The montagnards and their umbrellas

It was raining almost day and night. Out on the street, I saw people carrying their umbrellas and wearing rain coats, fully geared for the bad weather. For most eager travellers who came all the way from different parts of the world to visit Sapa, it made no sense to hide inside the hotel’s rooms. Fake North Face jackets were sold like hot cakes, thanks to the desperate tourists of course!

In this awful weather, shooting portraits became a rather difficult task, not to mention shooting landscapes. But when I looked at these pictures, I realized that umbrella could serve as a nice background sometimes.

 

Children at work and at play

The girl

I met this mysterious girl while I was wandering in Sin Chai village. Her colorful costume drew my attention. Yet, I couldn’t tell which tribe she belongs to. Black H’mong, Flower H’mong and Red Dzao people are easily identified. But this beautiful girl’s dressing just doesn’t give me much clue. I waved at her and she returned me with a gentle smile. I quickly pressed my shutter and snap this wonderful photo of her.

Sapa, Vietnam – The land and the Montagnards

The weather was terribly bad. There was a downpour in Hanoi a day before my departure to Sapa. All the tourists I met were upset as their tours to Ha Long Bay had been cancelled due the havoc caused by Typhoon Conson. I was nowhere near the coastal area of northeastern Vietnam, but the locals warned me that the typhoon would brought in plenty of rain to the whole northern Vietnam and reminded me get a poncho. What the locals had predicted soon became true. It rained for 3 whole days out of my 4 days stay in Sapa. But I never got a poncho.

In all my trips to overseas, I try to plan as much as possible. But there is one thing that I could never plan or control. It’s the weather. Sapa is a very unique place as it is located in the mountainous region in the northwest of Vietnam which offers stunning views of the rice terraces. The beautiful landscapes are something I always want to photograph. But the weather made every single shot looked flat, dull and uninspiring. Since there was nothing much I could do to change the whether, I just gotta tried my best! Below are some snapshots of the sceneries and the colorful hill tribes I met in this beautiful region.

 

Paddy field

Black H’mong

Wid boar

Flower Hmong

Bac Ha market

Buffalo for sale

rice terrace

 

Red Dzao

Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

I love to visit Museum no matter which country I go. There are just too much national treasure to explore, be it a collection of fine arts, artefacts, weaponry, mummies or in this case here – sexually explicit wooden carvings. Unlike other museums that I have visited before, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology offers a very different experience. This Museum showcase life-size houses of different ethnic groups in Vietnam (there are 54 official ethnic groups in Vietnam). And one of the interesting structure is the tomb of Giarai (Jarai) people, an Arap subgroup of Gia Lai province. Asia has long been known with many peculiar funerals.  But what so unique about Giarai’s tomb is those sexually revealing wooden figures that are encircling the tomb. With my photos below, I guess no further elaboration is needed.  Together with other wooden figures like pregnant women, children and animal, they symbolize fertility and serve to accompany the dead into the afterlife.

For more information of this Museum, you can visit – http://www.vme.org.vn/index.asp. It’s quite a distance away from the city centre. I took a local bus (No. 14) from Hoan Kiem Lake to reach the Museum.

 

Medieval stained glass window

 

I’m always attracted to these colorful stained glass window whenever I pass by churches. From TV and historical books, I saw many more beautiful stained glass windows with saints, scriptural texts and floral motifs. I used to wonder why these elaborate windows only appeared in cathedrals or chapels of unique but similar architectural style. And it was not until my university years that I learned that these structures are actually the results of an architectural movement in the eighteenth century called Gothic Revival, or Neo-Gothic, to revive the art form which reach its height in the Middle Ages. Stained glass also became a major pictorial form to illustrate the narratives of the Bible to a largely illiterate masses.

A tour to the Saint Joseph Cathedral in Hanoi reminded me again that I must visit Europe to see some of the most beautiful Neo-Gothic architecture on Earth.

(HDR image)

(evening Mass)

(HDR image)