Trans-Asia Bridge Span Festival – A friendly art space

On the occasion of celebrating important events in 2007, Quang Tri Province planned to organize a series of festivals, especially the second “Trans-Asia Bridge Span Festival” from July 24 to 30. The festival is expected to make Quang Tri an interesting place for tourists.

The second “Trans-Asia Bridge Span” Festival will host participation from numerous art troupes nationwide. Particularly, during the festival, apart from exhibitions, fairs, sport competitions among the provinces of Vietnam, Thailand, Lao, and Myanmar, there will be a four-night festival among Indochinese countries with cultural performance items from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

The second “Trans-Asia Bridge Span” Festival will also introduce the Quang Tri international fair and exhibition 2007 model, held by the CIAT. The fair and exhibition attracts participation from domestic enterprises and enterprises from Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and China.

In 2004, the first “Trans-Asia Bridge Span” Festival created an attractive art playground. The Vietnamese side had the attendance of art troupes from Quang Binh, Hue, Danang, and Quang Nam. Numerous foreign art troupes took part in the festival, with a variety of art performance items such from Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and China.

2007 is the year marking numerous significant events for Quang Tri Province, such as the 100 year anniversay of late General Secretary Le Duan’s (death? Birthday?), 35 years since Quang Tri’s Inpendence Day, and 60 years of the dead and wounded soldiers day.

Apart from the festival, Quang Tri will also hold some activities such as the “Quang Tri Festival – April Memory”, “Night Ancient Citadel” festival, and “July Gratitude Festival”.

Source : CPV/HNM

A restaurant of Vietnam’s country life

On the way from Nha Trang to HCMC, travelers can easily find a small signboard at Km5 telling the way via a small street to Thon Viet Restaurant. Literally, the meaning of the restaurant’s name is simply Vietnamese Village, implying a place that promises guests the quiet and peaceful atmosphere of the country life of Vietnam.

Without the signboard, guests could hardly find the way to the restaurant nestled under the lines of betel trees, the green fields and trees. Passing a garden, guests will see the restaurant that was opened only a couple of months ago with waitresses in ao ba ba, the traditional dress of southern women in the village.

Construction of the village-style restaurant was closely supervised to every decoration detail by the owner, farm engineer Nguyen Trung Binh. Either side of the pathway in the restaurant is decorated with flowers and grass. Here and there in the restaurant are the water wells, small bridges across small canals, the Lunar New Year Poles and long-handle buckets.

Typical images of the Vietnamese village seem to be well depicted in Thon Viet Restaurant where guests could find a flock of chicken walking around the area to look for rice, the banana and bamboo trees, the eartherned jars to hold water with the dippers made of coconut shell.

Diners can choose many outdoor corners in the restaurant to have their meal such as behind the banana trees, by the bamboo bridge or the small pond, feeling like they are dining in a village.

Thon Viet serves many kinds of traditional rural dishes, each of them being displayed in baskets or panniers or wrapped in banana leaves and guests will be served with fresh vegetables, which are grown around the restaurant, according to Binh.

Diners will find it enjoyable tasting the fresh, piping hot dishes such as fresh grilled anabas and amaranth soup and rice in clay pot in the natural setting of the Vietnamese village, which could bring guests an authentic Vietnamese dinning experience.

Thon Viet Restaurant is located at Km5 on 23-10 Road, Vinh Diem Thuong, Vinh Hiep Commmune, Nha Trang City, tel: (058) 892 340, fax: (058) 871 185.

By SGT