Vietnam travel destination 29: Discover Thai nguyen attractions

Thái Nguyên (About this sound listen) is a province in northeastern Vietnam. It is a mountainous, midland province with natural area of 3534.45 square kilometres and a population of 1,149,100 people as of 2008. Its multiethnic society is represented by eight ethnic groups.

With its rich mineral resources and salubrious climate, the province offers significant opportunities for industrial development for domestic and foreign investors.  Thai Nguyen is also known as an educational centre and ranks 3rd nationwide with 21 universities and colleges. The province is also the centre of tea industry in the country with an area of 16,000 ha (second only to Lam Dong) with a production of 100,000 tonnes/year; dried tea production is 25,000 tonnes/year. The tea produced here is considered the finest in Vietnam.

Museum of the Cultures Of Vietnam’s Ethnic Groups :

The Museum of the Cultures of Vietnam’s Ethnic Groups, located in downtown Thai Nguyen in Thai Nguyen province, was established in 1960. It contains more than 4,000 documents, exhibits, and pictures, concerning all aspects of Vietnamese civilization. The museum also presents an extensive collection of agricultural, handicraft, and hunting tools. Typical ritual clothes with bright colors and decorative motifs of different ethnic minorities are also exhibited. The unusual costumes of the Tay and Nung ethnic groups used for worshipping their sorcerers are embroidered with lines and designs that supposedly perceive magical sounds.

The Viet Muong showroom presents nearly 500 documents, objects, and photographs illustrating archaeological articles discovered in Phung Nguyen, Dong Dau, and Go Mun in the north of the country. Exhibits of Vietnamese national agricultural and handicraft productions and brocades woven by Muong ethnic minorities are also displayed.

Exhibited in the Tay-Thai showroom are nearly 500 documents and artifacts related to the slash-and-burn agricultural technique and traditional trades of minorities, such as the Tay, Thai, Lao, and Lu. Women's clothes and musical folk instruments such as the tinh string instrument, the flute, as well as displays of the traditional ceremonies of several minorities are also exhibited.

The H'mong-Dao showroom displays approximately 600 documents and artifacts reflecting the agricultural practices of the H’mong, such as slash-and-burn farming, terraced rice fields, hunting weapons, and clothes of the H'mong-Dao ethnic group.

The Museum of the Cultures of Vietnam’s Ethnic Groups is a repository depicting the culture of ethnic groups living throughout the nation. It is also a place for people to learn about the origins and traditional cultural identities of every ethnic group in Vietnam.

Nui Coc Lake : Scenic remains of a romantic legend, Thai Nguyen

Driving along National Highway No3 for 80km from Ha noi  to Thai Nguyen City, making a left and traveling up a small road for about 20km, you can see Nui Coc, a reservoir with a beauty that can warm the cockles of the frostiest character.

The region is famous for not only its picturesque scenery but also a legend about the romance of a girl named Cong and a young man named Coc. Legend has it that the couple loved each other very much but due to prejudice both families did not allow them to become husband and wife. Coc waited for his sweetheart until he turned into a mount present-day Coc Mountain. Receiving the bad news, Cong was broken-hearted and bewailed her lover until she died. Her tears flowed and changed into a river, the present-day Cong River, soaking deep into the soil to bring up the tea plants; thereby creating a specialty of Thai Nguyen – Tan Cuong tea. The dam was built in 1977 on the Cong River, a tributary of the Red River, and can hold back 175 million cubic meters of waters. It is surrounded by hills and secondary forest.

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It’s the scenic side of things that make Nui Coc special, the 89 pretty little islands that dot the 25,000m² surfaces and make it a sort of Halong Bay in miniature. The islands have different characteristics; some are forested in green, while one is home to thousands of storks and many other species of birds. That’s why it’s named Stork Island, another is the home to wild goats and of course, it’s also called Goat Island. There is a green oasis where such dominant flora as Rhodomyrtus tomentosa, Melanoma candidum, Cratocylon spp. and Eupatorium odonatum tourism. There are also about 40 species of birds and 15 of mammals inhabiting the area. There you can see several species of duck in winter, particularly Dendrocygna javanica, Anas crecca and A. acuta, and a small breeding colony of Ardeola bacchus and Egretta spp that has recently been established on an island in the lake. Near the lake, Coc Mountain stands imposingly amid the blue sky, bright sunshine spreading over every blade of grass and twig, all creating marvelous and splendid scenery.

For those who like their creature comforts there’s a new resort near the lake. Tourism Park of Nui Coc Lake is divided into two areas, one on the northern bank of the reservoir and the other on the southern. The northern area boasts many mini-guest houses built on the side of a hill and shaded with green trees called keo la cham, along with water parks and an artificial dinosaur park. There you can refresh yourself with entertainment or go fishing on the lake or try specialties of the lake such as chub with the largest weighing nine to 10kg, shrimps and bamboo rats, called by locals as dui. You can also travel across the water in a motor boat and lie back to enjoy the poetic and grandiose beauty of the boundless sky hanging high over mountain and forest.

Mysterious caverns in Thai Nguyen, Thai Nguyen

Though its name means “mysterious mountain”, Linh Son is actually a pair of limestone caverns named Heaven and Earth in Thai Nguyen Province, some 75 kilometers north of Hanoi.

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Thien (Heaven) and Dia (Earth) can be found on the slope of Hot, a limestone peak in Linh Nham Commune, Dong Hy District. With a floor area of 360m² and hundreds of stalagmites and stalactites, Thien is a sight to behold and the locals reckon it in beauty like the much-vaunted Thien Cung (heavenly palace) in Halong Bay. Upon entering the cavern, you may feel lost in a fairy world amid all the fascinating beauty created by the variegated stalagmites and stalactites. They resemble many shapes, the most obvious being the two dragons, the kneeling elephants, dancing kylins and lions, and the prostrate tigers guarding the entrance. The floor is fairly level, which makes walking around very easy, and there are staircases cut into the rock leading up to hewn altars on which stand Buddha statues.

Just outside the other end is a road to the mountain’s summit and another to the even more impressive Dia. This cavern has a floor area of 480m² and higher ceilings than Thien. Again the going underfoot is level and easy, and there are plenty more stalactites and stalagmites taking on various familiar shapes, particularly a big pen brush and a mother embracing her child. It used to be a Buddhist temple of sorts and there are still a few bronze Buddhas, a number of red lacquered statues trimmed with gold, and many stone figures on man-made altars cut from the walls.

In October 1995, some local residents discovered an old stele on the cliff above the twin caverns with carved Chinese characters meaning “restoring Linh Son Cavern”. Archaeologists and Sinologists from the Museum Preservation Department checked it out the following year but they found that most of the carved characters had faded beyond translation. Going buy the design and decorations, they did manage to ascertain that the stele came from the days of the Le Dynasty.

Linh Son is more than just a place of beauty; it also served as a refuge for the local people and the soldiers needing somewhere safe against the French troops and later the American bombs that carpeted the north of Vietnam. 
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