, but this something you have to watch if you're interested in local culture.

Puppets are carved from wood and then lacquered. The puppeteers control the puppets from behind a screen. Water is waist deep and they use rods to move the puppets around. The water thus creates the effect of a lake, river or rice paddies in various scenes. I actually bought myself miniature versions of these water puppets at Ben Thanh Market.






There's a live Vietnamese ensemble which plays music and narrates, with everyone in traditional Vietnamese costumes. Everything is in Vietnamese so you'd have to refer to the English guide at times to understand what is happening. It's definitely something you'd want to watch even just once.

Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theatre
55B Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, District 1
Ho Chi Minh City
Showtimes: 5 p.m. & 6:30 p.m.

Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Hue, Hoi An & My Son

It was my sixth time (technically seventh if you count immigration stamps) to visit Vietnam. And finally, I had the chance to fly over to Hanoi from Ho Chi Minh City. Too bad there are no direct flights from the Philippines. I also got to return to Hue and Hoi An and visited Ha Long Bay and My Son for the first time. I actually coined my own term and refer to Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, Hoi An and Ha Long Bay as the 5Hs of Vietnam, the five must-visit places when planing a trip there. So before I forget again, here are photos from the trip which are now in the Ivan About Town FB page.

June 23-25 - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
June 25-27 - Hanoi, Vietnam
June 27 - Ha Long Bay, Vietnam
June 28 - My Son and Hoi An, Vietnam
June 29 - Hue, Vietnam

Vietnam & Cambodia: Bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam to Phnom Penh, Cambodia

The bus from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam to Phnom Penh, Cambodia is usually straightforward. We spent US$15 for it. The six-hour land trip is a very common route. And you can easily buy tickets anywhere in Vietnam. But for this trip, we encountered some problems.

We left Mui Ne at 1 a.m. for the five-hour trip to HCMC. We were to catch the 8 a.m. bus to PP hoping to be there by 2 p.m. I had always wanted to shop again at the Russian Market since they have a lot of great cultural souvenirs and export overruns there.

What I thought would be an easy border crossing turned out to be an irritating one. At the Vietnamese border, the immigration officer treated us shabbily. We were standing in front of him for almost 30 minutes and he was not minding us. At times, he was smirking. When asked if we were in the right line, he would answer "I'm busy" while passports of the people behind us were brought to him. We didn't budge until finally he entertained us after we reminded him that we could be left behind by the bus.

At the Cambodian border, we had to wait over an hour for our passports to get processed. But the highlight of the day was the four hour wait for the bus to get on the Neak Leoung Ferry that would transport it across the Mekong since there was no bridge yet. Since the Cambodian New Year holiday had just ended, everyone was rushing to get back to Phnom Penh which explains the traffic jam. We finally arrived in Phnom Penh, close to 5 hours behind schedule. But it's all part of the adventure.

For more information on what to do in Ho Chi Minh City, read Things to do in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

Vietnam: Sand dunes of Mui Ne, Vietnam

The different sand formations around Mui Ne are a major attraction after its beaches. The sand ranges from pure white to gold in the Bau Trang (White Lake), to a fiery red in other areas.

We visited several sand formations including the red sand dunes in Fairy Stream and Red Canyon, the white sand dunes in Bau Trang as well as the yellow (gold) sand dunes. If not for the cluster pine trees by the lake, one would think it's a desert in Africa or the Middle East. In Bau Trang, you can ride a horse up the dunes or slide down on a makeshift sled which small kids will tout to you.

We booked this afternoon tour in Ham Tien Beach. It was US$14 per person but we had the 4x4 all to ourselves. The ride around was a blast as I enjoyed the wind hit my face as we stood behind the jeep.

Vietnam: Mui Ne Fishing Village in Vietnam

I've always enjoyed taking the road less traveled. And this time around, that road led me to a fishing village five hours northeast of Ho Chi Minh City. Yes, I found myself in Vietnam once again. And I was going to the beach! How we got to Mui Ne in Binh Thuan Province was an adventure in itself.

Because one of our low-cost carriers arrives in HCMC or Saigon at such an unholy hour, there is a big risk especially if you need to travel outside city limits. Our problem was the first bus to Mui Ne wasn't going to leave until 6 a.m. So we had to wait several hours before we could even start our five-hour journey by land. We decided to wait in Pham Ngu Lao, the backpacker area of HCMC.

While asking around, we were badgered by xe om (motorbike for hire) drivers who said that they knew of a bus to Mui Ne that would leave much earlier in the Binh Thanh District of HCMC about 8km away. It was a risk, but for some reason, we trusted them. And they dropped us off in front of a bus station that looked closed and told us to wait in the coffee shop in front of it. At least it was a bus station. And so we waited and had some local coffee. Until finally, a van passed by and people inside started shouting something in Vietnamese. Unable to comprehend, we asked the lady at the coffee store if that was the vehicle to Mui Ne. And she signaled us to get on board.

All was well until they stopped somewhere to load newspapers at the back. It turns out, aside from taking in passengers, they deliver newspapers as well! So we were on a newspaper van that left at 4 a.m. We arrived in Mui Ne at about 7:30 a.m., earlier than expected. Mui Ne and neighboring Ham Tien Ward are very popular for their beach resorts. But what struck me about this town were the colorful fishing boats in Mui Ne Harbor and the vicinity. And I leave you with pictures of them.

Vietnam: Mekong River boat ride

During my second day in Vietnam, I decided to go on a Mekong River tour. The thing I like about mainland Southeast Asian destinations is that it’s so easy to book tours even if you’re just alone.

I spent US$7 for a whole day tour which included lunch. I was picked up at my hotel at 8 a.m. and we were off to My Tho City, one and a half hours away.

We took a small roofed pump boat a few minutes from the city center. The river was very wide and we got to see many fishing boats, ferries and floating houses. Most of the tour was going to be in Ben Tre province across the river. Our first stop was a small coconut candy factory in Turtle Island where we got to see how they made the local delicacies.

From there, we went back to the boat and stopped over a fruit orchard where to my surprise, we were given bicycles for a ride around the area. Nothing fancy actually, it was the typical rural life in Vietnam which one can see here in the Philippines. But I’m sure the other foreigners in my group were excited with the new experience. We have better rural scenes in the Philippines. But there was no grassroots tourism program like this where the locals benefit directly. Our DOT is focusing too much on big resorts and golf courses, local residents don’t get to benefit too much from the tourism boom.

After the bike ride, we were served lunch in the fruit orchard. It was a small serving of spring rolls, pork, soup and rice. You could order more but it was a bit pricey. From there, we boarded our boat again and rode to Unicorn Island where first visited a bee-keeping farm to taste the honey, honey tea and honey wine. But we got more than that since we got to play with their pet python too. But the highlight of this part was that each of us was given a serving of snake wine!

We walked down the path to another area of the island where we enjoyed the local tropical fruits while being serenaded with Vietnamese traditional folk-song music performed by the locals. On the way back to the boat, we had to ride small paddle boats from the restaurant which took us through narrow river creeks shaded by nipa plants. We boarded our boat and headed back to the port.

From the port, we boarded our van and made a brief stopover at the bonsai garden in My Tho. Didn’t see much but I got some jackfruit snacks to munch on. We were back in Ho Chi Minh at 5:30 p.m. More photos in Multiply.

Vietnam: More from Ho Chi Minh City

The following day, I decided to take it slow. I wanted to get away from the pulsating beat of orderly disorder that characterized Saigon. So I booked myself on a trip to the Mekong River that would take me one and a half-hours outside Saigon to the city of My Tho and Ben Tre Province. The van passed by for me at my hotel at 8:00 a.m. and we were back in Saigon’s urban chaos exactly at 5:30 p.m. I'll discuss that in a later entry.

Back in Hồ Chí Minh City, as soon as I stepped down the van, I rushed back to my hotel to change and drop off my stuff since I wanted to catch the 6:30 p.m. water puppet performance. I took a cab from my hotel to the Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theatre to catch one of Vietnam's cultural symbols. It was a brief 50-minute show which is a must visit for culture vultures like myself.

I realized I had been so stingy like always that I had a lot of funds left. So I decided to check out the Vietnamese restaurant my hotel recommended called Hoang Yen Restaurant. I had minced meat soup, spring rolls and chicken wings. It wasn’t as cheap as what you’d get from hawkers or hole-in-the-wall establishments. In fact, it wasn't even close! But it’s worth a try if you have some extra money to spend.

From the restaurant, I walked to the Ho Chi Minh City Hall to check out this wonderful work of art well lit at night. The intricate detail of this charming French colonial government building never fails to enchant me, even more when it is lit up in the evening.

I didn't stay too long since I had wanted to sleep early. But a college friend, who I met in the plane on the way to HCMC, sent me a message that we meet up. So it was another night at Allez Boo (this time I downed a bottle of Saigon beer and a pizza). But we decided to go around and we moved to Gossip to check out the clubbing scene. It seemed the young, rich and trendiest of HCMC were all there on a Wednesday night. It was one big parteee!

The next day, I woke up early for some last minute shots around HCMC before my flight back to Manila. I got myself a xe om (motorbike for hire) for an hour to take me around District 1.

Of course, I dropped by the Ho Chi Minh City Hall again and the nearby Saigon Opera House. I watched as the city woke up with joggers and old folks doing their morning rituals; and motorbikes started to increase in number. But I didn’t have that much time since I had to be at the airport by 8 a.m.

I wish I had more time to explore. But at least I got back to Manila in one piece since I felt that I was in the middle of a giant traffic accident waiting to happen. If there’s a next time, I definitely will rent my own motorbike and join the fun!

Golden Dragon Water Puppet Theatre
55B Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, District 1
Ho Chi Minh City
Showtimes: 6:30 p.m. & 8 p.m.

Vietnam: Experiencing old Saigon and cosmopolitan HCMC

Day 1 in Ho Chi Minh City. I arrived at 9 a.m. after a two and a half-hour flight from Manila. Although I was at NAIA as early as four, the lack of sleep did not deter me from rushing out to explore this dynamic city.

First impressions do last. I was pleasantly surprised that a new and modern Tan Son Nhat airport welcomed me. How I wished that the Philippines opened its new terminal sooner since all other ASEAN countries have modernized their own gateways. Outside was an orderly line of taxis waiting for passengers. I was expecting to argue with the driver as one travel guide warned. But as soon as I sat down, he turned on the meter. I was booked in a hotel along Pham Ngu Lao Street, Saigon’s backpacker haven.

Most guides to HCMC always recommend a visit to its many pagodas and temples. I thus decided to drop by one or two to get the ball rolling. I took a cab to the Giac Lam Pagoda, believed to be the oldest in the city. It was quite a distance from the city center. And the trip made me a spectator to the organized chaos that passes through the many tree-lined motorcycle-choked boulevards of Saigon. There was not too much activity in the temple as what I’ve seen in other Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia. But there were a few devotees doing rounds around the different images with their joss sticks. By the time I exited its gates, it was time for lunch.

Since I was on the run, I tried to look for the neighborhood bahn mi vendor. These are the local sandwiches which may look Western but definitely taste Vietnamese. I just love the way the pate, meats, and herbs mix very well with the baguettes, a culinary blend of East and West indeed. After walking under the sun for several meters, I finally found a stand. Until now, I still cannot fathom how a sandwich that costs only VND5,000 (approximately 15 pesos) in the streets of Vietnam is sold for ten times that much in Manila!

After that quick bite, I visited nearby Giac Vien Pagoda. The first thing I noticed as I entered was a number of shrines on each side with photos of the departed. I walked around the hall for a while and was resting on a stool, preparing to leave, when the lone monk in the hall blurted out something in the vernacular, as if calling me to come closer. When I got to his table, he threw a few questions at me which he asked in English, albeit with a bit of difficulty. He stood up, picked up a few joss sticks, and asked me to follow him. He toured me around and I made my rounds around the temple like the locals.

It was another cab ride to my next stop, the Reunification Palace. The former presidential palace of the defunct South Vietnam, it was where the Vietnam War was said to end when tank number 843 rammed into its gates on April 30, 1975, the day Saigon surrendered. It has been left the way it looked on that momentous day for Vietnam. Even the command center in the basement of the building still has its war maps, telephone and radio equipment, and other items on display in the different rooms as if the war had just ended yesterday.

From the palace, I walked to the nearby Notre Dame Cathedral and General Post Office which stand beside each other. The red-brick neo-Romanesque cathedral, built between 1877 and 1883, towers over the area. Right beside it is the well-preserved post office building, one of the more elegant French colonial buildings of Saigon. There are in fact many more buildings like it.

Further down the road was Ben Thanh Market, the best place to start shopping in HCMC. I’ve gone shopping there before. But for this trip, I had no plans of spending on anything. So I decided to skip it since warnings and tales of bad experiences are very familiar to me. No matter how alert or good you are at protecting your things, sticky fingers around the place can get really sneaky. And I didn’t want to lose my camera or wallet while even just a few seconds caught off guard.

So I walked back to my hotel in Ð Pham Ngu Lao to get some rest before going out for dinner. The streets around Ben Thanh are also alive in the evenings. As soon as the shops inside close, those outside set-up tents for the night market. Right beside the market building, a row of stalls offers fresh seafood which they serve dampa style.

Right beside my hotel, was Allez Boo bar where I got to chill out, watching people and motorbikes go by this busy bamboo-walled street corner. I ordered the house special, Allezboo Slammer, a mix of amaretto, sambuca, brandy, lime juice and cointreau. Check out my photos in Multiply.

Vietnam: Hoi An town and the story of my backpack

It was this trip to Hoi An, another UNESCO World Heritage Site, which opened my eyes to the backpacking culture. In 2003, I was introduced to bus travel between countries when I took a bus from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to visit friends. From Kuala Lumpur, I took a six hour bus up north to Malaysia’s heritage jewel, the city of Georgetown in Penang. But I had always traveled with a large piece of luggage and it was difficult for me to move around. The first thing I would do when I arrived in a place was to look for a hotel and drop off my luggage before I could go around. The Hoi An trip changed that.

According to UNESCO, Hoi An “is an exceptionally well-preserved example of a South-East Asian trading port dating from the 15th to the 19th century. Its buildings and its street plan reflect the influences, both indigenous and foreign, that have combined to produce this unique heritage site.”

I purchased my bus ticket at an agency in front of our hotel. I was happy that I only spent US$6 for a round trip ticket. The attendant was so surprised that my return ticket was on the same day because tourists who purchased tickets from them usually bought a one-way ticket since their next stop after that would be Ho Chi Minh or they would stay overnight and come back the next day. Imagine catching the first six hour trip down to Hoi An, staying for only two hours, and taking the last bus back to Hue. It’s like commuting to Baguio and coming back down just after two hours of sight-seeing. But unlike Baguio, Hoi An was just a small town and two hours was enough to see the sights but not quite enough to experience the culture. But I was pressed for time so I had no choice.

On the wall were other destinations in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. It was then that I realized that I could tour Southeast Asia via bus. And it was that realization in 2004 which led to my three-week five-country journey around Southeast Asia last April. I remember e-mailing people about the idea and buying a map of Indochina in Hue to try to plan the trip. And thus, after two years of yearning and planning, the trip finally pushed through.

One of the added attractions of this bus trip were stopovers at other tourist attractions on the way including this place called Marble Mountain. When we arrived there, there was shop after shop of marble souvenirs in all known colors of marble. Unlike those some of those cheap-looking marble souvenirs we have in Romblon (the marble in Romblon is high quality and the souvenirs are carved from whole marble and not molded marble dust and resin like the ones here but there's something about the carvings I don't like, especially the letterings they put which make them look cheap), the shops here had so many quality items to choose from such as animal figures, small busts of Ho Chi Minh and Chairman Mao, Buddha heads and other religious images as well as larger marble items. And the prices were shockingly cheap! I remember buying a 10-inch high brown marble Buddha head for something like PHP300. To make the long story short, I bought more than I could carry and realized that I would be lifting this box of marble stuff as I went around Hoi An.

I never intended to buy myself a backpack but I ended up having to do so out of necessity. Yup, the first thing I did when I arrived in Hoi An was to buy a backpack that could carry all the items I bought. And I didn’t have to search far since there were so many shops which sold bags due to the fact that Hoi An was a popular stop in the Southeast Asian backpack trail. When I finally found a backpack which could hold the entire box, it was off for a walk around the old town to check out the sites.

So that's how I got my backpack and started bakpacking! Hehe! Anyway, I was reading Wikipedia and found this brief history of Hoi An: "The former harbour town of the Champa people at the estuary of the Thu Bon river was an important trading centre in the 16th and 17th centuries, where Chinese from various provinces as well as Japanese, Dutch and Indians settled down. During this period of the China trade, the town was called Hai Pho (Seaside Town), during the French occupation. Originally Hai Pho was a divided town, because across the "Japanese Bridge" used to be the Japanese settlement. The bridge (Chùa cầu) is a unique covered structure built by the Japanese, the only known covered bridge with a Buddhist pagoda attached to one side."

I also found this website which has a nice photo of the port area. You can check out my photos in Hoi An here.

Vietnam: Hue, Viet Nam and its Forbidden Purple City

Nope, that isn't in the Philippines. It's a photo of the Perfume River (Huong Giang) in Hue, Viet Nam which I took way back in June 2004.

I was looking through some old files to prepare a module on heritage conservation for local government units and saw a copy of the Hue Declaration on Cultural Tourism and Poverty Alleviation. It's quite significant to me not just because of its content but because I was there in Hue at the very time the Asian ministers of tourism were meeting to draft this declaration. I was lucky enough to participate and listen to the ongoing Ministerial Conference thanks to then Tourism secretary Obet Pagdanganan.

I consider this trip my first backpack adventure. In fact, it was during this 2004 visit to Viet Nam that I bought the very backpack which started my fancy for backpacking. I’ll share the funny story in the next entry. The trip was just for a few days and it should have been longer since I and sculptors Toym Imao and Norman Tiotuico were planning it for quite a while to attend Festival Hue 2004 and the 3rd International Sculpture Symposium which I wanted to duplicate here in the country. But my MBA studies started quite early and I had to cut the trip short so as not to miss too much in class.

From Manila, I took a flight to Ho Chi Minh City where I stayed for a few hours in transit en route to Hue. I had been to Ho Chi Minh in 2002 during the Ship for Southeast Asian Youth Program so I decided not to stopover anymore since I was pressed for time and I wanted to see new places. The flight to Hue was just an hour. You could opt to take a bus but that would take forever and should be reserved for a trip with lots of time to spare.

Hue, the former royal capital of Viet Nam's Nguyen Dynasty, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Replete with palaces, temples, royal tombs and other remnants of Viet Nam’s rich past, Hue finds itself in the company of other former royal capitals in Southeast Asia which have continuously aimed to preserve their outstanding architectural heritage. These include Angkor in Cambodia, Ayutthaya and Sukhothai in Thailand and Luang Prabang in Laos among others. In fact, the Purple Forbidden City in the heart of Hue was said to be patterned after the one in Beijing.

For the most part of the trip, it was raining. In fact, it is said that, "Hue's weather is infamously bad: the Truong Son Mountains just to the south seem to bottle up all the moisture, so it's usually misty, drizzly or outright rainy, and things get even drippier than usual in the winter rainy season. Bring along an umbrella any time of year." So I was always soaked from the torrential rains since our main means of transportation around were bicycles which we rented for the duration of the trip as well as cyclos which were pedicabs with the passengers in front of the biker.

Every two years, the city is alive and bustling thanks to a cultural festival called Festival Hue which attracts thousands of people from all over the country. I was impressed at how the Vietnamese value this celebration which featured various aspects of Vietnamese culture. Most Filipinos today would not “waste” their time watching cultural shows and presentations. I guess things that make us Filipino do not matter to most of us nowadays.

In fact, many of the events at the festival were free. And while I was walking around in the rain, I was lucky to chance upon this concert of an orchestra from Hanoi in one of the old art deco theaters. You just entered and sat down in the hall. I hope we have government-sponsored cultural festivals like these here in the country. It makes me feel sad that we demolish our old theaters here in Manila as well.

I got to visit the Citadel and the Forbidden Purple City, as well as the tomb of Tự Đức (right) during my first few days. But since it was raining, I didn't get to enjoy the structures as much as I should have.

Food there is cheap and one of my personal favorites was the Bánh Mì Thịt, a Vietnamese submarine sandwich made with a French baguette containing paté, Vietnamese mayo, different selections of Vietnamese cold cuts and deli, pickled daikon and carrots, and cucumber slices, often garnished with coriander and black pepper. These sandwiches are "common everywhere in Vietnam as a favorite of factory workers and school kids and eaten for any meal of the day, commonly breakfast and lunch." There was one stand outside our hotel which sold sandwiches for VND6,000 each (US$1 = 15,000 dong) so I made it a point to try a different one every morning.

I was lucky that during my last day, it stopped raining. So I contracted the services of a motorcycle-taxi who took me around the various royal tombs that lined the Perfume River. The tombs were lavish, housed in vast complexes along the banks of the river. But visiting them and other ticketed attractions was quite expensive if you planned to drop by many of them.

Unlike Angkor which sold passes that allowed you to enter all the sites (Cambodians entered free while tourists paid $20 for a day pass which was still quite expensive), in Hue, each site had its own ticket which would have been perfectly alright if not for the rates.

With the UNESCO World Heritage status, the government really took advantage of this by charging high rates for tourists to enter each one! Vietnamese nationals paid much lower rates while I think I paid VND55,000 (that's US$4) for every tomb I entered. There are eight of them if you have the time and money to visit all. Anyway, at least the fees here are channeled to restoration and not politicians’ pockets.

For the last day, I visited two more tombs namely those of Khải Định (above left) and Minh Mạng (above right) as well as the Thiên Mụ Pagoda (left). Anyway, you can check out my Patrimoine Mondial album to see more photos.

OT: To all those generations of kids like myself who grew up learning about the nine planets of the solar system (I was an astronomy buff way back in grade school and had a monthly dose of Astronomy Magazine delivered to my home), Pluto is no longer a planet! Check out the details here.