Betel Nut Tradition and Vietnamese Love Story Folklore

What is a betel nut? It is a combination of betel leaves, areca nuts, and lime offered during Vietnamese traditional wedding ceremonies. It is known as “Trầu Cau” in Vietnamese. Trầu is the betel leaves with a heart shape. It has a stingy and spicy flavor. Cau is the areca nuts which has a bitterly […]

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Beautiful women of Vietnam – blackened teeth tradition

There is a Vietnamese old traditional phrase that said “Cái Răng Cái Tóc Là Góc Con Người” which means “your teeth, your hair is your origin” according to Google Translation. To me, it also means “the teeth, the hair are the foundation of a person.” This phrase resonates with me. When smile, the teeth shines […]

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Vietnamese Religions

For the first ten years of my life growing up in Vietnam, I was most familiar with Buddhism (Đạo Phật). During those times, there was this distant bell ringing in my ears every Sunday morning down several blocks.  I always wondered what that was. One December morning, I remembered following the bell chime and came […]

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Vietnam Geography

Vietnam has a loosely shape of an “S” with a distance from north to south of 1650 km (1025 miles) and 50 km (31 miles) wide at the narrowest point of the “S”. According to Wikipedia.org, Vietnam is approximately 331,212 square kilometers (127,8812 square miles). To give us some visual reference on size and weather […]

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Vietnam Culture and Tradition

There are many traditions in the Vietnamese culture. There are several traditions that Nguyễn Vӑn family partake. Some of those traditions are polygamy, Giỗ, and names. Polygamy stood out the most in our past family tree. Polygamy no longer exists at this current time in Vietnam. However, it was a common practice during and before […]

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Vietnamese People and the Language

The Vietnamese are rather small people in stature and round in facial features. On average, Vietnamese range from 4 feet to 5 feet 6 inches tall. We have distinctive almond shaped eyes with doubled eyelids,  wide face, dark skin and wide nose with low nose bridge. We are not well known as football players or […]

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Nguyễn Văn Family Reunion

Where to begin the Nguyễn Family’s epic journey to America so that we all can share our stories with families and friends? I’ve been starting, stopping, starting, stopping and procrastinating my writing for at least 10 years. The Nguyễn Văn Family Reunion will serve as an excellent beginning point for the start of my journal. […]

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