An evening at the Temple
One of the things we love most about designing journeys in Vietnam is introducing travelers to traditions they would probably never find on their own.
A few weeks ago, while visiting a small temple ceremony on the outskirts of Saigon, we spent the evening with artisan Ngoc Dao, who has practiced Bong Roi dance since she was fourteen years old. As local families gathered around the temple courtyard, musicians slowly began playing traditional drums and percussion while incense filled the air.
Then the performance started.
Balancing trays of flowers and ceramic bowls on her forehead, Ngoc Dao moved gracefully through the courtyard with a mix of dance, ritual, and performance that felt both intimate and completely unfamiliar at the same time.
A folk tradition of Southern Vietnam
Bong Roi is one of Southern Vietnam’s oldest folk traditions, often performed during ceremonies dedicated to female deities known locally as Ba. Combining ritual singing, graceful dance, live percussion music, and impressive balancing acts, performers move through the temple courtyard carrying trays of flowers, ceramic bowls, silk scarves, decorated ceremonial towers, and offerings balanced carefully on their forehead or head.
Many of the props come from everyday Southern Vietnamese life, simple objects transformed into sacred offerings through movement and ritual. Part spiritual offering and part community gathering, Bong Roi remains deeply connected to local life in the Mekong Delta and Southern provinces, where these ceremonies are still held to pray for peace, health, prosperity, and protection for the community.
What makes it especially fascinating for many travelers is how raw and human it still feels. The performances do not happen inside polished theatres, but inside local shrines surrounded by neighbours, food stalls, children running around, and elders quietly watching from plastic chairs.
Ngoc Dao told us something we kept thinking about long after the evening ended:
“This art only stays alive if people continue gathering together like this.”
A quiet cultural layer of Vietnam
Historically, Bong Roi has also long been connected with Vietnam’s LGBTQ+ community. Many performers were men with feminine expression or queer artists who found acceptance and identity within the ritual world of Southern folk culture. Long before modern conversations around gender became more open, traditions like this quietly created space for softness, grace, and self expression to exist naturally within community life.
For travelers interested in culture beyond museums and landmarks, experiences like this offer a different way to understand Vietnam. Not through performances created for tourism, but through traditions that are still genuinely lived by local communities today.
This is also one of the special cultural encounters we can arrange privately for travelers looking to explore the deeper cultural layers of Southern Vietnam with local insight and respectful access.
