Victoria Sapa Resort & Spa

Victoria Sapa Hotel is the only luxurious option for an ideal retreat in the town of fog, Sapa. It offers 77 well appointed rooms with wooden floor, private terrace and bathrooms with bathtubs. The interior decoration offers a nice touch of local culture and European style. The restaurant boasts the finest cuisine in town complete with a romantic and relaxing ambiance.

Victoria Sapa Resort & Spa also has a private overnight carriage, the Victoria Express Train, to cater its guests exclusively. Perfect in every detail, Victoria Sapa is a tempting choice for high end travellers to experience something different and unique, in harmony with local nature and culture.

Address: Xuan Vien- Sapa
Phone:
Fax:
Web: http://www.victoriahotels.asia

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Chau Long Hotel

Discover all that Sapa (Lao Cai) has to offer with Chau Long Sapa II Hotel as a base.

The Chau Long Sapa II Hotel boasts a convenient location with modern amenities in every guestroom and superb service. Each of the hotel's guestrooms offers air conditioning, desk, hair dryer, internet access, in room safe, television, shower, mini bar.

Services and amenities available for guests at this Sapa (Lao Cai) accommodation consist of shops, elevator, bar/pub, laundry service/dry cleaning, meeting facilities. For a more enjoyable stay, guests can take advantage of a variety of recreational facilities, including massage, indoor pool, jacuzzi, gym, sauna, spa, garden. Chau Long Sapa Hotel hotel provides a warm and welcoming service of international standard.

Address: No 33 - Cau May Street - Sapa - Lao Cai
Phone: (84-20) 3871245
Fax: (84-20) 3871844
Website: http://www.chaulonghotel.com/

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The Hoa ethnic group

Language:  The Hoa or Ethnic Chinese, speak a language belonging to the Chinese, language group (Sino-Tibetan language family).

History:  The Hoa have migrated to Vietnam in different periods since the 15th century. Later on, other waves of Hoa immigrants came at the end of the Minh, or beginning of the 20th century.

Production activities:  In rural areas, the Hoa live mainly as farmers, who plant rice in wet fields. In urban areas, they are active in trading in service businesses. Handicrafts, such as pottery making, is highly developed (in Quang Ninh, Song Be, Dong Nai provinces), as is paper and incense making (in Ho Chi Minh City). Fishing and salt production are economic of a small group of Hoa who live along the coastline. In business, the Hoa always respect the word “trust”

Diet: Rice is the main food. However, they often eat wanton, rice noodle soup, and stir-fried noodles. In middle class family people eat rice soup with salty duck eggs for breakfast. The Hoa have good cooking techniques. They prefer stir-fried dishes with lots of spices. Hoa drinks, on top of quenching one’s thirst, are also considered as medicine: good for the whole body. Ginseng tea, chrysanthemum tea…are popular drinks in every family. On festival occasions, men like to drink wine. Many people smoke tobacco, including women, especially the elderly ones.

Clothing: Hoa traditional dress can only be seen on old people, or on special occasions like weddings and funerals. Women like to wear a blouse with a high collar, buttoned down along one side, and high cuts along each side panel. The long Hoa dress, tight around the hip, and with high cut panel along one side, is also very popular. Women, especially young ones, like to dress in red, pink or dark colors. The men wear black, or dark green shirts, which have buttons on one side, standing collar, and cut panels on the two sides. The shirt with four laps, standing collar, cut in the middle and with pockets, is also popular for men. The women are fond of jewelry, especially bracelets (made of brass, gold, stone, or jade), earrings, and necklaces. The men like to implant gold teeth as an accessory.

Housing: Those who are farmers form their own villages that usually lie on the foothills, on terraces, and along beaches. The above sites have the advantage of being close to water sources, and are convenient for traffic and transportation. In the villages, those who have houses close to each other’s are usually relatives. In urban areas, they form their own Hoa neighborhoods.

There are three kinds of houses: those with 3 rooms and 2 wings, those shaped like a gate, and those with shapes like w mouth. They are usually built from stones and bricks, have earthen wall, and have either tile or thatched roofs. Altars to worship ancestors, Buddha, and God stand out in the Hoa house. Carved wooden couplets or parallel sentences, scrolls, and Chinese calligraphy on pink paper pray for luck, success, and peace and are also popular things to hang in the house.

Social organization: The Hoa are highly patriarchal and there are evident differences between the rich and the poor. Relationships among relatives are very important. Each family tree has an ancestor temple for worshipping. Every year, on a specific day, everyone in the family gets together for the anniversary of their ancestors’ death. Business groups and guilds have the same tradition as well. They all have an ancestor founder and a yearly anniversary day. The Hoa have stable, monogamous marriages, and patriarchal family structure. Marriage usually occurs within people of the same local group. The head of a family line, the matchmaker, and local officials play an important role in a marriage. Today, women get married fairly late (average age is 28, 30), and have fewer children (2 to 3 each family).

Festivals: There are many holidays in a year: the Lunar New Year, the festival of the first moon night of the year Pure Light festival, double Five Festival (on the 5th day of 5th lunar month), all Soul’s Day (15th day of 7th lunar month), mid-autumn festival. The Hoa Lunar New Year lasts from those final days of one year to the 15th of January of the next year (lunar calendar). The festival to celebrate the year’s 1st moon is the most important Hoa event, where prominent religious and traditional cultural activities occur.

Beliefs: Ancestors, family spirits, guardian Gods (kitchen God, land God, and the God of wealth), and Buddha are popular worshipped figures. Pagodas and temples are widely developed. They are also the Hoa’s place for a social headquarters or a school, and where communal activities and Festivals take place.

Education: The Chinese language is taught and studied in grade school.

Artistic activities: The Hoa have varieties of traditional culture activities, such as singing, dancing, comedy, etc. they also play a wide range of instruments: several kinds of flutes, moon-shaped flute, zither, two-string Chinese violin, etc. skylark singing (san co) is enjoyed by many younger ones. The popular amateur cultural group that has traditionally been around is called “nhac xa”. Lion, tiger, and dragon dances are popular artistic shows, which are performed everywhere in big Festivals and on New Year’s.

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The Khmer ethnic group

Language: The Khmer speak a language belonging to the Mon-Khmer language group.

History: Before the 17th century, the Khmer and their culture dominated the Mekong delta.

Production activities: The Khmer are wet-rice cultivators who use the plough. In their near-perfect and efficient agricultural tool set, there are unique tools that are well suited to the geography and ecology of southern Vietnam. For example, instead of the plough, the Khmer use something called phang, which is better for cultivating soil that has salt and alum. There is a kind of scythe called pok to gather grass, a stick called so chal which is the reminder of the pointed digging stick used in the old days to make holes in the ground when transplanting the young rice plants. And finally, a reaping scythe-like tool, called kan dieu to cut rice plants.

The Khmer are very good at fishing, mat and textile weaving, knitting, making sugar from sugar palm-tree, and making pottery. The technique of pottery making is simple: the main tools are a stone (kleng), and a shaping table (cho). The Khmer don't use a turning wheel or a firing kiln. Khmer pottery wares are generally plain, with no color, and baked in low temperature, from 600C to 800C degrees. Potters produce mainly household wares; most popular are ovens (ca rong), and cooking pots (ca om). These are fondly used by the Vietnamese and Hoa people of the Mekong delta region.

Diet: The Khmer plant more than 150 different varieties of rice. They eat both regular and sticky rice. Daily foods also include shrimp, small fish, frogs, and vegetable. They process many kind of sauces: on pu sauce made from small shrimps, po inh sauce made from a kind of small fish, but the most famous one is a sauce made from a combination several kind of fish, small shrimps, rice flour, and salt. The Khmer love sour (tamarind), and spicy (pepper, garlic, vervain, hot pepper, carry) food.

Clothing: Before, both man and women wore wrapped skirts made from silk which they wove themselves. Today, young people like to wear trousers and shirts. Middle- aged and older people often like to wear loose-fitting black blouses and pants. Wealthy men sometimes wears loose- fitting white clothes, with a bandanna wrapped around their heads, or thrown over the shoulder. Only in weddings do young people wear traditional clothes. The groom wears a wrapped skirt with a red blouse that has standings collar and a line of buttons on the breast. On his left shoulder hung a long white scarf (kal xing) and a wedding knife (kam pach); its symbol is to, protect the bride. The bride wears a purple or pink skirt (xam pot), a long red blouse, with traditional wedding veil and hat. The Khmer's long dress for women is very close to that of the Cham: shirt without lap, bigger and longer, reaching below the knees, has a short collar, is cut a bit in the front enough to pull over the body, has tight sleeves, and is covered (from the underarm to the shirt's fringe) with four extra long pieces of cloth on both sides.

Housing: The Khmer live on the Mekong delta, especially around those districts of southwest Vietnam. Moreover, they centralize around these three areas; on the delta, along the coast, and on the southwest mountainous area near the Cambodia border. Before, the Khmer live on house-on-stills. Now, however, they live in houses built on the ground, with a simple straw roof and thatch wall.

Transportation: The Khmer use a cart and wagon on the road and on dry fields, and to transport agricultural products during harvest. Since they live in an environment filled with ditches and small canals, the Khmer use many*kind of boats: speed boat, sampan, and several local kinds of boats. However, a special kind of sampan called ngo (tuoc muaj, 30 meters-long, made by hopea wood, has from 30 to 40 rowers. On the bow and side of this sampan, there are pictures of the sea eagle, elephant, lion, and waves. This ngo sampan is used only on the occasion of greeting-the-moon ceremony, ok ang bok (on the October of the Lunar calendar). Otherwise, it is kept in temple like a sacred object.

Social organization: The Khmer have small monogamous families, and are economically independent. However, in some families, 3 to 4 generations live together. There are still remnants of matriarchy in the Khmer society. The Khmer have many different surnames.

There are surnames from the Nguyen dynasty like Danh, Kien, Kim, Son, Thach. There are surnames from the Vietnamese and Hoa (ethnic Chinese) like Tran, Nguyen, Duong, Truong, Ma, Li, ect. There are also purely Khmer last names such as U, Khan, Khum. Adultery, polygamy, incest, and divorce seldom happen, and are strict taboos.

Marriage: Parents arrange their children's marriage; though the young couple are involved in the discussion. Marriage has to go through 3 steps: match-making, proposing and engagement, and finally the wedding, which is celebrated at the bride's house. When all of this is done, the groom has to stay with the bride's family for some period. After couple of years, or when they have children, the young couple will live on their own, but still reside with the wife's family.

Funerals: The custom of cremation has been with the Khmer for quite some time. After cremating a dead person, the ash is kept in a tower called Pi chet day, which is built next to the main room of a temple.

Festivals: There are two main holidays in a year. The Chuon Chnam Thmay Festival is from the 1st to the 3rd day of "Chet" month (according to Buddhist calendar), approximately April in the western calendar. Greeting- the-moon Festival (Ok ang bok) is on the middle of Oct (lunar calendar). There is boat race between different villages on this occasion.

Beliefs: The Khmer worship Buddha, and their ancestors. There are also agricultural rituals, such as worshiping the field's God (Neak Ta xie), calling the rice's spirit (Ok Ang Leok), and the Moon (Ok Ang bok).

Education: When boys are old enough, their parents send them into pagodas to be monks for three to five years. There, they will study Buddhist sutras and learn Khmer language. Only after fulfilling this requirement, could they be secularized and get marriage.

Artistic activities: The Khmer have a treasure house of folklore literature, such as mythology, legends, fairy tales, fables, and funny stories. Of particular interest is a traditional theatre of Du ke, and Di ke: musicals influence from Indian and Southeast Asian traditions. The art and architecture of pagodas and towers are considered the Khmer's most special cultural trait. In the Therevada pagoda, the main statue of Shakyamuni Buddha is placed in the centre, there are also other statues of human and animal Gods surrounding him. These are remnants of Brahmanism and folklore religions.

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The Gia Rai ethnic group

Language: Giarai language is part of the family of Malayo- Polynesian languages.

History: The Giarai are one of the earliest residents of the mountainous area of Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands), and extending into parts of Cambodia. Early Giarai history refers to Potao ia (King of Water) and Potao pui (King of Fire), which have become cults to the Sky, the Earth, to pray for favorable rain and wind... Before the 11th century, both Ede and Giarai people were called Rang Dey. Between the 15th and 16th century, the Vietnamese feudal books of history and legends acknowledged terms of address of Thuy Xa (King of Water) and Hoa Xa (King of Fire). Only men of lineage Siu were allowed to carry these royal titles, and the women of the Ro Cham lineage were selected to be their spouses. It is likely that the word Pa tao is synonymous with Mtao of Cham people, Tao of Thai people and Thao of Lao people, all referring to a leader.

Production activities: The Giarai are primarily agriculturists. Land is the essential factor in production activities, being divided into two types: uncultivated owned lands namely De, tra, or Ion which are not yet cultivated and do not yet belong to anyone; and cultivated lands called Hma, owned by each household. Hma is part-garden, part swidden field, with land prepared by the slash-and-burn method, hoeing and ploughing the land, and using a digging stick to create holes into which seeds are inserted. In wet-rice fields, the Giarai use the hoe to turn up and plough into land (today the tendency is to use the plough drawn by two oxen).

Animal husbandry includes: buffaloes, oxen, horses, elephants, pigs, chickens and dogs, etc. In the exchange of precious objects, the buffalo has a value equivalent to gongs and jars. They also serve as offerings for sacrificial rituals. Family handicrafts include carpentry, forging and weaving. Artisans create back- baskets which are used for transporting goods and produce and for holding family possessions. The Giarai weave cloth using a style of broad-loom also found in Indonesia, producing wide, beautifully designed cloth.

Diet: The major foods are rice and its substitute, corn. Dishes are prepared using vegetables, salt and chili, vegetable soups, sometimes meat and fish. At meal times, the whole family sits around the dishes with each member having his/her own portion. At festivals, can (pipe) wine is consumed. The jar of wine is placed in the middle of the room, sur¬rounded by foods served in bowls, on plates and on banana leaves. Eating and drinking be¬gin, and a festive atmosphere encourages singing, dancing and gong playing. Many adults smoke.

Clothing: Daily wear for men includes a white and colorful striped loin-cloth (toai). In festivals, men wear a 4 m-long and 0.30m-wide indigo loincloth with designs on the hem and colorful loose fringes at both ends. A small black jacket, hemmed with linear designs of colorful threads down the sides is in the style of a poncho. The patao, or the village leader, is identified by his long, pullover indigo vest, which covers the buttocks. It has long sleeves and a red band from the collar to the chest. Under these range the buttons and a red cloth is patched to distinguish the shirt from others.
 

Women wear long indigo wrapper or sarong (1.40 m-long and 1 m-wide), hemmed with designs. The upper hem is designed with white or colorful strands. The wrapper is not sewn into a tube, but is simply a rectangle of cloth that is wrapped around the body. A short pullover vest or blouse is molded to the body; it has long sleeves and is black indigo in color. The sleeves are embroidered with colorful circle designs. Often men and women leave the upper torso unclothed, due to the hot weather much of the year.

Housing: The Giarai house is usually built on stilts and houses a matriarchal family that includes the husband, wife and children. The architecture is divided into two styles. The long house on stilts is called la-yun-pa which is 13.5 m-long and 3.5 m-wide at the average size. The house is split into two sections, mang and oc. The oc door opens to the north and is reserved for women, who are in charge in the matriarchal system. This large-style of house usually has two kitchens. A second style of house, called hdrung, is smaller (9 m-long and 3 m-wide). The height from the ground to the roof-top is not over 4.5 m. The main door, which opens to the north, runs straight to the floor for drying harvested crops. There are two windows at the sides of the door. This type of house has only one kitchen.

Transportation: The most popular means of transporting goods and produce is using the back-basket. In addition, the Giarai use horses and elephants for transporting goods and riding. Elephants are also used for pulling.

Social organization: The village (ploi or bon) is considered a residential place, as well as a community with a council led by elderly men (Phun po but). The council is charged with selecting the village leader (called oi po thun, Thap ploi, Khoa ploi) according to the Kdi or customary rights. Giarai tradi¬tional society is orga- nised into a territorial alliance (To ring). The chief of the To ring is a Khoa To ring, assisted by a Po phat kdi and a Thao kdi in his judgments. To ring is a community territory which becomes a military alliance in case of war.
 

Because of the matriarchal social structure, Giarai genealogy is based on the maternal line. People of the same bloodline make up families. Each family is divided into branches or splitted into two, alternate families. Each family and branch has a distinct totem. The Giarai are characterized by small matriarchal families, distinguishing them from the large matrilineal families of the Ede.

Marriage: Laws strictly ban the marriage between people of the same matriarchy branch and family. Girls and boys are free to choose their lovers at the age of 18-19, and girls take the initiative to choose their husband. Wedding customs are simple, and are not overly commercialized. The bride's family plays a positive role. The custom of remarriage with husband's brother or wife's Sister "when the husband or the wife is dead (levirate) is conserved. After the marriage, the husband must live in the wife's house, but the contrary is not acceptable.

Birth: The mother is greatly respected. When pregnant, a woman is not allowed to do hard work. She has a great fear of difficulties or death at delivery. When the child is born, the mother must follow strict dietary rules, like not eating rice cooked with water, but only eating com lam' (rice cooked in bamboo-tubes), vegetables replace meat...

Funerals: The Giarai people obey a custom that all people of the same matriarchy family must be buried in a common tomb when they die. A dead man must be buried at his mother's grave. In the common tomb, coffins are arranged one on the top of the other across, and then down alternatively. When the tomb is full, boards are set up for the next coffins before the ceremony is held to abandon the tomb. This ceremony is called Hoa lui, Thi nga or Bo thi, a great ritual in the mortuary process.
 

New house building: The new house building starts up with the formality of looking for land through the process of divination. The landlord puts 7 grains of rice on the ground and covers them with a bowl to learn the supernatural power of the Land God. After 3 days and 3 nights, the bowl is turned up, if the number of grains of rice remain the same, it is good. In contrast, if any grains of rice are missing, then the family must look for another place to build their home. After the divination process, the family celebrates for three days with singing and dancing. Another three-day festival is organized after the completion of the house.

Belies: The Giarai are animists, meaning everything is believed to have supernatural power. The Giarai worship different kinds of spirits (yang); among those are three the most often remembered in annual festivals or festivals held every few years: - Spirit Protector of the House (Yang Sang) is honored in the interior of the family house. The construction of a new house must be accompanied by the sacrifice of a buffalo and the planting of a kapok or silk-cotton tree. - Spirit of the Village (Yang ala bon) and the Spirit of Water (Yang iaJ, who protect the village and the life of its inhabitants. They are wor- shiped at the water's edge or the foot of a mountain. - Spirit of Kings (Yang po tao): The force that helps bring about favorable rain and wind and productive crops. The spirit is worshiped in an annual ceremony by the Spirit of Fire, the Spirit of Water and the Spirit of Wind (Ptao agin). In Giarai beliefs, the soul of the deceased is transformed into a spirit. Those who possess "magic powers" are called ma lai.

Festivals: In the past, men and women filed their upper teeth in order to give them an even appearance. The work was done by an old man called Po khoa tkoi, who used a blade file or pumice stone to even out the upper incisors. To prevent loss of blood, a plant called Tkoi am is used. Small girls, usually at the age of" 1-2 years, have their lobes pierced. Gradually, their lobes are gradually enlarged by seed piths so that when they grow up, they can wear ivory earrings as large as 6 cm in diameter. Men also have pierced ear lobes. The most important festivals are the abandonment of the tomb, the sculpting of statues for the funerary house, and the construction of a house. All are celebrated by eating, drinking, dancing and gong playing.

Calendar: The first month of the new year is counted beginning with the first rains, which general correspond to the month of April in the solar calendar. The twelfth Giarai month (held in March) is called Manning, a time when agricultural work is at a standstill and cultural rites and festivals are celebrated.

Education: Giarai people now use an alphabet based on the Latin script. Like all other ethnic groups in Vietnam, students study the national language of Vietnamese.

Artistic activities: The Giarai, people have a rich tradition of oral literature particularly epic poems like Dam San, Xinh Nha, Dam Di... These  are performed in the form of songs accompanied by the Tung nung stringed instrument. Certain characters of traditional Giarai popular dances recall inter- ethnic wars of the past. The most widely used musical instruments among the Giarai are the To rung, Krong put, and Tung nung.

Games: Young people enjoy playing tug-of-war during festivals

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The Ede ethic group

Language: The Ede language belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian group (Austronesia language family).

History: The Ede have long lived in the Tay Nguyen or high plateau region of central Vietnam. Traces of their origin are reflected in their epic poems, their architecture, and their popular arts. Up to today, the Ede community remains a society imprinted with matrilineal traditions.

Production activities:  The Ede’s principal food crop is rice, cultivated on swidden fields which, after a period of time, after left fallow before being exploited anew (cleared and burned). Each period of exploitation of a field varied between 5 and 8 years, based on the quality of the soil. Crop rotation and intercropping is practiced and there is only one wet rice harvest per year. Wet rice fields are found only among the Bih near Lac Lake.

The most numerous animals and poultry raised on the family farm are pigs, buffaloes, and chickens, but they are mostly used when there are ritual sacrifices to perform. The most widespread family handicrafts are the plaiting of household objects out of bamboo, the cultivation of cotton in order to weave cloths with the aid of looms similar to those found in Indonesia. Pottery and blacksmithing are not well-developed among the Ede. Barter was the most spread marketing practice in the former time.

Diet: The Ede eat rice cooked in clay pots or in large-sized metal pots. Ede food includes a spicy salt, game meat, bamboo shoots, vegetables and root crops abstained from hunting and gathering activities. Ruou can, fermented alcohol consumed using a bamboo drinking tube or straw, is stored and served in large earthen jars. Steamed sticky rice is reversed for ritual occasions. Men and women chew betel nut.

Clothing: Women wear a long cloth wrapper or sarong which reaches to the toes; their torso may remain unclothed or they may wear a short pullover vest. Men wear the loin cloth and a vest of the same style. When they are cold, men and wears wrap themselves in blankets. Ede jewelry includes glass beaded necklaces, rings made of copper or nickel that are worn around the neck, wrists, and ankles. Men are women alike have their teeth filed, blacken their teeth, and prefer distended earlobes. Head coverings include the turban and the conical hat.

Housing: The Ede primarily live in Dac Lac province, the south of Gia Lai province, and the west of  Phu Yen and Khanh Hoa provinces. The traditional Ede house is a construction whose length is reminiscent of the shape of a boat which is cut lengthwise or across giving it a shape of a reversed trapezoid. The structure rests on two rows of columns and not on the ground. The interior space is divided into two parts along the length. The first section is called Gah; it is both the reception area of the large matrilineal extended family. The other part, ok, is divided into many small rooms, each of which is reserved for a couple in the extended family.

Transportation: The plaited carrying basket with two shoulder straps remains the principal way for the Ede to carry their goods. In the Krong Buk region, the footed basket is the most widely used, but not all that popular nowadays.

Social organization: The Ede family is matrilineal: marriage is matrilocal, the children carry the name of the mother’s family, and the youngest daughter is the inheritor. Ede society is regulated by customary laws based on the matriarchal system. The community is divided into two lineages in order to facilitate marriage exchanges. The village is called buon and constitutes a unique kind of habitat. The inhabitants of the buon can belong to many branches of the two lineages, but there is also a nuclear branch. The head of village is the po pom ea or the master of the place of water. He directs, in the name of his wife, the affairs of the community.

Marriage: It is the women who take the initiative in matrimonial relations. She chooses the intermediary in order to ask for a young man in marriage, and once the couple marries, they live with the wife’s family. If one of the couple dies, the family of the deceased’s lineage must replace the spouse according to the chue nue (continuing the line) custom so that the surviving spouse is not alone. It also ensures that the thread of love tied between the two lineages, Nie and Mlo, do not rupture-in conformity to the teachings of the ancestors.

Funerals: The chue nue must be observed for each death. In the case of the death of old age or sickness, the funerals are organized at the home before the burial at the cemetery. In the past, if the people of one lineage died on dates near to those of the death of the same lineage, the deceased would be buried in the same grave. Consider that the other world is a reincarnation of the present world, the Ede share the deceased’s goods and dispose of them in the funerary structure. From the time that the funerary house is made, the celebration of the abandonment of the tomb takes place to put an end to the cares to the soul of the deceased and to his tomb.

New house: The construction of a new h is of interest to the entire village. Villagers help bringing material (wood, bamboo, straw) or help with manual labor in a system of exchanging labor (called H’rim Zit). The inauguration of the new house will take place when one has finished planting a row of trees along the wall. However, one can move well in advances of this date if the condition is not organized for the inauguration. Women, led by a khoa sang – the female head of the matrilineal family are the first ones authorized on walk on the new floor. They carry with them water and a fire in order to give coolness and heat to the new house. It is an Ede way to wish happiness on the members of the new house.

Festivals: Festivals are celebrated in the course of the last month of the lunar year, after the harvest time. After the festival of the new rice, h’ma ngat, it is the festival mnam thun, in honor of an abundant crop. It is the largest of the year, with wealthy people killing a buffalo or an ox as an offering, and others offering a pig or poultry. The spiritthe most important is Ae Die and Ae Du, the Creator, followed by the spirit of rice, yang mdie, and others. The Ede are animists. The agricultural spirit is the good spirits, while thunder, lightning, whirlwinds, tempests, and floods are the bad spirits. There are rituals that follow the course of a person’s life, rites that ask for happiness and health. The more rites there are, and especially those with the sacrifice of many buffaloes and oxen and great quantities of jars (for the fermentation of alcohol), the more the organizer are held in esteem by the villagers.

Calendar: The traditional agricultural calendar is fixed to the evolution of the moon. The 12-month year is divided into 9 periods corresponding to the 9 steps of agricultural work: clearing the fields, burning the vegetation, turning over the soil, wedding…each month is comprised of 30 days.

Education: Apprenticeship to a trade or craft and the dissemination, and oral transmission. Ede writing based on Latin script made its appearance in 1923.

Artistic activities: The khan is a long epic poem that one recounts in vivid exclamations and illustrates with gestures. There are alternating songs, riddles, genealogical histories…In addition, Ede literature is famous for unique myths, legend, folklores...Ede music is celebrated by the ensemble of 6 flat gongs, 3 gongs with projections, a gong for rhythm, and a drum. The gongs would never be absent from a festival or a cultural activity. Aside from the gongs, there are bamboo instruments and calabashes resembling those of other Ethnic groups in the Tay Nguyen region, though they are distinctively Ede.

Entertainment: Children like spinning top, kite flying, and flute playing. Stilt-walking is enjoyed by many. Hide and seek and lance or javelin throwing at a target are also currently enjoyed.

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