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Thirty-five years after Saigon changed it name, Ho Chi Minh City is a busy, modern metropolis. Rob Whitworth produced this time-lapse video.
Everyone who has visited Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam knows part of the magic (love it or hate it) is in the traffic. Ever since I first set foot in HCMC I have been captivated by the cities energy. Saigon is a city on the move unlike anything I have experienced before which I wanted to capture and share.
The music is “Mondo ’77″ by Looper. -via Arbroath
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Earlier this month was National Sisters Day, which got me thinking about famous sibling duos. I thought it would be fun to share a list of the most famous of these sister pairings, but to be fair, there are so many famous pairs of sisters out there that it would be impossible to list them all. That’s why I’ve decided to leave out most of the contemporary examples you’re probably already familiar with, like Paris and Nikki Hilton and Venus and Serena Williams. I’ve also left out all of the popular sister singing groups from the last hundred years because there are so darn many of them between the Pointer Sisters, The Andrews Sisters and the gals from Heart.
That being said, here are some sisters who impacted history.
These not-so-attractive ladies are probably some of the earliest examples of famous sister groups, even if they aren’t exactly real. The Graeae were three ancient goddesses from Greek mythology who shared one eye and one tooth amongst the group. While they were actually archaic goddesses, when they interacted with humans, they usually took the form of old witches.
Perseus stole the eye of the witches when they were passing it amongst themselves and used it to force the Graeae to tell him where the three objects he needed to kill Medusa were hidden. Thus, the Graeae were instrumental in the killing of Medusa, who was one of their sisters. Even if these siblings aren’t real, the story has been so long-lasting that it’s hard to imagine it not having any impact on European history to some extent.
Around the same time that tales of Jesus were starting to be spread through the Middle East, two Vietnamese sisters were kicking butt, leading a revolt against the Chinese oppression of their country.
It all started when Trung Trac fell in love and married a man named Thi Sach. The Chinese rulers of Vietnam were making assimilation into their way of life mandatory and when Thi Sach took a stand against the repression of his culture, he was executed. His death was supposed to be a warning against all those who would consider rebelling, but instead it spurred his wife and sister-in-law, Trung Nhi, to take up his cause and fight against the Chinese.
The two sisters were raised learning martial arts and studying the art of warfare, so when it was time to start a rebellion, they were ready. In 39 AD, the two women repelled a small Chinese unit from their village and started to assemble a large army of rebels –mostly women according to popular legends. Within a few months, they already had taken back over 60 citadels from the Chinese and had liberated the kingdom of Nam Viet. The two were named as queens of their free country and they were able to keep the territory free from the Chinese for over two years.
more …
This somewhat frightening video allegedly shows a man trying to cross a busy street in Vietnam. Timing is everything, and there are no save points partway, nor extra lives. -via Blame It on the Voices
This snake takes a pretty picture! The Ruby-Eyed Green Pit Viper (Cryptelytrops rubeus) is a newly-discovered species that lives near Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and in Cambodia. National Geographic has more picture of the snake, including its attempt to eat an entire frog that’s as big as the snake. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
(Image credit: Jeremy Holden)
Photo: LiiPo Ching/Mercury News
Forget luxurious shampoos, relaxing shaves, and facial treatments at spas. These beauty treatments don’t come close to the Vietnamese art of ear picking:
"It brings a lot of happiness," said Silicon Valley resident Nguyen Tuong Tam, who always heads to a hot toc upon arriving in this city, also known as Saigon. He likens a good ear picking to good sex. Indeed, fans of ear picking gleefully talk about "ear-gasms."
There is a spot near the ear drum that, when touched the right way, "tingles," said 26-year-old ear picker Nguyen Thi Le Hang. "For one person, it may just be a tickle. For another person, it’s a mind-blowing experience."
In fact, the ear has a G-spot, said Dr. Todd Dray, an ear, nose and throat surgeon at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center-Santa Clara. "The skin in your ear is super thin — it’s paper thin," he said. "It’s very sensitive. And there are a lot of nerves that converge in the ear."
Photographer Catherine Karnow went to Vietnam in 1990 to photograph scenes from that country as it was just opening up to visitors from the west. She spent days on a train traveling toward the mountains of central Vietnam.
I came upon a young mother with her children. My translator friend was not with me, so I had to gesture my request for permission to photograph her. She nodded smiling. As the train started to pick up speed as it descended the mountain, we finally felt the first breeze in days. I leaned way out the window to get the right angle, and we were all laughing, feeling the joy of the freefall. Afterwards I gave the children a box of crayons and promised to send photos to the mom.
Somehow I lost her address and was never able to send her any of the photos. One especially exuberant shot became quite a famous image. It is published all the time, and has even been on the Lonely Planet Guide to Vietnam for years. I’ve always wondered what happened to that beautiful woman and her children and wished I could share the success of the photo with her.
All these years later, we have Facebook with which to find old friends. Read how Karnow reconnected with the woman she photographed twenty years earlier at National Geographic Traveler. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
(Image credit: Catherine Karnow)
Hang Ken, a cave rediscovered in Vietnam last year, may be the largest in the world:
Surrounded by jungle and used in the Vietnam war as a hideout from American bombardments, it is so large that it could hold a block of 40-storey skyscrapers. Its entrance was only rediscovered last year.
The photograph was taken by a British expedition returning to the rugged Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park near the border with Laos.
The cave, lit from above through a skylight, is one of a network of some 150 connected caverns, many still not surveyed, in the Annamite mountains.
Story Link and Slideshow via Super Punch | Photo: National Geographic/Carsten Peter
See that little bitty guy in the center, with the light shining from his helmet? Yeah, it’s hard to see one man in a cave chamber that big -but we have a bigger version of the picture to help you out. National Geographic is covering an expedition to Vietnam last year that unearthed what may be the world’s largest cave -Son Doong, hidden in the thick jungle but big enough to stuff cities inside! There’s a television special, and a full article about Son Doong in the January issue of National Geographic Magazine. AND best of all, Neatorama has a collection of gorgeous photographs of the cave and its surroundings on our Spotlight Blog, courtesy of our friends at National Geographic. Link
(Photo Credit: © Carsten Peter/National Geographic)
Food and beverage websites argue about the best beers in the world, and we sometimes see a brew hailed as the most expensive in the world. Have you ever wondered which is the cheapest beer in the world?
Bia Hoi, most commonly found in Hanoi, is the most budget-friendly brew on the planet. Commonly described as having the appearance and flavor of Bud Light (go figure), Bia Hoi can be found for 3,000 VND per 12 oz. glass, which is the equivalent of about 16 US cents.
Gullible tourists and Vietnamese hobos seeking the beverage, need look no further than the ‘Bai Hoi’ or ‘Fresh Beer’ signs scattered throughout the city. Fresh beer is actually Bai Hoi’s English translation, and it is indeed brewed fresh daily — presumably in someone’s bathtub.
There’s no definitive word yet on whether it is worth the price. Link -via the Presurfer
Update 12/18/10 by Alex: Roger Wade wrote the original blog post on Bia Hanoi being the world’s cheapest beer. Thanks Roger!
Vietnamese herpetologist Ngo Van Tri noticed something strange about the tanks of lizards at the small diners in the village of Ba Ria-Vung Tau. They were all female, which is odd for the species Leiolepis ngovantrii, which is what they were thought to be. So he called a friend and fellow scientist at La Sierra University in California.
Dr. Lee Grismer and his son, Jesse Grismer, a doctoral candidate, flew all the way to Hanoi and then faced a grueling two-day motorcycle trip out to a restaurant where the owner promised to set aside a stash of the creatures for study.
But there was a little problem, says Grismer.
“Unfortunately, the owner wound up getting drunk, and grilled them all up for his patrons… so when we got there, there was nothing left.”
Faced with an empty tank and nearly dashed hopes, the men asked around at other cafes in the area for the local delicacy, and hired children to track down as many of the lizards as they could find.
What they received were 60 females -of a previously unknown lizard species that reproduces without males! Still, Grismer was obliged to eat some lizards to show proper etiquette to the local restaurant. How does it taste?
“You take a bite out of it and it feels like something very old and dead in your mouth,” he said.
(Image credit: Lee Grismer/La Sierra University)
In the early 1970s, millions of Americans bought and wore metal bracelets inscribed with the name of one American who was missing in action or a POW in Vietnam. Those bracelets were the project of Carol Bates Brown, who was a student at what is now Cal State Northridge and a member of the conservative student group Voices in Vital America (VIVA).
Brown became national chairwoman of the bracelet campaign for VIVA and worked six days a week, from morning to midnight. “My mother would find me asleep in my bed covered with checks and bank deposit slips,” she said. She eventually dropped out of school.
“There was something about a specific name being on them,” said Brown, 62, who went on to work on POW/MIA issues for the nonprofit National League of Families and later for the Pentagon. “People made a personal connection — ‘I’m watching out for this guy.’”
The plight of the POWs gave people a way to separate their feelings toward policymakers from their feelings toward those who fought in the war — a shift in public attitude still evident today. Whatever people think of U.S. policy on Iraq and Afghanistan, support for the troops remains strong.
Over the years, many who wore the bracelets got in touch with “their” POW if they returned from the war, or their survivors. The L.A. Times talked with several veterans who were contacted and the civilians who sought them out. Some have stayed in touch for many years. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times)
PS: The POW whose bracelet I wore has never been found.
Suzanne Thi Hien Hook was born in Vietnam in 1969. Abandoned at birth, she was housed in an orphanage where she was underfed because of her mixed race heritage. A British organization arranged for her adoption by a Middlesex couple in 1972. Hook grew up to be a successful businesswoman with a fancy house and all the trapping of a good life. In 2007, she returned to Vietnam for a year of volunteer teaching and came home with a mission.
Suzanne, whose Vietnamese name is Thi Hien, has now sold her £500,000 home in Buckinghamshire, Mercedes sports car and collection of 300 shoes.
She has also sold off all of her clothes and furniture to achieve her dream of setting up an orphanage for abandoned children in Vietnam.
Suzanne, who is abandoning her English life to run the Allambie Orphanage, in Ho Chi Minh City, admitted her ”whole life is up for sale”.
She said: ”I’m practically selling everything. My whole life is up for sale.
Hook’s Allambie orphanage is scheduled to open in November. Link to story. Link to orphanage website. -via Arbroath
Once a year, in mountainous Ha Giang province of northern Vietnam, married people can get away and enjoy a couple of days with on old flame -and it’s considered okay! The participants gather in the village of Khau Vai on the 26th and 27th of the third month, using the lunar calendar, in order to rekindle lost loves from the past.
Legend has it an ethnic Giay girl from Ha Giang province fell in love with an ethnic Nung boy from the neighboring province of Cao Bang.
The girl was so beautiful that her tribe did not want to let her marry a man from another tribe and a bloody conflict ensued between the two tribes.
Watching tragedy unfold before them, the two lovers sorrowfully decided to part ways to avoid further bloodshed and to restore peace.
But to keep their love alive they made a secret pact to meet once a year on the 27th day of the third lunar month in Khau Vai. Thereafter, the hill village became known as a meeting place for all of those in love.
One married couple came to Khau Vai together, as both were meeting former lovers. Read more in this story by Nguyen Van Vinh. Link -via Gadling
(Image credit: REUTERS/Kham)
This famous photo by Nick Ut of the Associated Press was shot on June 8, 1972, after South Vietnamese forces used napalm on an area where they suspected Communist forces were hiding. The little girl in the center, Kim Phúc, and the terror that she expressed in photo came to symbolize the war in the eyes of many Americans.
Kim Phúc was badly burned and suffered permanent nerve damage. She tried to study medicine when she grew up, but was forced drop out in order to become a propaganda tool of the Vietnamese government. Later, she was able to begin medical studies in Cuba. While traveling back from Cuba in 1992, her plane stopped in Canada to refuel. Kim and her husband used the opportunity to defect, and they became Canadian citizens in 1997.
In the years since she’s escaped, Kim Phúc has spoken to thousands of US veterans, established a foundation to help children hurt by war, and served as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Peace. In the links, you can read a biography of her and read or hear her life in her own words, courtesy of NPR.
Biography and Personal Narrative via Ace of Spades HQ | Images: AP and CBC, respectively
Researchers have found in Vietnam what they believe to be the world’s largest cave:
By contrast, explorers walked 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) into Son Doong, in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, before being blocked by seasonal floodwaters—and they think that the passage is even longer.
In addition, for a couple of miles Son Doong reaches more than 460-by-460 feet (140-by-140 meters), said Adam Spillane, a member of the British Cave Research Association expedition that explored the massive cavern.
On May 8, 1970, construction workers clashed with students and anti-war protesters in New York in what became known as the Hard Hat riot. But it’s far from the only riot to ever happen in New York City (as I’m sure residents can attest to). Here are a few of them big enough to get their own titles.
It was four days after four students were fatally shot at Kent State and the country was in a state of unrest. In New York, several hundred protesters gathered at Broad and Wall Street to hold a vigil for the slain students. By noon, more than 1,000 people had gathered and the vigil had escalated to a rally, and about 200 construction workers had had enough. They made signs reading things like “America, Love it or Leave it” and got right up against the police line that separated them from the students. They obeyed it for a few minutes, but the tension got to be too much and the construction workers started chasing the students through the street, beating some of them severely with fists, clubs and crowbars. The construction worker mob fought their way into City Hall and demanded that the flag be raised to full mast again – it had been lowered to half mast to honor the dead at Kent State. Fearful of further damage from the mob, the Deputy Mayor ordered the flag to be raised. The riot eventually fizzled out on its own. Six arrests were made and more than 70 people were injured. When mayor John Lindsay accused the police of standing idly by and letting the riot happen, thousands and thousands (some reports claim up to 150,000 while others say only 60,000) of construction works and other blue-collar workers peacefully protested by marching through Manhattan on May 20. Photo via Five Feet of Fury
Picture the outrage that people experience every time the price of a barrel of gas goes up, then throw in extreme poverty and unemployment – up to a third of the working population was jobless. That’s basically what happened in 1837 when the cost of flour went up from $5.62 a barrel to a whopping $12 a barrel. The price of everything was skyrocketing and it was sending people to the poorhouse. People organized and decided to meet at City Hall to rally against people who were price-gouging – everyone, they said, from landlords to flour merchants. Then someone started naming names – Eli Hart was allegedly hoarding flour, and the crowd was in the mood to do something about it. Hundreds of people stormed down Broadway to Washington Street and forced their way into the building. Attempts to control the mob were completely useless and the mayor ended up fleeing while the crowd tossed barrels of flour out of the windows so people could scoop it up in boxes and pails. The flour, it is said, was nearly a foot deep in the street. The riot only died out when backup police and militia arrived. By this time, Hart’s flour had been cleaned out and the crowd had started to loot other flour dealers.
Apparently things weren’t much better even 40 years later. On January 13, 1874, thousands of unemployed immigrant workers and Socialist obtained a permit to have a mass meeting in Tompkins Square. They wanted the mayor to establish a program that would create jobs. Despite having all of the legal papers necessary to hold the demonstration, the city decided that having thousands of upset people meet to discuss the mayor maybe wasn’t the best idea and revoked the permit. It didn’t matter: more than 7,000 people showed up the next day anyway. Police didn’t give them a chance to have a peaceable meeting; they immediately dispersed the crowd by beating people with clubs. Samuel Gompers recorded the events and said that police on horseback were attacking anyone they could reach, even women and children. He called it “an orgy of brutality.” Photo by R. Wampers
More than 100 years later, there was more unrest in the East Village. Apparently Tompkins Square Park had become a haven for the homeless and “rowdy youth” and neighborhood residents were sick of it. The Community Board eventually decided that it would enact a 1 a.m. curfew to try to curb some of the late-night gatherings that were going on in the park. Some people definitely didn’t support this decision, including anarchists who were protesting in defense of the homeless and some citizens who felt that the police were trying to take the park away from the public. A rally was organized for July 31, but the police were tipped off and a small riot occurred, resulting in four arrests and injuries to at least 10. Another rally was planned for August 6, and the police showed up in droves this time. A bloody riot ensured; a New York Times reporter referred to the place as a “bloody war zone.” By dawn, more than 38 people were injured, nine people were arrested and six complaints of police brutality had been filed. Rightly so, it seems: it was later determined that the police charged the crowd unjustly. Allen Ginsberg said the police were beating up bystanders who weren’t even involved and another witness said he saw a couple who merely came out of a grocery store get clubbed down for no apparent reason. One man trying simply to hail a taxi was beaten by an officer and the whole thing was caught on tape. Photo via Blog Blabbin
On March 19, 1935, a 16-year-old Puerto Rican kid was caught shoplifting a penknife worth 10 cents from a five-and-dime store across from the Apollo. He was caught by an employee at the store who threatened to take the kid down to the basement and “beat the hell out of him,” so the kid bit the employee in the hand. The police were called and an ambulance showed up to treat the bite (which must have been a heck of a bite). Thanks to a woman who had witnessed the threat on the shoplifter, a crowd gathered outside of the building and assumed that the ambulance was for the shoplifter. When, by coincidence, a hearse parked outside of the store, the rumor started to swirl that the kid had been beaten to death. And thus started the first recorded race riot in Harlem’s history. Things escalated so that by the early evening of the same day, the front window of the five-and-dime store had been shattered by rocks and looting started to happen in stores surrounding it. Stores in the area started to post signs stating that they employed all races, hoping to deflect some destruction. The rioting continued into the early morning, when the shoplifter was photographed standing next to a policeman so his picture could be circulated to convince the rioters that he was totally fine. Photo via BlackPast.org
