There are so many festivals in Vietnam including a folk festival, special art performances, the inauguration, ecological tours, a traditional rowing contest on the Son River, and buffalo fighting festival ...
Buffalo Fighting Festival is a traditional festival of Vietnam attached to a Water God worshipping ceremony and the “Hien Sinh” custom to show marital spirit of the local people in Do Son, Haiphong.
A good fighting buffalo must not be castrated and must have one or all of the following: big horns, a large neck, short legs, red eyes, thick cilia, strong and good-looking teeth, and a strong and red scrotum (affectionately dubbed the “gear box”).
Each buffalo has a distinct method of attack: charging headlong into an opponent; lifting an adversary onto its hind legs, exposing the vulnerable underbelly; or jabbing the eyes, ears or neck with its horns. Determining the loser its simple – it’s the buffalo that dies or runs away first.
In one of the fights, a buffalo is killed by a ho lao strike, prompting festival organisers to remove the carcass in a truck. Some of the fights get out of control.
Some buffaloes visibly despise the violence. When they are supposed to charge one another, the more docile opponents just nuzzle. But this is rare – more often than not, the green grass of the field is covered in blood by the end of a fight. The fiercer the clash, the louder the applause from the crowd.
Unfortunately for the buffalo, this good treatment is short-lived. At the end of the festival, all of the contenders – regardless of whether they win or lose – are slaughtered and fed to the crowd. Although it may seem strange to eat the entertainment, village residents say the meat is some of the best they’ve ever tasted.
