Oct
01
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New destination in West Lake for audiophile's dream
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Nhac Xua (or Old music) Café at No. 46 Yen Hoa Street, Hanoi is an ideal place for those who love the sound from old music machines.
Nguyen Duy Binh is turning on a reel-to-reel tape recorder playing old songs.
Located beside West Lake, the café looks more like a shop selling second-hand electrical products. The 15-square-metre front room is piled full of old big amplifiers stacked roughly to the ceiling, along with old record players and reel-to-reel machines, with hundreds of other pieces of not easily identified audio equipment.
Seeing the only small table and some tiny tools being occupied by some customers, I walked to the inner room to find the same scene. This room didn’t even have a place to sit.
The owner, a middle-aged man with a gentle smile, asked if we wanted some drinks or just were looking for some equipment. Then he invited us to a range of tables outside, which were arranged next to the banks of West Lake.
“People usually come to my coffee shop not just for coffee,” he said. “Most of my customers are fans of the old stereo equipment and come to enjoy their music.”
The 'scrap-iron’ collection.
Nguyen Duy Binh revealed that he had spent almost all his life collecting these old machines and he opened this shop in 2010 mainly to share his hobby with others.
“Some decades ago, they used to be the dream of many people including me,” he said while pointing to an old reel-to-reel machine in the middle of the room. “It cost as much as a big house during the 1960s and only wealthy families could afford them then.
Binh said that he loved music and had been attracted to audio equipment since they became popular at some cafes and among wealthy families some decades ago.
The young man tried to save money and buy an old one. He also taught himself the mechanics through books so that he could restore old pieces. Due to his tight budget, Binh could only buy old and broken-down equipment from scrap-iron dealers for his collection. However, he has successfully restored many items.
Since he left his job at a confectionery company in 1990, the audiophile has spent all his time with the old machines and the number of items in his collection has quickly grown.
“My wife has complained about my ‘scrap-iron’ collection, which keeps growing bigger in our house,” he said with a big grin. “They have been costing me a lot of money too.”
However, he said that recently he has begun earning money from restoring old machines and selling them on to other people.
“Customers are welcome to discover my shop and get free advice over any items they want to buy, but they won’t be able to persuade me to sell some machines, including this made-in-the US record player.”
“It used to be my dream to own one, and so I won’t sell it,” he explains.
When I asked a customer at Binh’s shop about the quality of the audio equipment, he said that although the sound was not as clear as modern stereos, old analogue equipment had a warmer tone.
‘The most important thing is that I want to relive my old days with the old songs played by these old machines,” Binh said.
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Oct
01
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Special thing about Octoberfest
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VietNamNet Bridge – Oktoberfest, the world’s largest beer festival, which kicked off on September 22 in Munich, Germany, will be held at numerous locations nationwide, including the Lion Restaurant, the Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers, the Windsor Plaza Hotel Saigon and Cung Xuan Convention Center in Hanoi.
Participants to Oktoberfest 2011 at the Windsor Plaza Hotel Saigon.
This year, a huge party hosted by the hotel and the German Business Association
in HCMC will mark the 20th anniversary of Oktoberfest Vietnam.
A party hosted by the German Business Association (GBA) and the Windsor Plaza Hotel to mark the 20th anniversary of Oktoberfest Vietnam will run from October 5-6 and from October 9-13 on level 7 of the hotel from 6 p.m. onwards.
A bountiful buffet of German cuisine and imported German beers await guests. Dance and folk music from Steirerbluat will keep the party rocking through the night. Furthermore, guests can win prizes during the event.
According to GBA’s website, news agency Reuters and the Chicago-Tribune ranked Oktoberfest in HCMC last year the ninth largest Oktoberfest outside of Germany.
Oktoberfest Hanoi hosted by the GBA will kick off at 6 p.m. on October 19 at Cung Xuan Event Center.
Participants can savor German food prepared by the Movenpick Hotel Hanoi’s chef with The Gaudiblonsn band from Munich supplying the music.
More than 15,000 are expected to participate in HCMC with 3,000 in Hanoi, which will make Oktoberfest 2012 one of the largest German cultural events in Southeast Asia.
The popular Oktoberfest venue in HCMC, Lion Restaurant, will host proceedings from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on October 5 featuring German draft beer and 1,000 liters of a special beer. Guests will savor traditional German food and enjoy music performances and game shows.
This year’s new face of Oktoberfest, the Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers organize the event at all of its restaurants.
A German Beer Feast is available at the Saigon Cafe every Friday night in October with German delicacies and free-flowing German beer, house wine, coffee and tea. The Wine Bar on level 23 offers a choice of German-style sausages and steak in a roll every Friday and Saturday, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Level 23 Signature restaurant will have a five-course menu for Oktoberfest prepared by executive chef Jens Heier from Germany. The classy restaurant, Mojo Cafe on Dong Khoi Street features a special menu with German cuisine.
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Oct
01
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Take a visit to a village drum maker in Vietnam
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VietNamNet Bridge – As the Mid-Autumn festival approaches, streets are filled with colourful toys and the sound of the trong boi (paper drum), a tiny traditional toy, can be heard everywhere.
Noise-maker: Trong boi is modest but popular toy enjoyed
by generations of Vietnamese children.
The trong boi has long been a popular toy among children at festival time. However in recent years, foreign imports of flashy toys seem to have taken over.
Bao Dap Village in the northern province of Nam Dinh was known as the home of the trong boi, but nowadays, craftsmen in the village make star-shaped lanterns because they are easier to sell. Only one artisan, Nguyen Van Huong, who has made paper drums for 50 years, still pursues the trade.
In the past, paper drums were the village's main source of income, and paper lanterns were a seasonal commodity that were only in demand during the Mid-Autumn festival, while tambourines were popular the year round, according to Huong.
"Over the past 10 years, the art has slowly died off, and now I am the only one who works in the trade," he said.
"Some people continue to make them for their children, but not for sale."
Like other traditional toys, the trong boi is a modest and beautiful toy. Materials are cheap and easy to find, such as clay, bamboo splints, plastic sticks and paper.
The whole process takes Huong through certain steps. He collects clay in the morning when the land is wet with dew, and it's easy to dig and knead.
The clay is kneaded into small circular frames, and dried until it becomes hard like bricks.
The frames are then covered by pink or red paper with glue made from boiled glutinous rice powder. The most important process is ensuring there are no gaps between the paper and the frames.
Nguyen Van Huong has spent 50 years making the trong boi.
A drumstick made from bamboo only a little bigger than a toothpick is tied to the tiny double-faced drum and the handle. When the handle is rotated, the drumstick beats onto the drum skin.
Huong said he was the only one in the village invited to display his craft at the Viet Nam Museum of Ethnology during the Mid-Autumn festival.
"Both children and adults are full of admiration and interest when they see how I make the toys," Huong said.
"An old proverb says: ‘Gia choi trong boi (Old men play trong boi)'. That is used to mock at old people who still have affairs with young girls and lose their dignity," Huong said. "It makes me sad that many young people only know the trong boi through the saying, but they don't know what it actually is."
All of his family know how to make the toy, and produce 20,000-30,000 each year.
"We have to make lanterns and artificial flowers to earn more money because profits from selling the trong boi are not enough for my family to live on," he said.
"We continue to make paper drums to prevent them from disappearing altogether, preserving a traditional Vietnamese toy. We don't want them to become a distant memory, remembered only by the proverb."
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The apperance of Hanoi International Film Festival
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01/10/2012 09:12:52
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Vietnam with the interesting news with International arrival is rising
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01/10/2012 09:02:34
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Concentrating on developing Northeastern region tourism
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01/10/2012 08:59:59
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November with Ha Long week 2012 event
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01/10/2012 08:11:29
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Testing single visa in Thailand and Cambodia
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29/09/2012 10:47:14
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Growth of Cambodia
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29/09/2012 10:40:20
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Tourist Arrivals rises to 15 Per Cent
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29/09/2012 10:37:22
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Number of foreign tourists up to 3.3 million in 2012
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29/09/2012 10:35:32
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Cambodian leader targets at least doubling tourism numbers and revenue by 2020
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29/09/2012 10:33:37
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