Travelog - A travel guide to Vietnam

Khmer girls performing a folk dance.

Soc Trang Province is a land bearing many imprints of reclaiming land and fighting against foreign aggressors by people of Kinh, Khmer and Hoa (Chinese) ethnic groups, who have always united together in good and bad times and are now joining their efforts to improve their socio-economic life and preserve their unique cultures.

Soc Trang Province People’s Committee President Huynh Thanh Hiep gave us a warm welcome when we met him. He told us about the bumper harvests, good prices for rice and the happiness of the people, especially the Khmer ethnic people. Talking about the last shrimp harvest, he said merrily: “There is a shrimp farm in Vinh Chau that harvested 22 tonnes of shrimp per ha, making it a record in Vietnam. Before the year 2000, one could hardly imagine of golden harvests on Soc Trang land.” President Hiep spoke so positively about the improvements that it inspired us to visit the whole province.

Smile of havest - Photographer: Khoa Nam

The President said that many things had been achieved in Soc Trang rural areas, things we who live in the big cities take for granted, especially in the villages and hamlets of the Khmer ethnic people. Included are the construction of roads, improved accessibility to electricity, better irrigation systems, breakwaters, clinics and schools. However, he was still concerned about the number of poor households, which accounted for 17% of the provincial population, the highest rate in the delta provinces (after Soc Trang Province was separated in 1992, the poor household rate was 64%). Now, the Province is focusing on minimizing this rate.

Worthy of note was the fact that various crops and animals had been farmed and raised to replace the rice monoculture. Improved farming techniques and know-how are available to every farmer, who can calculate the higher economic value from each unit of the cultivated land. The President advised us to visit different places, especially the areas inhabited by the Khmer people, where we could see clearly the advanced developments in Soc Trang Province.

Khmer beauty in Soc Trang

There are nearly 400,000 Khmer people in Soc Trang, the biggest number in the provinces of the Mekong River delta. They live around 90 pagodas, big and small, where reside 1,800 monks, who study, work and are hospitable. All pagodas are spacious and beautiful having their entrances always wide-open to community, which are extremely brilliant on such festive days as the Cho Chnam Thmay festival, Oc om bor water-welcoming ceremony with a traditional Ghe Ngo (boat-racing) festival, Don Ta ancestors’ anniversary, and the flower- and frock-offering festival.

The State’s policies focusing on the development of production and infrastructure in 52 communes have brought many Khmer households out of hunger and poverty. The programmes on agricultural promotion, price subsidy and loans for production and business, product-sale, together with investments in education, health care, and culture at grassroots level have yielded good results. The Province has four boarding schools for ethnic pupils and a Pali intermediate school (the only Pali-teaching school in the country) to train a contingent of Khmer cadres and teachers. Books and newspapers, as well as radio and television programmes in Khmer language provide rich practical information.

The architecture of Kh’leng Pagoda’s pillars.

Soc Trang Province boats its many relics of typical historical, artistic and ecological values, such as Kh’leng Pagoda, Ma Toc (Bat) Pagoda with thousands of bats hanging on the trees in the pagoda’s garden and Khmer museum with many antiques, and a professional folk singing, dancing and music troupe with many talented artists.

Without doubt, the yellow colour of the monks’ frocks under the roofs of the peaceful old pagodas, the Robam-Duke Dance performed by beautiful, dark eyed female ballerinas with their lithe and graceful movements, as well as the strong and robust arms of young men rowing the boats at the Ghe Ngo races will leave a undeletable impression on any visitor to Soc Trang Province.