Khmer Museum Soc Trang

In 1936, in the city of Sóc Trăng, the French agreed to pay for a building where the Khmer community could meet. In 1941 it opened under the name Samacum Association. In Khmer, Samacum means a council, a gathering. Toward the end of French rule, it gave the monks and the Khmer people of southern Vietnam an official place of their own. It was a place to meet and to talk over the affairs of their community.

More than eighty years later, the same building still stands on Nguyễn Chí Thanh Street, about 500 meters from the well-known Khléang Pagoda. Today it is called the Khmer Culture Gallery, and it is part of the museum in Sóc Trăng, an area now within the city of Cần Thơ. It is one of the best places to understand the Khmer Krom, the Khmer who live in southern Vietnam.

Krom means south. The Khmer Krom are an officially recognized ethnic minority community of Vietnam. They share ancestors with the Khmer of Cambodia, going back to the ancient kingdoms of Phù Nam and Chân Lạp. But they have lived on the land of the Mekong Delta for many centuries, and they have an identity of their own. The old Sóc Trăng region has the most Khmer people of any place in the country, about 30 percent of its population.

One thing the museum shows is clothing, the kind worn to the pagoda and at festivals. Khmer women wear the Sampot, a garment wrapped around the body from the chest or the waist. Over one shoulder goes the Sbai, a long strip of silk. With gold and silver jewelry in Khmer patterns, the whole outfit has a beauty of its own that cannot be mistaken for any other culture's.

Khmer instruments are another highlight. There is the Chapey, a long two-stringed instrument tied to the storytelling singers who wandered from village to village. There is the Sa-dam drum, played at festivals. And there is the Pinpeat, an orchestra of five to nine instruments played together, the classical orchestra of the Khmer since the kingdom of Angkor.

Then there is a model of a ghe Ngo, a boat that deserves a long pause.

The ghe Ngo is 25 to 30 meters long, with a curved prow that sweeps upward. Its body is painted with dragons and the naga. In Khmer art, the naga is a serpent with many heads, sometimes shown spreading them as a protective hood over the Buddha. Fifty to sixty rowers sit in even rows on both sides. Every Khmer pagoda has one. Building it takes six to twelve months, from choosing a big trunk of the sao tree to carving, painting and decorating. It is not an ordinary means of getting around. It is the pagoda's emblem of honor. It is launched only for the Ok Om Bok festival, on the full moon of the tenth lunar month, to race on the Maspero River in Sóc Trăng.

Anyone who has watched a ghe Ngo race does not forget it. Fifty rowers dig in together to the beat of the drum, the long boat flies along the river, and tens of thousands of spectators cheer from both banks. It is the biggest Khmer festival in Sóc Trăng, and also a festival of offerings to the Moon, rooted in the wet-rice farming of the Khmer people.

Beside the ghe Ngo, the museum introduces two stage arts that belong to the Khmer. The Rô băm is a classical dance drama performed in masks, telling myths and old tales, solemn and majestic. The Dù kê is a witty folk comedy about daily life, meant to teach as well as entertain, lighter and closer to the audience. The two exist side by side and serve different audiences, from ancient times to today.

Three great Khmer festivals are shown in detail through photographs and models. Chol Chnam Thmay falls from April 13 to 15 and is the Khmer New Year. People build mounds of sand, bathe the Buddha and hold ox races. Sen Dolta comes in the ninth lunar month and is a three-day festival of offerings to ancestors. Ok Om Bok comes on the full moon of the tenth lunar month. It is the festival of offerings to the Moon, with flattened rice, called cốm dẹp, and water lanterns.

The old Samacum building, now the Khmer Culture Gallery, is more than a place to look at objects. It is proof that a community has lasted. It began as the Samacum Association in 1941, became the Khmer Traditional House after 1975, and was the Khmer Culture Museum in 1992. Now it is the gallery. The building has changed its name many times, and the Khmer people of Sóc Trăng are still here. The Sa-dam drum still sounds in the exhibits, and the ghe Ngo still waits for the water to rise.