The Artists’ Village

I tried to find the artists' village a few years ago and failed miserably. When I was new to Saigon, a durable expat had told me about a place he had once been taken to, where a group of artists lived in traditional wooden houses.

My research to find this exciting-sounding place started with an online search. With no keywords and scant information to feed into the computer, the search engine yielded very little. But persistence and the algorithms on that day blessed me. My fortune came in the form of an obscure post on a traveller’s personal blog. I got an address. That led to a phone number. That led to an invitation, from a person who said she was the artist’s daughter, to visit on Sunday at 2pm.

My Ho Chi Minh City map wasn’t big enough to cover the southern part of District 2, so I drew my own map to take with me. After an hour of hunting down street names, going up and down the same road repeatedly and reading the blank faces of the people we asked for directions, I called the number to ask the painter’s daughter for help. No answer. Landline? No answer. I kept trying. We’d made an appointment confirming the time, so why was no one at home? No answer.

I gave up after another unsuccessful hour. I went home disappointed, but didn’t think much about the place ever again. Maybe once a year it would come up in conversation, and some other expat would have heard about it. I would usually shoot them down.

In Steps Fate

One day, editor Nick and I got to talking about the mythical village. Nick had seen it and remembered the road it was on. The algorithms that live in the net blessed him with a location about 3km from the one I had looked for. And his was empirically tested and proven in analogue, on a bike.

Armed with this new information, I found Ham Long village. It’s not really a village, but it might be one day, if the artists that live in these neighbouring houses lapped by the Saigon River get a business plan together. And maybe an online presence.

At the moment, one artist, Ly Khac Nhu, invites visitors to his gardened art galleries. I couldn’t imagine anyone stumbling upon this art venue. It’s halfway between the Phu My Bridge and Diamond Island. Location is instrumental to business success, so how had his shop ticked for over 10 years? The tours. Apparently those groups of tourists who religiously follow their guide know something we expat residents don’t know about Ho Chi Minh City. They also have the advantage of being boated directly to Ly Khac Nhu’s riverside garden.

I go there by road, on a rainy day drenched in swear words. After an hour-long drive, I curl under my umbrella into the first wooden house I saw, where the amount of mot-hai-ba-yo-ing suggests a homage to the recently deceased general Vo Nguyen Giap might be going on. I’m politely shooed away, but in full detective mode. Two doors down, a wide open gate and the number 35 invites me into a soggy garden. This is it.

The Gates of Purgatory

Trunks axe into animal shapes and ceramic sculptures with facial expressions are everywhere. The houses with trees all around could well be the examples of traditional Vietnamese architecture, the sort I’ve been led to expect by the person who first told me about this hidden place.
A man arrives minutes after I do. With his raincoat still on, he doesn’t seem at all surprised to see a stranger walking around his patio, unannounced, looking at the artwork. He switches the lights on and answers a few questions, but he tires quickly and disappears, and sends over a young woman to repeat the same answers, but not to expand on the details.

I still don’t know why a pond that was singled out as being ‘northern style’ was characteristically northern. It’s a green pond with lotus plants in ceramic vases. Afterwards, I make enquiries, but am none the wiser.

The pond patters away under the raindrops. Under wooden columns and straw clay walls, I peer at paintings. This northern-style porch shelters an open air gallery of unremarkable artworks, mostly lacquer or ceramic pieces. The house stops looking rustic once you go inside. Bright fluorescent lights shine on white walls, washed by terrible leaks that stream rain down to puddles on the floor. The leaks drip over many artworks. Fortunately, Vietnamese lacquer is resilient — it’s used in furniture precisely because it can protect wood from water damage.

Surrounded by a number of amateur or otherwise nondescript paintings, my gaze suddenly lands on a large lacquer of a fierce figure in a distinctively rough style. It’s indeed a Le Kinh Tai, and the price tag of VND210 million reflects the artist’s reputation.

A No-Frills Tour

The next house in the precinct is designed in Hue style, except for the antique wooden doors, which owner Ly Khac Nhu brought in from China as a symbol of his heritage. The tiled roof on this small building is better able to minimise the leaks than the palm leaves of the northern style house. But the humidity is there to stay.

The galleries inside have some splendid furniture, from Chinese cabinets with mother of pearl intarsia, to three-legged art deco chairs. But none of it is for sale. The paintings are the only items that the solitary girl looks eager to part with, at prices starting in the millions of VND.
Unfortunately, there is no information on the works, and sometimes the name of the artist can’t be found. The wide range of quality, subject matter and style and the unfathomable age of some paintings (the bad conservation probably makes some artworks look much older than they are) make the whole place a bit suspect. In another country, this would be a car boot sale.

A third house in the complex is a Tay Nguyen style house with a sloping thatched roof and a lake all to itself. It’s an appropriate home to over 20 sculptures made by different ethnic minorities, the personal collection of Mr. Nhu.

By the river, bamboo curtains shade the solid chairs and tables where the paying guests who arrived by boat enjoy tea or coffee and a spectacular view. The rest of us are not offered such pleasantries, so I scurry along with my umbrella to the lacquer studio.

The owner of this house — who’s not Mr. Nhu, and doesn’t have his taste in art — pats silver leaf onto lacquer boards. It’s a mini-factory of tourist souvenirs: small, portable lacquer paintings of any image a teenager might produce.

The artists’ village is a good idea that is poorly developed. The venue is wonderful, the journey by road long and some of the artwork, quite awful. If you decide to go, take your own refreshments because the nearest source is not exactly within walking distance.

                                                                                         By Cristina Nualart

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The address is 35 Thich Mat The, Thanh My Loi, Q2, Ho Chi Minh City. But don’t trust Google Maps

The Slow Train to Lang Son

Set on the border amidst dramatic limestone karsts, Lang Son is often relegated to the status of border town. It’s anything but. Julie Vola retraces some well-worn train tracks to the outer reaches of northern Vietnam

Saturday, 5.30am, I am in Gia Lam train station. I follow the controllers and porters pushing my bike in the darkness of the night. We need four people to lift the bike onto the train.

5.50am and Anh is late — the train leaves in 10 minutes. The controller knows I have two train tickets, we try to communicate, I call her and they talk, she jumps on someone’s motorbike, the controller goes to her, they are running. I am already on the last wagon, the train is going to leave. They jump in, as the train starts moving.

6am. We sit down in a booth, the seats in our coach are hard wood. It’s still dark outside and very cold. The windows covered in a wire mesh are closed. I am hoping to find a seat without the wire mesh-covered windows, but the train is already pretty full and there aren’t any options for the moment. Anh starts pulling out some bread, condensed milk and popcorn to share for our breakfast. In my bag I only have a clean pair of underwear, three lenses, two cameras, a notebook and some money. I buy two bottles of water. Looking out the window through the mesh, the sun rises slowly as we leave Hanoi’s suburbs.

In April 1895 my great-great-grandfather Vézin was awarded the contract from the French administration to build a railroad from Phu Lang Thuong (56km from Hanoi) to Lang Son. His daughter married the son of an engineer, whose surname was Vola. My grandfather was born and raised in Hanoi until he returned to France to study medicine. He came back in 1951 as a chief surgeon and served three years at Quang Tri Hospital, 67km north of Hue. After he passed away my family rediscovered photo albums from the colonial era.

Sitting on this train I am retracing the steps, or more aptly, the tracks of my great-great-grandfather. During my time in Vietnam I’ve talked about him a lot. Too much. Yet I still feel nostalgic. There is an odd fascination with the train to Lang Son, the legacy of my ancestors.

The Border

The train ride is photographic eye candy: the light, the contrast, the people. After breakfast I pull the camera out of my bag. Our neighbours, who are already looking at me with stupefaction, are starting to ask questions. Anh is a great companion and she answers them all for me. I decide to take a stroll to other wagons to find a mesh-free window to take pictures of the scenery we are travelling through. We stop at every station and more people and goods fill the train. It’s cold, people sleep, talk, eat and occupy themselves. Time goes by slowly and we relax.
There is a certain sadness to the countryside we are passing through. The colours of the winter landscapes are muted with earthy dark green and brown intermixed with shades of grey. There are a few patches of brightness, some vegetable gardens along the tracks or some colourful jackets that catch my eye, but everywhere the gloom remains.

Once we arrive in the border village of Dong Dang, just 10km north of Lang Son, we are overwhelmed by all the porters and the goods being loaded on the train for China. The province of Lang Son is the city gateway to Trung Quoc or the Middle Country, as Vietnam refers to their northern neighbour. Anh’s family lives in Dong Dang. So we stop by to visit them and I get my first taste of the delicious honey roasted pork that Lang Son is famed for — thit lon quay. Since we are so close to the border we pay a quick visit. Anh negotiates with the armed guards — I am able to take photos. There are a few electric carts for people with luggage, but most people crossing the border by foot pull their suitcase behind them. I have a photo of the border gate at the time of Vézin and I was hoping to see it there. From the distance we thought maybe there was something to see on the Chinese side, but I guess we went to the wrong border gate. There are about five or six border gates in Lang Son Province.

The Citadel

By the time we arrive in Lang Son, it is well into the afternoon. We meet up with Xuan, an English teaching assistant, and the three of us head to the Mac Dynasty Citadel before the light disappears. It’s Saturday and the place is full of groups finishing their picnics, leaving their trash lying in their wake. They sing and laugh as loud as they are drinking. The main area is surrounded by four karstic limestone hills, which offer a great view of Lang Son. On the right side you can access what remains of the old citadel.

Nguyen Dinh Long, who has been working here for seven years as a security guard, tells me the citadel was built in the 16th century by a king from the Mac Dynasty to establish his power in the region over the Le Dynasty. It was destroyed over time by war and conflict, but he tells me most of the place was still standing when the French left. In 1962 the citadel was established as a national vestige to help protect it. Only two walls remain. While the north gate was renovated in 2010, the south gate has been reclaimed by nature.

After that the priority for me is to get hold of a pair of motorbike gloves I spotted earlier. They have a hole next to the index finger so you can put your motorbike handle bar inside. They’re waterproof and lined with warm synthetic fur, perfect for the way back to Hanoi. Next winter someone will have to introduce these to the capital.

Xuan has to leave and drops us at Bac Son, famed for its Lang Son specialties: pho chua (sweet and sour pho), roasted pork and roasted duck. It’s around 5.30pm and I am exhausted.

The Lake and the Cave

Sunday morning. Maybe because it’s so cold in the room, we wake up a bit late and have a very slow start. We go back to Bac Son, buy some pho chua and then head to the cafe next to the New Dynasty Restaurant situated on a small island in the lake. With a great view of the lake and the surrounding karstic hills, the spot is the perfect visual complement to our breakfast.

I am busy preparing the food for a photo shoot while Anh is already eating hers. Pho chua is a complex dish with many ingredients — vegetables finely chopped, pork marinated in oyster sauce, pho noodles, roasted peanuts and onions, aromatic herbs and sesame seeds. But the best part is the cold soup, made sour with vinegar, sugar, tomatoes, ginger, garlic and herbs. It’s a fine balance between dry and wet, Vietnamese and Chinese. It’s perfect and I wonder where I can find it in Hanoi.

I take a small tour around the lake — it’s my favourite spot in the city — but I linger too long and when I am back at the cafe it’s already late. We only have time to check out Tam Thanh Cave.

It’s the bigger of the two caves to visit and is busy; people are gathering around the lotus flower basin trying to catch a drop of lucky water from the ceiling. Anh is waiting for her turn, and when she finally gets to hold out her hand the drop of water just happens.

Back to Hanoi

It’s time to get on the road back to Hanoi, 160km due south. With nobody else on the road, we get on my bike, put on some music and share the headphones. About 15km from Lang Son and for around the next 45km, we go through a beautiful landscape of rice paddies and karstic mountains. It slows us down as I have to stop to capture the scenery with my camera. The rest of the road trip is tiring, especially the last 50km that slowly replaces the idyllic natural landscape with one more befitting of an urbanised industrial nation. I am glad to arrive back in the capital.

There is a great potential to see beauty in Lang Son, you just need to go in the right season — the weather while I am there is overcast and the area is covered in a low mist. The city is often dismissed as a border town and does not have a reputation that attracts tourists. Lonely Planet writes that most visitors just pass through to cross the border to China. And while Lang Son was mostly destroyed in 1979 during the Sino-Vietnamese war; the city of old is visible at the market. The pursuit of economic prosperity has begun to mend the wounds between this forgotten border town and its neighbours to the north.

As for my ancestors, it’s the train that matters, the tracks that they built to connect Hanoi with the border. Lang Son has its own very separate history, rich with stories of dynasties, citadels, economic development and war. It’s a history that, despite undergoing so much destruction, somehow remains very much alive.

                                                               By Julie Vola

Con Dao Islands home to turtles, crabs and a multitude of sea life

Underwater beauty: Con Dao Islands also have beautiful coral reefs and thousands of fish.

by Hai Chau

With their pristine seas, the Con Dao Islands are home to a large number of sea turtles. Every year, between April and November, their breeding season, thousands of turtles crawl ashore to lay eggs in the sand, providing a fascinating experience for visitors to the beautiful island.

It took us nearly one hour to travel to Bay Canh Island from Con Son Island by boat. It was nearly 4pm, and the tide had already ebbed away, leaving behind rugged rock-tops emerging above the transparent water.

After the boat had anchored by the Bo Dap beach, some visitors scuba dived while others transported the luggage and food to the canoe to continue moving onwards to the Con Dao National Park.

As soon as our canoe reached the park, we were warmly welcomed by a forest warden who carefully helped us to step ashore.

The two sides of the small path leading to the park were covered with thick mangrove forests which looked so primitive and seemed to offer no access to humans. At times, there were pleasing sounds made by small insects from nearby trees.

It had started to get dark, and the winds got stronger, imbued with the taste of the sea. There was no electricity, and the only light we had came from our tiny electric torches and the moon shining above.

Leading us around thousands of sea turtles' nests, Le Hong Doan, the head of the forest management on Bay Canh Island, said, "Sea turtles often lay about 100 eggs at a time, each of which will take from 45 to 60 days to hatch."

He pointed at the holes marked with boards, from which hundreds of tiny sea turtles were crawling out.

Curious: Tourists anxiously wait for the first egg.

"They can return to the sea tonight," he continued.

If tortoises can protect themselves by retracting their head into their shell, sea turtles can only try to swim as fast as they can to escape from their enemies. In addition, they are also frightened by light and noise, so only after dark and after the tide has risen will they start to find a place to lay eggs.

Therefore, after finishing dinner prepared by the forest wardens, we were led to the mangrove forest to see the blue land crab, a rare kind of crab in Viet Nam. Like sea turtles, they are also afraid of humans, so they instantly hide on hearing approaching human steps.

After half an hour of seeking out crabs unsuccessfully, we had to give up and lie on the hammocks, waiting till midnight when the sea turtles started to lay eggs.

Fifteen minutes later, a forest warden shouted in excitement, "I have found blue land crabs! Let's go and see!"

Holding a 1kg crab which kept wriggling in his hands, he said, "Blue land crabs crawl fast and hide very carefully. So it is very difficult to find them. The number of these kinds of crabs is very small, therefore we are building a plan to preserve them in the future."

After seeing the rare crabs, everybody moved to the beach to wait for the turtles. It was nearly 11pm but there seemed no trace of any commotion that crabs create. The sea at night was so silent, except for the sounds of the waves that sometimes struck ashore.

At about 12pm, by following the big footprints in the sand, we approached the position where a turtle was digging a hole to prepare to lay eggs.

Digging deep: A sea turtle digs with its flippers to create a nest for dozens of eggs, which it lays at night. — Photos dantri.vn

"She is making a very deep hole to protect her eggs," explained the forest warden while shining his electric torch at the back of the turtle.

Shortly afterwards, each tiny egg, as small as a ping-pong ball, started to fall into the hole. Everyone was very excited and curious to see such a rare and interesting scene. The result of that night was 87 eggs laid by the 200kg sea turtle.

After giving birth successfully, the mother turtle quickly used her two rear legs to cover the hole with sand and moved to the sea.

Noting down the details about the size the mother turtle's shell, the forest warden started to dig the hole in which the turtle had just given birth to check the quality of the eggs.

"This mother turtle laid fewer eggs than usual, because each turtle is expected to have more than 100 eggs, 80 or 85 per cent of which will be hatchable," he said, while quickly moving the eggs into a net.

The eggs looked so cute that we could not resist asking for the forest warden's permission to hold and gaze at them in our hands.

He also enthusiastically showed us how to examine the eggs properly and provided us with important information about two popular kinds of sea turtles in the area.

According to the board of management of Con Dao National Park, the eggs are moved to a higher position in order to prevent sea water from spoiling them. Additionally, the direct interference of the hatching temperature will decide the sex of the baby turtles, which helps in balancing the male to female ratio.

The movement also plays a very important role in preserving such precious sea animals, whose babies only have 1/1,000 or even 1/10,000 chance of survival.

Not only learning about the process of giving birth and development of sea turtles, we also had a chance to release the baby turtles into the sea ourselves.

Three of us held a basket which contained hundreds of baby turtles and moved towards the sea. As soon as they landed on the sand, the turtles immediately swam away in the silent night, riding along the white frothy sea waves.

What an interesting lesson we had learnt about nature, precious sea animals' preservation and environment protection.                                                                                                                                              — VNS

In pictures: Dai Yem waterfalls in Moc Chau

VietNamNet Bridge – The waterfall of Dai Yem (Pink Blouse), also known as Nang or Ban Vat, is located in Muong Sang Commune in Moc Chau District in Son La Province.

If you visit Moc Chau town, you will have opportunities to watch the magical beauty which nature has granted to this area, and live in a primeval scene of the early days of life on earth.

Dai Yem waterfall is a historical landscape, which is closely related to the history of Thai people in Muon Sang land a long time ago. The name Dai Yem is derived from a story about the brassiere of the girl who saved a boy from the flood.

The Vat spring which flows to the waterfall has a length of about 5km. Water fills the spring year round. When it flows to this part, the spring is blocked by a limestone wall, and the water is stagnant and flows back to the lower bank. Bo Sap is a large spring, which derives from Bo Sap village near the border of Vietnam and Laos in Yen Chau land.

Back to the upstream of the spring, tourists can reach the first waterfall. The internal parts of the spring have many small and medium rocks with various strange shapes. In the rainy season (April to September), the entire 70m width is a white curtain flowing to the river, a poetic scene. The second waterfall has only one line from a height of 50m. Many trees at the top of the waterfall create a grand landscape.

The waterfall includes two levels of falls with the second located 150 meters at an angle below the first one. Above the second waterfall is a floral stretch of land from where visitors can view the surrounding mountainous view.

The Dai Yem Waterfall looks most stunning during the rainy season from April to September every year, when the 70-meter-wide fall gushes down its slope, looking a dazzling white and imposingly dramatic and poetic.

Some pictures of the waterfall:

Along the way from the town of Moc Chau to Dai Yem waterfall, you will see many beautiful scenes, friendly smiles of the locals and feel the breath of spring everywhere.   Dai Yem waterfall is created by the two streams of Vat and Bo Sap.   The waterfall is associated with the legend about the pink blouse of a girl that saved a boy from the floodwaters.   The waterfall has a height of 100 m, divided into two branches. One branch has up to nine floors (standing for nine steps of love in the legend) and another five floors.   The two branches are located about 200 meters from each other. Between the two branches is flat ground, favourable for visitors to take photos.   The waterfall is at its most beautiful in April or October.

Baking pizza at the foot of Lang Biang

 – American James Reelick, 54, loves Da Lat so much that he settled there, started to help out in the tourism sector and even ended up marrying a local woman. He spoke with Ha Nguyen about his impressions of the lush, mountainous area.

When and why did you settle in Da Lat?

In 2007, I was visiting Da Lat, trying to conquer Lang Biang Mountain. The fresh climate and beautiful landscape of the place left a lasting effect on me. The good economic potential of the place did not go unnoticed either.

What did your parents (family) say when you decided to settle in Lang Biang?

My parents were very supportive of my decision to move. My father was an immigrant from the Netherlands. He migrated to the US in 1956. He met my mother in Connecticut. My parents first introduced me to travelling when I was 7 years old. Along with my younger sister and brother, we returned to my father's home country, the Netherlands, for vacation. I had the first taste of foreign foods and smells and different cultures on that trip. I have been travelling ever since. My mother and sister have come to visit me in Viet Nam, and they truly enjoyed their experiences here. I have two daughters who live in the US: Elizabeth Grace Reelick, 26, and Lauren Jennifer Reelick, 25. Elizabeth has visited me and I am hoping that Lauren will also be able to come in the near future.

Have you travelled around Da Lat and Lang Biang?

Yes, I have travelled extensively in this area, on foot and on motorbikes. I am an avid hiker, so Lang Biang is the perfect place for me to live. I live and work/own a K'BE wood fired pizza and BBQ at the foot of Lang Biang. Most weeks we go hiking on Lang Biang or Bi Doup - Nui Ba Mountain and surrounding areas. The landscape here is breathtaking; pine forests, streams, rivers, mountains, vegetable gardens, birds, horses, and wild buffalo. There are many mountain roads that are very rarely travelled, so it is possible that you will not see many people, if that is what you like. I live amongst the K'Ho Lach people who are very familiar with forests. It has been my pleasure to camp and hike with village leader Krajan Plin and eco-tourism mountain guide Vang Mull.

Have you met any difficulties while staying in Lang Biang?

No, I have not met any difficulties living in Lang Biang. The Vietnamese and K'Ho people are very generous with their time and knowledge and are very accepting of me living amongst them.

How does your wife, Nguyen Thi Lien, help you? Does she help with cooking and processing food?

We married in March 2013 and soon after our baby was born. We applied for a marriage licence with the government in November 2012. Yes, she supports me very much. She is a partner in my business. She does much of the cooking and food preparations. Without her I would not be successful.

Inner Sanctum: We've heard that you supply pizza and other foods to serve travellers. Could you tell us how you make pizza and other foods? Where do you buy the material for making pizzas?

Yes, we serve both domestic as well as foreign travellers. Pizza is very easy to make and most people can make pizza at home. It is a combination of flour, yeast, water, and salt. It takes about a day to prepare the dough. We also prepare BBQ pork ribs and roasted chicken. My wife Lien also makes very fine salads using local ingredients. We try to source all ingredients locally. This area is famous for its fresh vegetables. However, we are very concerned about the use of chemicals in vegetable cultivation, so we look to farmers who grow them with minimum or no chemicals. Consuming organically grown vegetables is the path to good health. Many of the vegetables we use come from our own gardens.

How is your pizza different from others?

The main difference is that we use a wood-fired oven, meaning we use wood for fuel instead of gas or electricity. We use coffee wood as our fuel. Coffee wood is very hard and burns very hot. Our oven needs to maintain a temperature of 250oC. We use coffee wood for another reason: we do not want to cut trees in forests. We are very concerned about the environment and do not want to destroy forests. The coffee trees must be cut every 10 years to rejuvenate the tree, so it makes sense to use this wood instead of cutting trees in forests. We also only make one type of pizza, a traditional variety that originated in Naples, Italy. It has tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, oven-roasted tomatoes (to bring out the real flavour of the fruit), basil (we grow in our garden), and herb Provence (a special spice from France). I built the oven myself, in traditional Italian fashion.

How much does your pizza cost?

Our pizza costs VND125,000 (US$6). Although we sell more of it during peak tourism seasons, we make them available throughout the year.

How well do travellers enjoy your pizza and other foods?

Some of our guests have said that our pizza is the best they have ever eaten. Our BBQ ribs are a favourite item because of their true wood-fire flavour and the tenderness of the meat. We only select pork ribs with high fat content, so our meat is always juicy. Roasted chicken is also "finger licking good", our guests have said. We slow roast our chicken for 1 hour and 20 minutes. We buy our chicken from local poultry farmers who only kill the "walking chicken" after we place our order and then deliver them within 10 minutes. Lien then cleans the meat and seasons it with honey and spices and wraps it in aluminium foil and transfers it to the oven.

I cannot quote most of our guests because I do not speak Vietnamese so well, but we have many repeat customers and they come from as far away as HCM City. We had one guest who left HCM City at 4 in the morning so they could eat our ribs at 11am and then return home. Another guest was brought here by her son who lives in Da Lat. She liked our ribs so much that she took 2 kilos of ribs for her other son who lives in HCM City that afternoon on an airplane.

What other things have you done to attract tourists and travellers?

I have rented three properties here in Lang Biang. One we run as K'BE wood fired pizza and BBQ. I allow my friend Robert Moorehead, an Australian photographer, to run another one as a photo gallery that displays the pictures of ethnic people. The third place is the future home of a Viet Nam Base Camp; here we have built two ethnic bamboo houses and an ethnic long house. Here, tourists can get a glimpse of traditional ethnic homes. We will conduct hikes in the surrounding countryside. I also work with a K'Ho coffee producer who grows Arabica coffee. The site is 2km from our location, so tourists can go and sample coffee and see how it is roasted. I also work with the famous village leader, Krajan Plin, who also plays the cong chieng (gongs), so people can also watch traditional shows.

How do you plan to promote sales and tourism this year and the next?

I'll continue working with local vendors to enhance the experience of travellers coming to Da Lat, especially the Lang Biang area.

                                                                                                      

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Pictures: Hai Hoa Beach Fish Market early morning visit

Tourists say it’s one of the most interesting markets in the world, whether you arrive early in the morning to get the best choices or later in the morning for a look around and breakfast.

The market is located at the Hai Hoa Commune, Tinh Gia district, Thanh Hoa province around 200km south of Hanoi on the banks of the East Sea.

Open early May to late August, it’s one of Vietnam’s top fish markets – and with good reason.

Some photos:

Tourists come to experience the daily life of fishermen The market opens at 5 am Lots of fresh seafood  A wide variety of shrimp, squid, and crab are inexpensively priced

The Old Houses of Duong Lam

Where people are hospitable, there’s no need to confine your urban exploits to abandoned houses. David Mann (words), Julie Vola(photos) and Mai Thu Trang (translation) found such people in Duong Lam, householders of some of the oldest houses in Vietnam