Hanoi’s streets are currently dotted with colourful decorations welcoming the fast-approaching Lunar New Year (Tet) festival.

  In front of Vincom Commercial Centre

Along Hang Khay street

At the fountain near Hoan Kiem (Returned Sword) Lake

Along Ba Trieu Street

Ba Trieu Street at night

Along Hang Bai Street

Watching shimmering lights from balcony

2013 is observed as the Year of the Snake

At a corner of Trang Tien Street

Putting the finishing touches to decoration work

Hanoi getting a facelift

VOV

Vietnam’s beauty in the early 20th century was featured through photos taken by several foreign photographers in 1915 and 1916.

The photos included in a collection were taken under sponsorship of Albert Kahn (1860 – 1940) who was a French banker and philanthropist.

Albert Kahn 

In 1909, Kahn travelled with his chauffeur and photographer, Alfred Dutertre to Japan on business and returned with photographs from the journey. This prompted him to begin a project to collect a photographic record from around the world with Vietnam travel guide. Between 1909 and 1931 they collected 72,000 colour photographs and 183,000 meters of film. They form a unique historical record from 50 countries, known as "The Archives of the Planet".

In early 1929 Kahn was still one of the richest men in Europe. Later that year the crash on Wall Street severely reduced his financial empire, and in 1931 he was forced to bring his project to an end.

A century after he launched his “The Archives of the Planet” project, the BBC has restored the it, bringing Kahn's dazzling pictures to a wider audience for the first time in a book named “The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn”.

Photos of Vietnam taken by Albert Kahn’s photographers in 1915 and 1916:

 

Trang Tien Street, Hanoi

 

Hang Thiec Street, Hanoi

 

Hang Gai Street, Hanoi

 

Paul Dummer (Long Bien) Bridge, Hanoi

 

Red River

 

Northern officials in ceremonial costumes

 

Resident Superior in Northern Vietnam besides his wife and four children

 

Village officials in a festival

 

Vietnamese women chewing betel

 

Smoking opium

 

A Chinese women addicted to opium

 

A psychic

 

A calligrapher

 

Small wares vendors

 

Ha Long Bay in 1916

 

Halong Bay in 1915

Source.vietnamtourism.org.vn

 

Ok-Om-Bok ceremony, one of the Khmer people’s three biggest festivals, lured thousands of people from some provinces gathered in Tra Vinh City’s Ao Ba Om area. The ceremony was held on the evening of November.
Khmer ethnic minority Ok-Om-Bok ceremony  attracted thousands of people from several locations gathered in Tra Vinh City’s Ao Ba Om area on the evening of November 28.

Ok-Om-Bok Ceremony

Despite the Khmer traditional ceremony only, attendants from other ethnic groups paid attention to the celebrations.
The ceremony started at 8pm but people arrived at the festival site from early afternoon. The Ok-Om-Bok ceremony or Le Cung Trang worships the moon. It is often held on the 15th day of lunar October annually. This is one the Khmer people’s three biggest festivals.
People hold the ceremony to pay tribute to the moon for their harvests and good forthcoming crops.
If tourists in Vietnam travel come to this area on the occasion of ceremony will have chance to take part in this interesting event. You will understand about one of the annually biggest festivals of the Khmer people.

Followings are some wonderful photos taken from the ceremony:

Sparkling Ao Ba Om

The moon adds to the beauty of Ao Ba Om

Khmer dancing

A girl portrays the moon

People are paying the tribute to the moon

Feeding the little boy with the hope of a new abundant crop

Vietnam is famous for wet rice civilization. The beauty of Vietnamese people are outstanding in their harvest time. Let take a look at the process of planning and harvesting to discover one of the hidden charm of our country.

Planning rice

Vietnamese women are cutting rice

The smile in harvesting time

Carrying rice

Carrying rice to home

There are 54 different groups of people living in Vietnam, the majority of the population are the Viet people.  Of the 78 million people living in the country, 85 percent are what we refer to as Vietnamese.

They live primarily in the lowlands of Vietnam. Three-quarters of the population of Vietnam live in rural villages. A vast majority of the citizens are rice farmers, and live in the lowlands where there is fertile, easily irrigated soil. Where the ancestors of the Viet people came from is not completely known. They were probably farmers that moved gradually into the northern part of Vietnam from China, and slowly moved south, pushing other native people like the Champa out or up into the mountains as they migrated along the coast.

One of the larger minority groups in Vietnam are the Chinese. They immigrated to the lowlands of Vietnam during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Before the war between North and South Vietnam, they were involved in foreign and rice trade, and remained somewhat independent from the Vietnamese people. Later, however; new laws and regulations forced most to abandon their ways of life, and many fled the country.

Two other minorities living in the lowlands include the Cham and the Khmer. The Cham are descendants of the Champa kingdom that existed along the central coast for thousands of years. Now there are only about 50,000 of their people left living as fishermen and farmers in scattered villages along the coast. The Khmer, of Cambodian decent, live and have lived for a long time in the swampy Mekong Delta, south of Ho Chi Minh City. They are more numerous than the Cham people. mountain girl

The other residents of Vietnam live in the mountainous regions of the country. They, as a group, are commonly called the Montagnards. In the northern mountains, along the Chinese border, live tribes that have migrated there in the last several centuries. Some of the more common of these include the Tai, Nung, Meo, Yao, Muong, and the Tay. The Tay are by far the most numerous of the northern people. To the south, in the central highlands, are the Rhade and the Jarai peoples. They are descendants of nomads who came to the central coast in the third or second millennia BC, and have since been pushed up into the highlands. Now they live mainly by slash and burn agriculture. For centuries, the mountain people lived in isolation and were suspicious of lowlanders. They maintained only limited communication and trade with the Vietnamese. In the last fifty or so years, the Vietnamese have tried both peacefully and forcefully to integrate them into their society, and they have found themselves in the middle of several wars. Now the Vietnamese government is implementing programs to improve and develop communities, bring lowland Vietnamese people into the mountains, and educate the children of these Montagnards, while still allowing them to maintain their heritage.