Travelog - A travel guide to Vietnam

Sorcerer Hoang Chung, La Pan Tan Commune, Muong Khuong District, Lao Cai Province, preparing offerings for the ritual.

Visiting hamlets in the Northern mountainous areas when Spring comes, anyone could see with their own eyes not only a captivating beauty constituted by forests of peach and apricot trees in blossom, but also the unique and interesting rituals in the Mong’s Gau Tao festival. When speaking of the distinctive cultural characteristics of the Mong ethnic minority, one can’t help mentioning its Gau Tao festival (lit. going out in mountain) to pray for happiness and fortune. As is the Mong’s custom, house masters must ask sorcerers in their hamlet to communicate on their behalf with their ancestors and the Gods of Soil.

Normally, the house masters will hold the Gau Tao festival for three to five days in three consecutive years and for 10-12 days in case of organizing the festival for only one year. On the 25 -26th day of the Tet, the hamlet’s young and strong men will select and chop down a bamboo tree as cay neu (the New Year tree) and set it up on a hill side or a flat ground where the festival’s solemn main rituals will happen.

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The pieu headscarf is one of the typical features of the Thai women’s costume. It is made delicately with colourfully embroidered patterns deeply imbued the wild nature. Pieu not only represents the beauty but also reveals the skillfulness and talent of Thai women.

On the black background material, Thai women weave pieu in different styles from various threads which are dyed by a substance extracted from trees’ barks or fruits’ seeds. The patterns on pieu headscarves are embroidered differently, much depending on weaver’s personality, feelings and tastes. Normally, it is made with complicated fringes and harmonious colours of red, yellow and indigo. Particularly, it is decorated with refined embroideries of lozenge-and- zigzag shapes, flowers, streams, etc.

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“Catching tortoises”,a traditional dance
of the Red Dao.

Over thousands of years of national construction and defence, the ethnic people along the northern border areas have created a rich and diverse cultural tradition, of which festivals are considered an important factor in their spiritual life with unique and distinctive features. One of them is “Seeking Fortune” feast by the Red Dao

The Red Dao in Ho Thau Commune, Hoang Su Phi District, Ha Giang Province holds a feast to seek fortune in the beginning of the year, from the first to the 15th day of lunar January.

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