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

That being said, here are some sisters who impacted history.

The Graeae

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.

Source

The Trung Sisters

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.

The Trung’s victory was short-lived though. It wasn’t long before the Chinese amassed a massive army and decimated the women’s forces. One legend claims the Chinese were able to win the battle by fighting naked, embarrassing the female warriors so they willingly left the battlefield. Another story says that a pregnant woman on the front lines, Phung Thi Chinh, gave birth to her baby, scooped it up in one arm and continued to fight with the sword in her other hand.

Despite their most valiant efforts, the female fighters were outnumbered. To protect their honor and avoid capture by the Chinese, the Trung sisters committed suicide by drowning themselves in the Hat River. Their remaining fighters carried on the battle until they were killed or until they killed themselves.

While much of the story is more legend than truth, the Trung sisters are still highly revered in Vietnam as heroes of the first resistance movement in their independence from China. There is even a holiday honoring the day they committed suicide and temples throughout the country are dedicated to their memory.

Source

The Grimke Sisters

The Grimke Sisters were some of the first women to publicly act in American social reform movements. While many revolutionaries were raised by progressive parents who taught them to question the way things are, Angelina and Sarah Grimke were the opposite. Their father, the chief judge of the Supreme Court of South Carolina was a strong proponent both of slavery and of the subordination of women.

The girls were raised on a massive plantation, where they saw the worst parts of slavery on a regular basis. When Sarah was only five, she tried to run away so she could escape somewhere without slavery. She later taught her personal slave to read although this was against the law at the time.

Sarah was a bright girl who studied constantly and wanted to become a lawyer. Unfortunately, when her parents learned that she wanted to attend college, they forbade her to study any more. Since she could no longer continue her education, Sarah begged to become godmother to her youngest sister Angelina. From that point on, the two were extremely close.

The two started working for the abolition movement in 1835 and soon learned just how powerless women were when it came to politics. Angelina caused a scandal when she wrote her first abolitionist work, as it urged southern women to reject slavery because it allowed their husbands the opportunity to cheat on them with their black slaves. Discussing such a sensitive subject in such a brazen manner was considered outrageous at the time. As if that weren’t enough, the pair urged racial acceptance, not just the banning of slavery –something even many abolitionists were against. Every letter they wrote and every speech they gave was fought by criticisms, but the sisters stood strong.

They pressed on and eventually, they became the first women to address the Massachusetts state legislature in 1838. Their appearance caused a scandal, but inspired a number of young women to follow them. Eventually, they attracted thousands of women in New England to join the abolitionist movement and thousands of men and women would travel from miles around to see the girls give public speeches.

In 1838, Angelina got married to abolitionist and women’s rights supporter Theodore Weld. While the couple initially planned for Angelina to stay active in politics, when she delivered a baby, she found herself too busy to be a public speaker any more. Sarah moved in with the couple and also chose to retire from the public sphere. While they no longer spoke publicly on the matter, the girls continued to write and edit abolitionist newspapers and pamphlets.

At one point, the girls started a boarding school and many abolitionists sent their children there to learn about politics and slavery without the racial prejudices of other schools at the time. After the Civil War, the Grimke girls learned that their deceased brother had three mixed-race sons with one of his slaves. The girls took in the oldest two of the children and provided them with education and support.

After years of support for the abolitionist and feminist movements, the girls lived long enough to see the slaves freed and to see the 15^th Amendment passed. At almost 80 years old, Sarah and her sister were able to vote for the first time in 1870.

Source

The Podgorski Sisters

You can change the world in a number of ways and while Stefania and Helena Podgorska may have only saved the lives of 13 individuals, they are still heroes who could very likely inspire other groups of brave rebels.

The girl’s father died in 1938, so Stefania had to start working in a grocery store owned by a Jewish family called the Diamants when she was only 15. It wasn’t long before Poland was invaded by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and the town of Przemysl was right at the dividing line between the two nations. The Germans took the girl’s mother and their brother to a forced labor camp to support the Third Reich, leaving a 16 year-old Stefania to care for her 6 year-old little sister. They also took the Diamants to a newly-formed ghetto.

Stefania took a job as a machine-tool operator and paid rent for the apartment where she and Helena lived. In 1942, the Germans began to liquidate the Przemsyl ghetto, sending the Jewish residents to concentration camps. Fortunately, two sons of the Diamants escaped from the train that was scheduled to take them to the Belzec extermination camp and made their way to the Podgorska’s home. While the two girls were scared, they knew they had to help, so they let the boys stay in the attic. The older boy, Max, asked Stefania if he could bring his family to stay in the attic and she said yes.

Because the attic was too small for so many people, Stefania soon rented a detached cottage with a larger attic. She and Helena moved in first and the rest of the family and their friends followed. Soon there were 13 people living in the girl’s attic. Unsurprisingly, the young girls quickly ran out of money to feed and house all of their visitors, so the girls began knitting sweaters and Stefania took orders for them from everyone she knew. She would even trade clothes for food when she couldn’t get enough money together.

The family lived next to an SS officer for a long time, but everyone worked hard to stay quiet and not alert suspicion. Even so, the girls were terrified and shocked when a German officer knocked on their door one day and ordered them to vacate their home in the next two hours. Their fugitive tenants begged them to run away, but Stefania refused and the officer soon returned, informing the girls that he changed his mind and would be taking a home on the other side of the house.

A few months later, the Soviet Army took over Przemysl and the Jewish attic-dwellers were free. Stefania married one of the Diamant’s sons and emigrated to the US. Helena remained in Poland, married and eventually became a physician.  In 1979, the two were flown to Jerusalem and honored as the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for their heroism during the war.

Source

As I said in the beginning, I did decide to leave out most of the contemporary famous sisters and any music acts, so if you’d like to take this time to talk about your favorite famous female siblings, go right ahead. Also, if you have any fun anecdotes involving your sisters, feel free to share them here.

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)

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."

Link

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)

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)

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!

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.

Link -via Fark

(Image credit: Lee Grismer/La Sierra University)

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, 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

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)

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.

Link

The Hard Hat riot

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

The Flour Riot of 1837

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.

The Tompkins Square Riot

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

Tompkins Square Riot, Part Deux

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

Harlem Riot of 1935

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