Vietnamese Water Puppet Theater

Last Sunday, one of my old teammates who is now based here, invited us to watch the water puppet show with her son Harry. The water puppet show is also well recommended by TripAdvisor, but everything was in Vietnamese so it was really nice to have hosts who were translating for us. If you are going to the same place, you can refer to this post for the subtitles.

Me with Tran, Harry and Sofia.
We arrived in time for us to get front row seats for the 10am show.

The water pupper theater.
The art is from the Li Dynasty in the 11th century when the locals used to entertain themselves in the fields after harvest season when the floods came.
Disclaimer: I may be inventing some of this. Just imagine that these are subtitles from a pirated dvd. 

The show starts with the fire breathing dragons.
Water Puppets + fireworks = really cool!

I had to drag Sofia from bed so she's only half awake.
She used my shawl because she thought we were in the splash section.

The second act are 2 fishes running after a ball.

They volley it to each other by using their tails.

The third act is when the ducks come out.

These are the farmers that own the ducks.

They're trying to protect the ducks from the hungry fox.
Can you spot him?

Like every Bollywood movie, there's a fight scene just before the singing... joke!

However, in this story, the fox gets to eat the duck... so no singing or dancing.

The next story is when the fish come out.

There are two fishermen in their boat.

There is also this fisherman who only has a wooden trap.

While this fisherman has only a shallow basket.

The puppet show is quite funny, it's shallow basket man who catches all the fish.

Then there's a part when the children come out to swim.
They also do stunts by standing on top of each other and jumping into the water.

The finale is when the four mythical animals come out.
This is the phoenix and the golden turtle.

The fire breathing and water sprouting dragon comes out again.

The fourth mythical animal is the unicorn.
He's in between the dragon and the phoenix.

The puppeteers who were behind the curtain.

Bye!!! That was a really good 30 minute show.

The Water Pupper Theater is in the Historical Museum at the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Gardens at 2 Nguyen Binh Khiem Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City.

You can tour the museum before or after the puppet show.

Sofia with her love of museums had to take a quick look.
Real elephant tusks.

Buddha with a thousand hands and eyes.
She also has eyes in each hand.
Again, I repeat, please don't take my word for it.

This reminded me of the rosetta stone.

This is the temple across the Historical Museum.

This is the historical museum from the outside.

A closer look at the group.

Thank you very much for taking us Tran and Harry.

We really enjoyed that! :) Just Saying.