Friday, March 29, 2013

Bo Da- a unique pagoda in Bac Giang


Bo Da pagoda in Bac Giang has its own ancient beauty attracting numerous visitors and pilgrims.
Bo Da, also known as Bo or “Quan Am at mount Bo Da” is one of the most unique pagoda in Tien Son commune, Viet Yen district, Bac Giang province and a major Buddhist center of the Truc Lan Yen Tu zen. 


The ancient entrance of Bo Da pagoda
The pagoda is situated at the foot of a beautiful pine hill that is surrounded by soil walls, mountains and rivers. Bo Da is called “soil pagoda” because it was made from a brown soil, antique walls and bricks.
Bo Da has unique architecture that is different from the traditional pagoda in the North of Vietnam. The pagoda contains 18 temples, nearly 100 ancient rooms with harmonious architectural layout, special materials: unique soil, bricks…Moreover, Bo Da has an ancient garden temple where ashes bones of more than 1,400 monks and nuns were buried.
 
The pagoda has still preserved the oldest Buddhist Vietnam prayer book that carved on wood. Pagoda also keeps a very interesting devise of Nguyen Hong famous writer that was a handwritten copy of the rules in the pagoda.
The place preserve lots of prayer book
Unique garden temples in Bo Da

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Exploring the wild

Situated in central Quang Nam Province's Phuoc Son and Nam Giang districts, Song Thanh Nature Reserve is 110 km northwest of Tam Ky Town and 85 km southwest of Da Nang City. Both the Vu Gia and Thu Bon rivers begin in Song Thanh before flowing into the province's main rice cultivation areas.
An ethnic minority group performs at the Song Thanh Nature Reserve in the central province of Quang Nam. It is not far from the Lao border, the Song Thanh Nature Reserve is the house to a giant diversity of both flora and fauna together with ethnic minority cultures.
  
Huge swathes of evergreen and old-growth forests provide a large range of vegetation at Song Thanh, especially in the reserve's strictly-protected 93,250-hectare core zone.

The waterfall hike is a good way to begin exploring the area. A path leading to the crystal, clear falls begins behind the Song Thanh Nature Reserve Management Board Office. The two-hour forest walk is made all the more pleasant by the sounds of singing birds above.

Some tourists in Vietnam tourism also enjoy exploring the Co Tu, Gie Trieng and Mo Nong ethnic minority communities in hamlets just outside the reserve's major jungle areas.

In the evening, visitors may be invited to join the locals for gong shows and song and dance around the bon fire. The Co Tu are known for their lively performances as well as their traditional brocade weaving.

Surveys by the WWF Indochina and the Forest Inventory Planning Institute show that Song Thanh is house to 831 high-grade plant species, 38 species of which are endangered in Vietnam.

The provincial Forest Control Bureau says Song Thanh is home to nearly 360 animal species, 51 of them are endangered in Vietnam. The most special animals here are the langurs and mang Truong Son (Truong Son Muntjac), a kind of deer.

Song Thanh is most easily reachable from Tam Giang District's Thanh My Town. The Dong Truong Son and Huong Giang guesthouses supply adequate accommodation while the meals at Thanh My Restaurant are tasty. Good shopscan be found at the Thanh My Town Market and medical services are available at the Nam Giang District Health Station. Travel is easiest by xe om (motorbike taxi).

Monday, March 11, 2013

FOREIGN TOURISTS IN THE CALLIGRAPHERS STREET


Recently, not only a lot of people in Hanoi and in other surrounding provinces but also many international tourists go to the calligraphers street to buy hand-drawn traditional calligraphy in Hanoi’s Temple of Literature area. 

Calligraphy is a special traditional custom in Vietnam which originated from the art of writing beautifully.
Vietnamese script and Chinese script written carefully on red paper by calligraphers has a special attraction to foreign visitors. The meaningful characters have become the symbol of luckiness, worshipping objects for thousands years in Vietnam.
Visitors come and enjoy Vietnamese traditional culture and keep memories about their trip to Vietnam on Tet holiday. They are so surprised when seeing many people, not only the old but also the young and children go to buy calligraphy in the calligraphers street. They are curious about the significance of calligraphy, the significance of giving and receiving calligraphy…
Anually, on Tet holiday Hanoi people come to the calligraphers street to buy calligraphy with many wishes. The old people pray for blessing, happiness, young people pray for a happy new year with luckiness and success…. Apart from hanging the calligraphy in the house, many people buy small-size calligraphy to put in their wallet.

A calligrapher is writing carefully a character. Most of calligrapher belong
to Huong Nam calligraphy club and UNESCO calligraphy club


Foreign tourists pay attention to the calligraphy
                                                                                Provide by http://travel.org.vn

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Sweet - and - sour mango girdle cake in Nha Trang

Nha Trang is famous for not only many tourist spots and beautiful beaches, but also a lot of good food and unique dishes such as white rice vermicelli with fish or jelly-fish, eel, blood cockle cooked with tamarind, squid, girdle cakes… Mango girdle cake is one of unique dishes that is rustic but so appetizing. That cake has become a famous brand name in Khanh Hoa.

Mango girdle cake has the same shape to a girdle cake. However, the ingredients to make the cake are ripe mangoes and a little sugar.


There are lashings of sweet mangoes in Khanh Hoa. Therefore, people here take advantage of the number of mangoes to make delicious cakes that you can preserve for a longer time. It is very easy and simple to make the mango cake. You just need to choose ripe mangoes, clean and peel them. After that, you use a scraping knife to grate them until touching the mango seed.
Then you pour mango juice and a little sugar into a pot. Next, you both heat and stir until the mixture becomes viscid.


The final step is drying cake under the sun for two days. That is all. The cake tastes sour, sweet and aromatic from mangoes. Finally,You just need to preserve the cake into platic bags and enjoy with friends and family.


                                                                                                                    Provide by Travel to Vietnam

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Adventure and family reunion in Vietnam


IT'S amazing what the Vietnamese transport on their bikes: fridges, furniture, dogs, cats, small children, chickens; we even spot a monkey.
We’re on our way from the airport into Ho Chi Minh City and hundreds of scooters and motorised pushbikes weighed down with all manner of things are weaving in and out of the taxi’s path.
My husband Stewart, daughter Isabel, seven, and I are visiting my recently retired father Patrick who lives 300 miles north east of the city in Nha Trang, where he was teaching English.
New direct Vietnam Airlines flights from Gatwick have slashed the journey time from 18 hours to a more comfortable 11.
The-busy-Binh-Tay-market-in-Ho-Chi-Minh-City-s-Cholon-district
Before taking the overnight train north to meet my father we are spending three days exploring Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), still widely known as Saigon by the locals of Vietnam’s biggest metropolis straddling the Saigon River.
Although Vietnam is officially a Socialist Republic it feels like the most capitalistic communist country I’ve ever visited.
HCMC, where skyscrapers rub shoulders with fading French colonial buildings, pagodas and Soviet-style blocks, is a hive of activity.
It is home to six million people, three million mopeds, bustling bars, restaurants and shops galore. Evidence of the French occupation of the 1800s and early 1900s is still visible in the beautifully laid out avenues and the stunning red-brick Notre Dame Cathedral.
Its twin compass-point spires are now dwarfed by the dazzling glass of Diamond Plaza, one of the city’s numerous shopping malls.
We booked a morning city tour which took us to the vast Chinese ghetto of Cholon where we explored the maze of streets lined with barbers, bird sellers outside tumbledown pagodas and heaving markets where fishwives loudly sell their wares.
We visited the Reunification Palace, a whitewashed concrete edifice which is now a museum and where time has stood still since 30 April 1975, when a phalanx of North Vietnamese tanks smashed down its gates signifying the end of the Vietnam War.
We also visited the historic surroundings of the Rex and Caravelle Hotels - where reporters, soldiers and attaches hung out in the Seventies. We ate ice-cream and drank coffee watching the world go by in air-conditioned cafes and we were not ripped off once.
No £5 cokes, no £30 bottles of wine, no £7 coffees, no £10 G&Ts – just lovely service at the kind of inexpensive prices that don’t make mum and dad wince at buying a round of ice-creams.
Our most expensive meal was just £25 in the Vietnam House restaurant, Saigon, housed in a French colonial building. We tucked into delicious crab spring rolls, pineapple beef and spicy noodle soup.
After sightseeing in the heat it was wonderful to retreat to the 470-room Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers for a cooling dip in the outdoor pool and watch the sunset over the city at the Level 23 Wine Bar.
On our third day we headed to Saigon Station to catch our overnight train to the coast.
Unfortunately due to some mix up, the tourist ‘Golden Train’ we were supposed to catch, with a private cabin and comfortable bunks, had already left. This was where our trip became a real adventure as we travelled as the poorest Vietnamese would travel – uncomfortably.
The next morning we awoke to a spectacular scenery of sugar cane plantations and white salt flats before arriving in the beach resort of Nha Trang, renowned for its golden stretch of sand and watersports.
The view from the Sheraton Nha Trang which overlooked the sea was stunning and there’s enough going on in the hotel with its pools, cooking classes, leisure centre and beauty spa, to keep everyone entertained.
But a visit to the amazing VinPearl Land water and amusement park is not to be missed. Neither is the journey there on the world’s longest over-sea-chairlift.
sarah o'grady
Sarah, daughter Isabel and Sarah's father Patrick, reunited in Vietnam
It wouldn’t be out of place in a James Bond film. It’s not surprising that we spent the whole day there enjoying the fairground rides, the water slides, the aquarium and shows.
It was spotless, uncrowded and cheap; Alton Towers eat your heart out.
We dined on succulent seafood at the off-the-beaten track restaurant Cay Me and the beachfront Baodai’s Villas. For a more upmarket waterside restaurant we went to the Nha Trang Sailing Club and stayed to listen to the music.
It was also lovely for Isabel to spend time with her grandad. One day he turned up on a moped similar to the ones we’d seen in HCMC where three days earlier Isabel had vowed she would never ride. She pootled off up the Nha Trang coast without so much as a backward glance.
It was just one of the experiences that made our trip feel as much as an adventure as a holiday.