Long Sơn island

Writing the entries about Đà lạt suddenly reminded me of a day trip at the beginning of April on the Hùng Kings (plural intended!) holiday. The weekend is also memorable because Vũng Tàu and much of the area inland was lashed by a typhoon on Sunday, and our trip on Saturday was almost cancelled because we had had such heavy rain early in the morning.

Long Sơn island is a large island in the waterways between Vũng Tàu and Bà Rịa, located in one corner of Vĩnh Gành Hào, the bay that you cross if you take the ferry between Saigon and Vũng Tàu. The island, or at least the floating seafood restaurants near it, were the chosen destination for the ILA outing on liberation day national holiday in September 2009. At the time Stuart from ILA told us teachers that Long Sơn is famous for monks with long beards but as we didn't go anywhere near them, I totally forgot about it.

This time on Hùng Kings holiday, Bảo's colleagues decided on a trip to the island (I think partly because I had suggested it as a day trip destination to him some time before). To get there we hired a taxi. This sounds expensive but because it dropped us off for lunch, returned to Vũng Tàu and then agreed to return when called, it was probably the most cost-effective means of transport we could use.

As a result of this visit I discovered Nhà Lớn - Long Sơn's Big House. Briefly, because I haven't found much information about it,  Long Son big house was established in the early of 20th century by Le Van Muu, a follower of Tu An Hieu Nghia religion. The religion actually comes from An Giang province in the Mekong delta. Following a Google translation of a Wikipedia entry in Vietnamese, it seems that the religion is an off-shoot of Buddhism and had the aim of using simple ideas and words to bring Buddhism to ordinary people such as farmers and fishermen. It also seems to combine ideas from Taoism and Confucianism and, in Long Sơn to revere or at least memorialise the founder of the house and his family.

Remarkably I have discovered an academic paper on Nhà Lớn Long Sơn, so I am posting a link to it here (and hoping to get time to read it thoroughly!).

The followers of Ông Tran in Long Son still follow a basic habit of wearing black áo bà ba costume (the shirt and trousers traditionally worn by South Vietnamese people), walking on bare feet and keeping their hair in buns. This habit with hair applies to both men and women, which explains Stuart's reference to long-haired monks. They also follow a strict daily routine to cook and offer food to worship and clean in the temple. They consider Nhà Lớn to be their sacred common house and live in rooms spread out in the few hectares of land that the Nhà Lớn is located on.

One of the websites I have based this information on records that
 "The locals still preserve the traditional positive characters of honesty and hospitality of the Southern people, for they always invite visitors to Nha Lon for free meals. Those meals are used first to worship and are simple, but still delicious. Visitors also have a chance to taste other specialties at Long Son."
To be honest, I felt that it was a bit of a pain for the residents to have to meet with so many visitors (due to the holiday) and we found that the guides who took us around either didn't have anything to say (I am relaying the report by the Vietnamese speakers of our party when I say this) or didn't want to talk about the house. We were not allowed to take any photos of the interior, but it was a veritable museum in parts and interesting to explore. The pictures  give an idea of the architecture.

Long Sơn is also well-known for gà ta, which in Australian English would be known as free-range chicken. Just why the meat of this chicken is so desirable is a mystery to me. It is some of the toughest meat on earth! However, in terms of animal welfare the lifestyle of the gà ta is much preferable to its cousin gà đông nghiệp (literally industrial chicken), and many people do not want to eat the meat of the latter. For example, Bảo's mother only buys gà ta.

So, although we were headed to a seafood restaurant and in Australia it is just "not on" to bring in food from outside, we purchased a number of grilled chickens then headed off to meet the boat that would transport across the channel to one of the floating restaurants off-shore from Long Sơn island. Actually, as it turns out we did have to pay for bringing in our own food, but we also indulged in prawns and oysters, too.