One of my favorite activities on my recent Vietnam vacation was watching a “water puppet” show. According to the program, you haven’t really visited Vietnam until you’ve watched the water puppets!
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| The outside of the theater. It seated several hundred people. |
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| The puppeteers stood behind the green curtains, waist-deep in water. I can only assume they controlled the puppets through horizontal rods attached to the puppets’ lower ends. Each little skit portrayed some aspect of traditional Vietnamese life and was accompanied by live music (the musicians sat to the left and right, just off the edges of the picture). This one was about ploughing the fields with oxen. |
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| At first it surprised me that the water was so dirty. But I think they did that on purpose so the audience couldn’t see into it. That way, it functioned almost like another curtain – the puppets could disappear into and rise from the water as well as swimming in it and seeming to walk on its surface. |
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| This skit was entitled “Two Unicorns Playing with a Ball”. Obviously the Vietnamese idea of a unicorn is very different from the Western kind! |
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| This cute skit was called “Fishing”. |
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| At the end, the puppeteers all came out to take a bow. |
Click here to read my post about arrival in Ho Chi Minh and our hotel, the Golden Dragon
… or my blog post about seeing the sights in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)
… or the one about my boat tour of the Mekong Delta
… or the Cu Chi Tunnels (from the Vietnam War)