Saigon Players is an Amateur Theatre Group From Saigon. The Group was founded almost six years ago from a core group, mostly expat to create a venue for theatre lovers to meet and exercise the art and share it with those of little experience. The current performance, “Missed Saigon is Back” is the latest in a series of Missed Saigon Performances put on over the past four years at bars, restaurants and schools in Ho Chi Minh City. The show comprises scenes making fun of expat life in Vietnam while showing the greatest respect for our hosts and host country. The performance is about 40 minutes long, black box theatre and as usual, all funds go to charity., this time helping out the Sesame School for Hospitality and their kids.
Ticket prices are 50,000 ea at the door.
01.03.09 Last night, the crew of Vietnam's version of the US television hit, Ugly Betty (here known as "Co Gai Xau Xi" or "Ugly Lady"), held a wrap-up party at Mui Ne's own Forest Restaurant. A few cast members of the wildly popular show were present, including the star, Ngoc Hiep. Visit the Mui Ne Blog to see more photos from the evening.
Lion Dancers, Martial Artists and Traditional Musicians at the Tet opening of Prudential in Phan Thiet Market. Visit The Fish Egg Tree Blog for more photos of Tet in Phan Thiet.
Colored lights and Christmas stars hang overhead in the Catholic neighborhood of Thanh Hai in Phan Thiet.See more Christmas photos and stories on Our Blog.
24.12.08 Singer and pop superstar Ho Quynh Huong is filming a new music video in Ham Tien (Mui Ne). Visit the Mui Ne Blog for more photos from the shoot.
13.12.08 The third annual Vietnam Singer's Day was hosted by Phan Thiet City this week, and brought an extraordinary high-profile live music show to our small fishing town. Singers included My Tam, Quang Dung, Dam Vinh Hung, MTV, Tien Dat, Thanh Thao, Hong Ngoc and Le Hieu. The event raised around 450,000,000 (nearly US$27,000) for government welfare programs in Binh Thuan Province, including the province's Poor Fund and Environmental Protection Fund. Visit the Mui Ne Blog: The Fish Egg Tree to see more photos from the event.
Drummers at the Dinh Thay Thim Festival in La Gi View more photos at the Mui Ne Blog
10.10.08 Thay and Thim were a married couple renowned for both their sorcery as well as their humanitarian deeds toward the surrounding community. In recognition of their deeds, the community of La Gi, in Ham Tan district (1hr and 30mins southwest of Phan Thiet) built a temple about 130 years ago to honor and worship them. The tombs of Thay and Thim are located in a forest named Bau Thong, 3km from the temple. A lunar festival is held yearly (October 12-14 in 2008) to honor them. The following is a schedule of events next week for the Thay Thim Festival.
LOCATION: Tan Tien – La Gi – Binh Thuan
ACTIVITIES:
1.Ceremonial Events and Religious Observance
Sunday 10/12: 05:00am: Nghinh Than Ceremony
11:00am: Nhap Ðien An Vi Ceremony
Monday 10/13: 10:00am: Cung ngo Ceremony
02:00pm: Phat loc Ceremony
Tuesday 10/14: 04:00am: Thinh Sanh Ceremony
08:00am: Tien Hien Ceremony
2.Traditional Events and Group Activities*
Sunday 10/12: 05:00am: Flower Parade with Dragon and Lion Dancing
04:00pm: Fish Carying Contest
07:00pm: Opening Ceremony, Dragon and Lion Dancing
08:30pm: Play: The Thay Thim Legend
Monday 10/13: 08:00am: Sand Dunes Race
08:00pm: Cheo Ba Trao Opera Performance
Many Thanks to Viet Quoc at BTV for providing this schedule.
*Please note that these activities are approximate translations and there may be some errors.
27.09.08 The new year festival of Kate was kicked off tonight at the Thap Poshanu Cham towers in Phu Hai (between Phan Thiet and Mui Ne), with an opening ceremony of rather stale formalities. The main activities of the festival include the "Praying for Peace" ceremony from approximately 4pm to 7pm on Sunday, and then the grand procession and festivities have a finale Monday morning from 8am to 10am. A sort of Cham Olympics will also be held with events around the city of Phan Thiet through October 02. Sadly, the provincial government has not advertised any of this in English, for the benefit of foreign tourists (nor have the details posted in Vietnamese been very helpful either), so it may be necessery to drive around a bit to find the sporting events in town, which include both modern games (football) and traditional Cham competitions. Visit our blog for photos from the larger festival in Phan Rang. Visit HANNO STRAMM'S BLOG for photos from the local festival.
Children Carrying Dragon Fruit Lanterns for the Mid Autumn Festival (Trung Thu)
14.09.08 The Mid Autumn Festival (Trung Thu) in Phan Thiet last night was a tremendous success. The children of Phan Thiet were undaunted by the rain showers at 5pm, and marched proudly through the streets in a grand procession at 6pm. The parade was made up of all the elementary schools around the city, each lead by their own large, lantern floats, with themes representing the city of Phan Thiet. The classes followed the floats, resembling dragons, seahorses, tall ships, tropical fish and the Phan Thiet Tower, and the children each carried smaller, although no less elaborate, lanterns of dragon fruit, stars, fish and wild animals.
Phan Thiet is nationally recognized as the best place in the country to observe the yearly festival, famous for its lantern parades and tasty moon cakes made of coconut, lotus seeds, green beans, candied meats, and of course, a dried duck-egg-yolk at the center to represent the full moon. See more photos at the official MuiNeBeach.net Blog: The Fish Egg Tree.
A Lantern Float Under Construction for the Mid Autumn Festival (Trung Thu)
09.09.08 The Mid Autumn Festival (Trung Thu) will begin on the night of Saturday, September 13 at around 5pm, with a grand parade of floats and lanterns on Nguyen Tat Thanh Street and around the riverside. The festival continues with smaller parades on the night of the 14th in the surrounding villages. Phan Thiet is nationally recognized and awarded as the best place to observe the festival in the entire country due to the size and granduer of the procession.
The Mid Autumn Festival is also known as the Moon Festival, and is a popular Chinese celebration dating back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty. The Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar. The traditional food of this festival is the moon cake, of which there are many different varieties. Cakes usually have at least one dried, salted egg yolk and come with fillings of coconut, yellow or green bean, lotus seed or minced pork. All are sweet. The most popular brand in Vietnam is Kinh Do--and they are also the most expensive. Small cakes start at 25,000VND and are as much as 100,000VND for larger cakes.
The Mid Autumn Festival is one of the most important holidays in the Chinese calendar. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Brightly lit lanterns are often carried around by children.
The Vietnamese version of this holiday is said to have originated in the 8th century, during the reign of Emperor Minh-Hoang. Legend says that the Emperor took his Empress, Duong Quy Pho, to a lake where he read a poem that he had composed to her by the light of the moon.
A more popular version of the holiday recounts the legend of Thang Cuoi, whose banyan tree was uprooted after his wife accidentally urinated on it and took him with it to the moon. Every year, on the mid-autumn festival, children light lanterns to show Cuoi the way to get back to Earth.
See more photos at the official MuiNeBeach.net Blog: The Fish Egg Tree.
One of the Many Dragons That Weaved Through Phan Thiet Streets
22.08.08 The Nghinh Ong Festival closed yesterday with an enormous parade through the city, complete with dragon and lion dancers, acrobats, traditional musicians, stilt walkers, martial artists, countless flags, banners, costumed participants, gong players, drummers and the grand finale--a troupe of 150 people forming a kylin--a mythical beast looking like a cross between a lion and a dragon--and the longest in SouthEast Asia.
The Kylin chases a golden ball at the end of the parade.
Singers Dan Truong (left) and Ho Quynh Huong (right)
The evening was celebrated in the Phan Thiet civic center with a performance from numerous nationally famous singers, including Dan Truong and Ho Quynh Huong. The concert celebrated the cultural diversity of Phan Thiet, with a backdrop of scenes from around the province.
17.08.08 The Nghinh Ong Festival, also knows as the Guan Kung Greeting Celebration, will begin next Tuesday the 19th, in Phan Thiet City.
The festival will last for three days and will remember a Chinese general and warrior-saint honored by the Hoa Chinese community.
The activities will begin at 5am on Tuesday, and will culminate on Thursday morning (7am-ish) with nearly 900 Hoa people (ethnic Chinese) marching through the central streets of the city, such as Nguyen Hue, Tran Hung Dao, Hai Thuong Lan Ong, Nguyen Tri Phuong and Ngo Si Lien. The best spots to observe the festival are usually around the Ca Ty Riverfront downtown.
This year, the festival will also feature royal dances and the masquerade acts of Chinese legends. The celebration will continue with an enormous parade filled with costumed performers, mystical dragon outfits and lion dancers, with the highlight being a performance of the greatest dragon dancers from around the country. The large green dragon, which is the center of the parade, requires more than 50 dancers to animate it, and is believed to be the largest such dragon in the country.
For the occasion, Ong Pagoda (Guan Kung Temple) will be decorated with flower garlands and multi-colored lanterns. People will gather to pray for happiness, health and good fortune for their families and friends.
The festival will also include a Vietnamese-Chinese cuisine fair. The festival is a long-standing tradition of the ethnic Chinese community in Phan Thiet city, but was only held every few years. It was organized by the local government for the first time in 2006 and has since become an even larger, yearly tourism event.
The festival also coincides with the "Cau ngu" or "Lang Ca Ong" Festival for Whale Worship, beginning on Wednesday, August 20, and centered around the Van Thuy Tu Temple on Ngu Ong Street (Fisherman Street, Duc Thang ward, Phan Thiet), which is the oldest temple dedicated to whale worship in Vietnam. Built in 1762, the temple now contains over 100 whale skeletons and other strange species of fish, most of which are 100-150 years old. Most noteworthy is a 22-meter whale skeleton, which is estimated to have weighed 65 tons when alive. The temple was recognized as a national relic site in 1996, although it has not been marketed yet to foreign tourists. Nghinh Ong actually has a double meaning--to the fishermen it is a welcome ceremony associated with the whale spirits they worship, but to the Chinese, it is a welcome and worship of their own deity.
National Day Looming in Phan Thiet
01.09.08 September 2 is Vietnam’s “National Day” state holiday. More popularly celebrated in Hanoi, the day is the anniversary of when Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam on September 2, 1945 at Ba Dinh Square. Later Ho Chi Minh’s tomb was built on the site and has become an important pilgrimage site for many Vietnamese. No official ceremony schedules have been posted, but typically these include music, cultural performances and speeches in celebration of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, and Vietnam’s Communist Party. Expect more traffic around town and occupancy in hotels to be higher.
22.10.07 Truong Thi Ba died last Saturday at the age of 100, at 539 Thu Khoa Huan Street, Thanh Hai Ward, Phan Thiet city. Ba, born in 1907, together with her 105-year-old husband Phan Tan Tro, will be officially recognised tomorrow as the only couple in Viet Nam that have lived beyond 100 years. Binh Thuan Province is reportedly home to five elderly people who will receive special recognition for the new over-100-year-old records.
20.10.07 The 10th meeting of record makers of Vietnam will be held in Phan Thiet on October 23, when nine new national records will be recognised by the Vietnam Record Book Center. The new records include: the largest area devoted to dragon fruit plantations in Vietnam (4,127ha); the largest number of coastal resorts in Vietnam (78 resorts and hotels); the place with the oldest fish sauce factory in Vietnam; the pagoda with the largest wooden bell in Vietnam; the place with the largest Nghing Ong (Whale worship) festival in Vietnam; sand dunes that change their shape most frequently; the first Vietnamese business to grow Spirulina alga; and the longest blue dragon (49m), at Quan De temple. While a number of the records do seem a bit contrived, establishing the officiality of the claims helps to build credibility in advertizing in the tourism industry and international business.
02.08.07 The Cau Ngu Festival began in Phan Thiet on Wednesday and will end on Saturday. In the Cau Ngu ("Fish Prayer") Festival, participants pray to the "big fish" (whale, dolphins, sharks, etc.), asking them not to hinder them in fishing trips during the coming year.
The festival includes the "NGHINH ONG" ("Man Welcome "--or in this case "Fish Welcome"). When a whale or a giant dolphin died and was washed ashore, people gave them an elaborate funeral to welcome the spirit of the fish. Women once cried and went into elaborate mourning to show their respect and venoration for the animals. Their remains are then stored in a local temple.
When participants ‘CAU NGU’, they also ‘NGHINH ONG’ at the same time, with or without any dead fish. The festival demonstrates the duality of both respect and adoration, as well as bondage to fear that is present in many local festivals and religious practices.
In the past fishmen used to tattoo their bodies to scare away whales and sharks when they fall into the water. They also painted their boats with eyes, fins, scales and tails for the same effect.
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Previously, the provincial government has combined the festival with the Chinese "Quan Kong" celebration, which remembers the birthday of a Chinese general and warrior-saint, who is honored by the local ethnic Chinese community. The holiday happends at about the same time, and is an opportunity for the local government to promote an even larger tourism event.
21.07.07 In Phan Thiet City from August 1 to 4, visitors have an opportunity to observe a traditional festival for fishermen called 'Cau Ngu'. Cau Ngu is a local festival, and involves worship of Ong Nam Hai, or the Whale, which is believed to help fishermen. During Cau Ngu, fishermen pray for calm seas, an abundant catch of fish, and peace for all. The celebrations consist of both religious customs and activities for entertainment. In Phan Thiet, the festival is centered at Van Thuy Tu Temple, a national cultural site containing some 100 sets of whale bones, including the largest whale bones in Vietnam. Hundreds of large and small boats will take part in the ceremony of Nghinh Ong, which is the heart of the festival. Fishermen in traditional costumes will parade in their boats, inviting the souls of whales from the ocean to come to Phan Thiet, in order to receive offerings and aid the fishermen in the next year.
The festival will continue with a procession of floating flower garlands and colored lanterns on Ca Ty river. At night, the river will sparkle with some 5,000 lanterns. The festival also includes dragon boat and coracle racing. The best place to observe the festivities is along the riverfront at the Phan Thiet Market downtown. As with any large festival, leave your valuables at your hotel. The festivities draw large crowds from around the province, which makes them a prime opportunity for pick-pockets.
Dragons of Nghinh Ong Rear Heads, Phan Thiet
11.08.06 Residents of Phan Thiet this weekend are celebrating the biennial Nghinh Ong Festival, which will take place between August 11 and 14.
Nghinh Ong is devoted to whale worship and is celebrated at the Ong pagoda by thousands of Chinese and Vietnamese participants. It originated in the Chinese community. People gather to pray for happiness, health and good fortune for family and friends. Ong Pagoda was built to worship Quan Kong in November 1770 (Year of the Tiger), in Duc Nghia Precinct, Phan Thiet City. It has a beautiful Chinese architecture and a statue of Quan Kong as well as an old bell originally cast in Guang Tung (China). On festival days, the pagoda is decorated with flower garlands. Colorful lanterns are hung during the night.
The normal festivities include an enormous parade with costumed performers and dragon, kylin, and lion dances with nearly 20 Chinese clubs from Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Ninh Thuan, Tay Ninh, Long An, Can Tho, and Hue. The highlight is always a performance by a troupe of 150 people forming a kylin--a mythical beast looking like a cross between a lion and a dragon--and the longest in SouthEast Asia.
HCMC’s Tran Huu Trang Theater will also put on cai luong (traditional southern opera) - Luong Son Ba-Chuc Anh Dai, and Thanh Xa-Bach Xa (Green and White Snakes) shows.
This year’s official program (added to by local officials) is scheduled to also include a traditional Chinese fashion show, with Fujian, Hainan, Chaozhou and Guangzhou inspired clothes.
Although celebrated in some other parts of the country, the best place to view the festivities, as with the Mid Autumn festival, is considered to be Phan Thiet. It is truely a unique cultural event and untainted by the modern tourism industry because it is still produced for and by the local community in traditional form.
As with any large gathering of people, it is best to leave your valuables back at the hotel when you visit the parade or other festivities. Gangs of pick-pockets and thieves from other cities and provinces often show up during festivals to take advantage of the crowds (Phan Thiet otherwise has a extremely low crime rate). Take precautions to keep cameras and wallets secure.
10.10.08 Thay and Thim were a married couple renowned for both their sorcery as well as their humanitarian deeds toward the surrounding community. In recognition of their deeds, the community of La Gi, in Ham Tan district (1hr and 30mins southwest of Phan Thiet) built a temple about 130 years ago to honor and worship them. The tombs of Thay and Thim are located in a forest named Bau Thong, 3km from the temple. A lunar festival is held yearly (October 12-14 in 2008) to honor them. The following is a schedule of events next week for the Thay Thim Festival.
27.09.08 The new year festival of Kate was kicked off tonight at the Thap Poshanu Cham towers in Phu Hai (between Phan Thiet and Mui Ne), with an opening ceremony of rather stale formalities. The main activities of the festival include the "Praying for Peace" ceremony from approximately 4pm to 7pm on Sunday, and then the grand procession and festivities have a finale Monday morning from 8am to 10am. A sort of Cham Olympics will also be held with events around the city of Phan Thiet through October 02. Sadly, the provincial government has not advertised any of this in English, for the benefit of foreign tourists (nor have the details posted in Vietnamese been very helpful either), so it may be necessery to drive around a bit to find the sporting events in town, which include both modern games (football) and traditional Cham competitions. 
14.09.08 The Mid Autumn Festival (Trung Thu) in Phan Thiet last night was a tremendous success. The children of Phan Thiet were undaunted by the rain showers at 5pm, and marched proudly through the streets in a grand procession at 6pm. The parade was made up of all the elementary schools around the city, each lead by their own large, lantern floats, with themes representing the city of Phan Thiet. The classes followed the floats, resembling dragons, seahorses, tall ships, tropical fish and the Phan Thiet Tower, and the children each carried smaller, although no less elaborate, lanterns of dragon fruit, stars, fish and wild animals.
09.09.08 The Mid Autumn Festival (Trung Thu) will begin on the night of Saturday, September 13 at around 5pm, with a grand parade of floats and lanterns on Nguyen Tat Thanh Street and around the riverside. The festival continues with smaller parades on the night of the 14th in the surrounding villages. Phan Thiet is nationally recognized and awarded as the best place to observe the festival in the entire country due to the size and granduer of the procession.
The Mid Autumn Festival is one of the most important holidays in the Chinese calendar. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Brightly lit lanterns are often carried around by children. 
This year, the festival will also feature royal dances and the masquerade acts of Chinese legends. The celebration will continue with an enormous parade filled with costumed performers, mystical dragon outfits and lion dancers, with the highlight being a performance of the greatest dragon dancers from around the country. The large green dragon, which is the center of the parade, requires more than 50 dancers to animate it, and is believed to be the largest such dragon in the country.
