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white-tulips · 3 years

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well, since it’s 5 in the morning I think now’s the perfect time to ramble about my thoughts re: OMORI vs Yume Nikki game design, Black Space, and how trying to copy something successful kind of sets you up for missing the mark

these are thoughts I’ve been stewing in since january, I don’t want people to forget that I have a lot of opinions about OMORI as a game

(firstly, I’m sorry if this is all over the place or not worded well. it is 5AM)

I’ll preface this by saying that these are merely my opinions. I’m specifically going to be focusing on one aspect of game design here, so if you’re curious about any of my other OMORI game design opinions they’re scattered around my blog and are not hard to find tbh

okay so my thoughts about this are mostly Black Space exclusive, and considering that’s one of the climaxes of the game this might be a bit of a spicy subject to talk about KJFGHKFJG but I am passionate about good game design okay. especially in psychological horror RPG games. (also throwing out there jic that I don’t think OMORI is a bad psychological horror. pls reference this post)

(also want to say that I genuinely like Black Space. okay? okay)

so this was something that I was talking about with a couple of friends back when I first finished OMORI around the beginning of january. actually, at this point I hadn’t even played Yume Nikki yet, but when I did finally play it recently my thoughts on this were 100% solidified

essentially, our thoughts on this can be boiled down to how Black Space was trying too hard to be Yume Nikki, but didn’t grasp exactly what made Yume Nikki so impactful in the first place

obviously taking inspiration from something you like and wanting to rework it into your own creation is normal, good, and even encouraged! however, the most crucial thing with that is the “reworking” part. when being inspired by something, the goal is to take what you loved, and didn’t love, and mold it into something entirely new. it shouldn’t be “well I like this thing, and this thing did it like this so I’ll try to do it like that too” because it’s just not going to work. (this is actually an all around issue I have with OMORI, not just Black Space, but more on that later)

so to me, a good 50% of Black Space came of feeling kind of... eh...? it was like... you have 50% that feels so well thought out and meaningful, and then 50% that’s there just to. be there. and be like Yume Nikki, I guess. even before I played Yume Nikki, I couldn’t even remember some of the rooms in Black Space existed until I replayed it again, which is a shame because Black Space is the type of area where everything should leave an impact

now I want to talk about the game design itself-

Yume Nikki is a game about experiences, and atmosphere. there’s limitless area to explore, so much so that it feels endless. there are so few things to interact with that sometimes it feels like you’re doing nothing at all. all you have is aimlessly wandering these huge areas, taking in the sights, and listening to vague sounds and music in the background that are often just a few seconds of audio played on loop. (this is one of my favorite OST in the game. having this be all you hear for 30 minutes as you walk around in a looping forest really does things to your head)

it uses all of these elements to make you feel lost, confused, and very alone. you’re just trapped in a dream, where even with all the space in the world to explore, the lack of anything to do makes it feel suffocating. even the small area you have in the waking world is designed in such a way that feels cramped and destitute-

Yume Nikki is a perfect example of “less is more” and “show, don’t tell.”

then take OMORI, which doesn’t really know how to balance those things with it’s tendency to try and shove too much in. for instance, think about the over abundance if NPCs with irrelevant fluff dialogue. it was all too much and so dull it got to a point I stopped reading most of them altogether

(and something important to note I think, is that the general feeling of Yume Nikki is the same throughout the entire game. the tone never really changes, and neither do the expectations. OMORI, however, tends to just drop things on you out of nowhere. and that’s not necessarily a bad thing! it works for a lot of different sections of the game, I’ll say.

however, Black Space was different. it’s kind of like, it just drops you in there and expects you to understand the way it works, despite the fact that all of the other horror segments lead you to have a completely different set of expectations for what you should be doing/feeling. it’s like shifting you into another game entirely, and it’s almost immersion breaking. up until this point, OMORI was not the same type of “show don’t tell” type of game, so suddenly jumping to attempt to do that can make it lose some of it’s impact)

like I mentioned before, Black Space is designed in a way that’s meant to mimic Yume Nikki. and I think we need to ask ourselves “just because we can do this, does it mean that we should?” again, taking inspiration isn’t a bad thing, but it’s the execution that matters

and here’s where my biggest issue actually lies, I suppose. it’s the fact that OMORI has multiple instances of trying to take inspiration from other things, and failing because it’s trying too hard to copy, not rework. it’s just most obvious because of Black Space, I think. because, like I said before, a good half of Black Space is just trying to be Yume Nikki without giving it any OMORI original flavor, and the fact that it’s trying to be something else is immersive breaking as hell to me

for example, take the red mazes. I don’t think the idea to incorporate it into OMORI was bad, but. you can plainly see when you compare the two maps that nothing was really reworked, made more interesting, or even given a OMORI flavored twist-

(Yume Nikki-1 ; OMORI-2)

another instance is less about the game design itself, but surprising/not-surprisingly, it actually has to do with OST

this is something my friend was telling me, because I myself have not read Umineko, but there are OST in OMORI blatantly trying to mimic songs from that VN, even down to their names

the biggest offender imo is GOLDENVENGEANCE which is a decent song, I won’t say it isn’t, but compare it to it’s Umineko inspiration, Golden Slaughterer

it’s just another unfortunate instance of “this thing I like is good, so I’ll try to copy it!” with no clear grasp on why it’s successful and it’s disappointing. that’s really the only word I have for it at this point, disappointing

and the reason it’s most disappointing is because of things in OMORI that are obvious inspiration, but were reworked so well

let’s take this other Umineko OST, Worldend Dominator. this is a brilliant song, and it’s really fun to listen to. and, it very clearly inspired beloved World's End Valentine

World’s End Valentine slaps. it’s great. it takes aspects of Worldend Dominator and shifts them around to be a unique and fun piece of music that also fits into OMORI perfectly.

something important to note about this, is that World’s End Valentine and GOLDENVENGEANCE were written by two different composers. what this makes clear to me is that there were people on the OMORI dev team that were better at reworking ideas than others. because, despite a lot of the criticisms I was talking about, there are things in OMORI that are obvious references that I love and think are great!

like this one, the most pointed out nod to Yume Nikki-

I think it’s great. it’s taking a very memorable bit of imagery from Yume Nikki, and giving it a reference while also giving it it’s own deeper meaning beyond just the aesthetics of it. it’s just good, I love it

and yeah, not all of Black Space feels like one giant copy of Yume Nikki. there are plenty of doors that I think take the same aimless, empty, and unsettling feelings and use them in a new way that feels more grounded in OMORI. my personal favorite door is the “Sunny... I love you.” room.

actually, funnily enough, the area in OMORI that felt the most like Yume Nikki to me wasn’t in Black Space at all. it was actually the snowy area right before Snowglobe Mountain. something about the vast empty space, simple yet atmospheric OST, and little things to find scattered around just gave me a nice Yume Nikki vibe, but mixed with the OMORI style (hell, the OST there and the one for the snowy area in Yume Nikki even have a pleasantly similar vibe, and not in the “oh this is a copy” way [X] [X])

gosh, I feel like if I keep talking I might end up going in circles more than I already have

hopefully my words made sense!! I’d love if anything I said resonated with anyone aha. I just hope that I’m not coming across as hating on something because I’m biased towards something else or something... almost all of the critiques I have about OMORI come from a place of genuine interest

thank you if you read all of this!

#text #omori #omori spoilers #oh no tumblr user white tulips made another opinion post that took 3 hours to type #meta

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years

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Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep22

All of this ‘the culprit’s motives are super shallow and they’re just unhealthily obsessive’ discourse is giving me war flashbacks to . . . . basically every other part of the entire When They Cry franchise, lol.

Thoughts under the cut. [Plus spoilers for Umineko]

I feel like at the end of the day we’re all just gonna have to agree to disagree about how we feel about how Ryukishi is handling Satoko as the culprit here, since I don’t really think any amount of social media posts detailing our interpretations of her character are gonna change anyone’s minds, lol. But I’m still gonna give my thoughts on her anyway because it’s fun, even if I’m basically just preaching to the choir.

To be honest, this feels pretty much in line with how Ryukishi already wrote characters like Takano and Beatrice, in terms of them having unhealthy obsessions that lead them to mass-murder. The amount of violence Satoko has caused is arguably worse than either of them, but they’re all pretty awful if you think about the reality of what they all did as villains.

Sorta like with how a lot of the old-school Umineko discourse went, I think people are too focused on the whole idea of Satoko hating studying, and ignoring everything else about her character and her circumstances. Although even then I feel like people are being kinda unfair toward Satoko about how strongly she feels about academics, but maybe I’m just biased because of my own history with schooling and the intense levels of anxiety and self-hatred that can go along with it.

Plus the fact that Satoko already has a long history of sever abandonment issues, and has basically always had HS that amplified her feelings of paranoia and persecution. It’s pretty obvious at this point that she never really got ‘cured’ in the first place, though it’s less important to think about HS as an in-universe fictional disease with it’s own rules, and more important to just think about it as a representation of real-life mental illnesses which aren’t bound by the rules of made-up brain-worm parasites and aliens or whatever.

Also, the Satoko that started all this looping in the first place was one who never dealt with Teppei returning to the village, and thus never went through her whole character arc related to that. The series is kinda ambiguous about how it handles the idea of people’s character development carrying over between loops, but it explains a lot about Satoko’s attitude here if you go with the idea that she never really had to overcome any of her trauma or coping mechanisms in the “good ending timeline”, and this is the consequence of that taken to it’s logical extreme. The idea of her view of the world being skewed by the fact that she only remembers the “good ending timeline” is also kinda lamp-shaded by the part where she hears about Rika’s looping and is like “oh yeah, that’s the month where we had that cool action movie stand-off with the Mountain Dogs :)”. By the time she really got to understand exactly what was going on beyond the specific timeline she had experienced, she was already way over the edge.

I get why people don’t like the idea of Gou ‘tainting’ the VN’s happy ending, but I honestly like the idea that it’s examining the consequences of how Matsuribayashi was such an overly-specific timeline where basically nothing bad happened and everyone just banded together to beat Takano. It kinda glossed over a lot of the personal problems that the main cast had in the rest of the series, and this really goes to show the effects of some of that stuff not getting properly addressed. It also reminds me that Minagoroshi is a timeline that even in the VN, Rika completely lost her memories of, so I can see how even post-Matsuribayashi she might have never let Satoko know about the details of that one timeline where she overcome her abuse.

I also feel like it only really got to this point because of Featherine’s meddling. In the original Matsuribayashi timeline, Satoko just started drifting away from Rika and ended up wandering into the Saiguden and meeting Featherine before anything actually serious happened in that timeline. I think that if she had just been left to her own devices and that timeline had just kept going, Satoko probably would have either found a way to reconnect with Rika, or they would have just slowly drifted apart for good. But then Satoko got given the power to time travel, and only started going off the deep end after going through another five years of identical suffering.

And on that whole note, it reminds me of how in Umineko, Lambda had a whole conversation about the idea of an abused person becoming an abuser themself if they’re given the power to lash out. Which is basically what’s happening here. Satoko is being given the tools to completely detach herself from reality and try as many times as she likes to get what she wants.

Which also reminds me that this episode in particular REALLY lays the Umineko parallels on thick, lol. Particularly the whole ‘Satoko is turning into Lambda’ thing, which feels just about 100% confirmed now. They straight up have Featherine bring up the exact same ‘monkeys using a typewriter’ analogy to explain Rika’s situation that Lambda uses in Umineko to explain Bern’s situation.

I know a lot of people don’t like the increasingly blatant Umineko tie-ins, and that a lot of people still think it might just be misdirection, but considering how much stuff in Gou has been surprisingly straightforward and predictable, I think it’s pretty much exactly what it seems to be.

Though to be more specific, this is probably more about the start of Lambda and Bern’s relationship, and their appearances in Umineko, rather than the very first origins of them as individuals, if that makes sense. Obviously the concept of Bernkastel as an identity has been around since Higurashi itself, and we’ve known for a long time that Lambda was the one who originally gave Takano her blessing of certainty, but we’ve never known the full details of how those two started their relationship, and Featherine’s whole series of name-drops in the last episode makes it seem like Lambda as a meta individual more or less already exists, with Satoko being an iteration of her. So I think they both technically already exist, but this is how the two of them come into contact and start their whole unhealthily obsessive relationship.

I guess it’s still possible that, even if she’s already existed for a long time as a meta individual, she hasn’t actually come up with the name ‘Lambdadelta’ for herself yet, and this might be where she does so. Even with the list of names Featherine referenced, she didn’t technically bring up Lambda’s name directly. So in that sense this might be ‘Lambda’s’ origin story, even if she already exists.

Considering how basically the entire story at this point seems to be acting in service of setting up the whole LambdaBern relationship dynamic no matter what, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this will end with Satoko and Rika fully embracing their codependency and mutually ascending to the meta plane so they can stay together once and for all. There might still be human versions of them that stay behind in the real world and continue living normal lives, though.

At the very least, it feels like that’s the logical outcome of the whole Chekov’s Sword Fragment plot device that’s been hanging in the background for ages now. I think it’ll just be the in-universe explanation they use to show the mechanics of how exactly that process works. It’ll probably be used to ‘sever’ Satoko and Rika’s meta consciousnesses from their physical bodies and allow them to basically become witches.

Mainly I just can’t really see this having a ‘happy ending’ at this point, aside from the whole idea that maybe the severing process leaves behind ‘normal’ versions of the two of them who stay in Hinamizawa and go back to their normal lives. I dunno if that’d make people happy, but it’d at least be a way for Ryukishi to have his cake and eat it too, lol.

I just don’t think that there’s any real chance of this ending with them just talking to each other and agreeing to put an end to all this, though. For one thing that’d just feel kinda anticlimactic and honestly make Gou’s story feel even MORE pointless, if it just ends with literally the exact same ending as the VN with nothing really being changed. But I also feel like Featherine wouldn’t be willing to just let Satoko ‘give up’ without having one of them definitively win their current game. In general I just feel like Ryukishi should just commit to the story he’s setting up at this point, instead of just backing out at the last minute and circling everything back to the same ending we already had like nothing in Gou ever happened. If we’re gonna have this whole new story to begin with, it should at least have some lasting consequences.

Anyway, I think in the next episode we’re finally going to loop back to the Damashi arcs and see how they played out. At this point I don’t care too much about getting answers to the ground-level mysteries of those arcs, and I doubt the story will spend much time on that, but I’m curious to see how it progresses Satoko’s whole development through these loops, since I think she goes through some changes with her motives and methods over the course of them.

Specifically I think that the actual experience of being physically present in her own set of loops and causing so much pain and suffering started to get to her, and she might have almost given up in her own way during Tataridamashi and wanted to just stay in that arc, but things went south anyway. Maybe, if that’s what happened, Featherine basically let her know that she won’t let her give up, and will force her to keep looping until one of them ‘wins’ no matter what. Either way, I think that arc was a turning point for her. Like how she asked Featherine to arrange things so that Satoko can make sure that she and Rika’s loops are synced up, she probably asked Featherine after that arc to change the rules again so that Rika will start remembering the details of her deaths. At this point it’s pretty obvious that the Hanyuu fragment Rika was talking to earlier in Gou was more or less just Featherine putting on an act and manipulating her, so the scene of Hanyuu giving her the power to remember her deaths was probably just Featherine telling her about the rule change.

And going by how the Nekodamashi arc went immediately afterward, I think that rule change was related to Satoko becoming increasingly desperate to put an end to the loops as soon as possible. And considering how she was willing to spend so much time reviewing Rika’s hundred years of looping just to prepare for this, it’d make sense to me if she becomes desperate because she basically gives up, but realizes that she isn’t actually allowed to give up, so she has to try and make Rika give in as fast as possible. Either way it’s pretty obvious that Satoko’s methods start becoming more violent in that arc, and she basically tries to brute-force Rika into submission, leading up to the loop where she just spawn-camps her and straight up starts screaming at her to just stay in the village while tearing out her guts. It’s still possible that her attitude in that loop was just one big act, but I think that was the result of her being genuinely desperate to just have Rika give up once and for all, and her starting to crack under the pressure of doing all of these things with her own hands across so many loops.

So now we’ll just have to see how the confrontation between them at the end of Nekodamashi plays out once we get back to it. In the long run I just think it’ll lead to the ending I talked about before, with them using the sword on each other. The exact nuances of how that sorta ending might play out are up in the air, though.

Either way, I think there’s probably enough time to wrap up all that in two more episodes, but there’s still reason to believe that there might be some kind of sequel in the works. I don’t really want to bet on it, though, so I’m just gonna assume that there’s two episodes left and base my theories on that. In which case I think the next episode will go over the Damashi arcs and end with Rika and Satoko’s confrontation at the end of Nekodamashi, and then the final episode will wrap everything up. Considering that they both more or less know exactly what’s going on with each other by that point, there isn’t really that much that needs to be wrapped up. I think that will be the final loop we get, so it’ll all just come down to how their confrontation plays out, and what decision they come to about how to handle each other.

I honestly don’t really know how I think a full sequel would go, if it’s at least one cour long. Assuming that it’s not just a new Umineko anime that more or less continues Rika and Satoko’s arc via Lambda and Bern, but is a straight up ‘Higurashi Gou Season 2′. It just feels like there isn’t really that much that needs to be done to wrap things up, now that everything’s being laid out in the open, and Rika and Satoko are both aware of each other’s looping. They might switch it up so that they both end up teaming up to take down Featherine, but I kinda doubt that’ll happen.

I’m still hoping this is leading into some kind of new Umineko anime though, lol. That feels like it’d be the main reason for putting so much effort into this whole elaborate LambdaBern origin story we’re getting here.

I’ve heard rumors that there’s been listings for a 25th episode of Gou, so it’s possible that rather than another full season, there’s just one extra episode at the end. I’m not exactly sure what the point of doing one extra unannounced episode at the end would be, though. It might end up being a bridge between Gou and a new Umineko anime.

At the very least, if it’s just ‘Satokowashi Part 8′, it makes me wonder why they haven’t announced it yet, and why they didn’t just split that arc into two BD volumes with four episodes each, instead of having it be one big volume with seven episodes, and one random episode at the end for some reason. But if it’s more of an epilogue or a bridge of sorts between Gou and something else, with Gou’s story concluding with episode 24, then I guess it’d make some sense to do it that way.

We also know there’s gonna be a panel for Gou at a convention around when ep24 comes out, so if anything gets announced it’ll probably happen there.

Anyway, this whole episode can be summed up as “Satoko does a gay little psychological torture that pisses Rika off”, in the most morbidly entertaining way possible, lmao.

#murasaki reblogs #higurashi #higurashi gou

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blognhungdongkhongaulove · 3 years

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“Những Dòng Không Đâu” is the real and full name of my blog.

I’m posting today something about my home town, Hue, Vietnam. The ancient royal capital is well known and watered by The Perfume River (Sông Hương). The Perfume River

by tôn thất tuệ Around the world, many rivers become the embodiment of their hosts: Thames of London, Seine of Paris, Danube of Vienna, Moldau of Prague, to mention a few…and Beethoven never forgot his 'father' Rhine. In my case, the Perfume River incarnates the City of Huế, ancient royal capital of Vietnam. She is, herself, nourishing the mind of generations after generations; she is spelling the term of endearment. In 1802, after pacifying the whole country to become the first king of the Nguyễn House, Nguyễn Phúc Ánh settled down in Huế and sped up the construction of the royal citadel. Why did he choose a narrow strip of land pushed to the sea by the Annamite Chain, the like of La Sierra, USA? Historians provided with many convincing theories. But for the Hueist who wish to claim the famous emperor to their camp, the prime reason dwelt in his love of the Perfume River. To compare with the Mekong in the South where Nguyễn Phúc Ánh emerged as a prevailing warlord, the Perfume represents just a piece of gossamer, having no commercial or strategic interests. Her values are embedded in her peacefulness and her romanticism. They are attributed not only to her geographical disposition, but also in her witnessing a flow of historical events with more vicissitudes than splendors. In 1876, the great grandson of the dynasty founder was outnumbered by the French expeditionary legion that fusilladed the capital. This marked the total colonization of Vietnam. While the resistance was smoldering, spot by spot in the whole country, the Perfume received a young and dynamic king in a getaway sampan on her water. Duy Tân, disguised as a commoner, left the Forbidden Palace, crossed the river toward the mountain to raise the banner of the national recuperation. His dream was annihilated by betrayal. He was arrested, and banished to the Reunion Island, North Africa; many of his followers were beheaded. Then came the immolation of the ailing monarchy. In 1945, the last king abdicated in favor of the new authority. In a stone throw from the Perfume, Bảo Đại surrendered the tokens of the royalty: the seal and the sword. The worst scare to the water body was carved in 1968. On the Monkey Lunar New Year, the Communist forces invaded the whole city. The South government took it back in fierce battles. The usurpers ran away after committing a mass murder. They killed in a hurry or buried alive those they detained during their one month long occupation. Of the new millennium just ushered, the maiden year of 2003 chronicled a large toll in the river but the Perfume was not guilty, not the villain. The Annamite Chain, as a vertical cliff, retained all the moisture from the Pacific Ocean then unleashed torrential rains into her and her sisters in the Center of VN. The whole City of Huế was engulfed in a yellowish lagoon. If Hue dwellers suffered quite a bit from this catastrophic flood, it seemed that they enjoyed around August and September mild chronic inundations that made the river closer to them by her swollen bosom. Once the murky water siphoned off into the sea, the Perfume repossessed her perennial limpid mirror reflecting the old royal wall punctuated with watchtowers. The sandy bed and marine plants are noticeable like in a giant aquarium endowed by the nature. A Western tourist, a century ago, wrote home that he roamed a boat in the Perfume smoothly as in a small lake. Wooden sampans moved slowly on the silver fluvial artery as if unfolding music scores celebrating the sauntering crepuscule. Up to the 1970 there were almost no motorized canoes, which helped boost the stillness. But at times, roaring nautical ski boats infringed the holy pastoral reverie. That kind of sport, province of the rich and privileged, revealed the other aspect of the city which she reflected too as she reflected the royal complex. Right at the beginning of the domination, the French started to urbanize the undeveloped Right Bank. Administrative service, hospital, treasury, school … swallowed rice paddies, as hungry lions dealt with innocent gazelles. They built a river front sport club as well as churches for themselves and for indigenous adherents to the new religion. Sumptuous villas in European architecture, house to Gallic rulers, appeared in sub tropical gardens. The entire national power was shifted from the Left Bank with a toy king to the Right Bank of His Excellence the Omnipotent Envoy. At the wake of the political downfall, a poet referred to the Perfume as a stream of tears mourning the defunct national sovereignty. I share this collective infliction, but I grew up when its acuteness has been somewhat alleviated by the latent healing effects of the time. Hue became introvert, kept silent the most possible.I used to wander along the river, mainly when the sky was somber, adrift like an autumnal dead leaf. One time I wondered what if I had to leave the town and this river, and I said to myself I should die. Ironically, after high school, I went down to the South for higher studies, was assigned to government jobs, then got married, I never came back to see the river, and I never die. (Actually I did come back but in many one day long official missions which kept me in meetings and formal dinners). If someone asks me which is the most speaking feature of the Perfume, I would pick the swans crossing the river in school days; swans in quotation marks. I would elaborate as follows:On the Right Bank, there were two famous and adjacent schools, one for boys and one for girls. (Forget, please, the one for boys, I’m boy). The girls’ uniform was white; conical leaf hats, white too, are not mandatory but all of them donned these. The campuses were situated right in between two bridges. It was too far for a walk, that’s why young ladies in white residing in the Left Bank decided to make a short cut. Roofless sampans helped them. Each student played part of a feather of the colossal swans skating smoothly on the undisturbed water.This must have been the most immaculate image since the time when time was created. I’ve just returned to the ancient royal city, after five decades, to discover that the beloved swans had been butchered. A bridge was built right at the place where female students boarded the sampans. The white uniform was crossed out from the school handbook. Walking then crossing the river was not practical. Motorcycles replaced sampans instead. I walk onto the new bridge. Watching the mountain in the river, I got a chill. An old mystical revelation surged back to my mind. A long time ago, shortly before the twilight, I was on the old bridge. I watched the indigo mountains, and uttered these words: “the real master of my life is the chain of mountain that plunges into the river, tainting dark the river to be embraced by the river”*. I’ve kept trying to decipher the enigma. I hope that I could fathom it, not analytically but intuitively and that the Perfume River retains this mysticism Now the drifter me, back as a tourist, as an outsider, still was not immune from the sacred attachment to something unreal but real. The prodigal son came back to enliven the remembrances of the time lost. May his last visit, shorter than a blink of the eye, be transcended into eternity; may the Perfume embalm the rest of his life, shower him with tranquility. But, helas, wisdom has it that the devouring nostalgia stays incurable, incurable forever.===

#Hue

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marketingadvisorvietnam · 6 years

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Nghệ An: a relaxing getaway - Travel - Vietnam News | Politics, Business, Economy, Society, Life, Sports

Marketing Advisor đã viết bài trên https://www.ticvietnam.vn/nghe-an-a-relaxing-getaway-travel-vietnam-news-politics-business-economy-society-life-sports/

Nghệ An: a relaxing getaway - Travel - Vietnam News | Politics, Business, Economy, Society, Life, Sports

Viet Nam News

Thuỳ Anh

For anyone looking for an escape from the bustle and heat of city life, Nghệ An Province is the place to go.

The province offers travellers a range of activities – including travelling around beautiful islands by boat, catching squid at night and visiting the busy fishing port and seafood market early in the morning.

With a long coastline, the province has a number of islands, of which the highlights are the Lan Châu and Ngư islands.

Ngư Island is also known as Song Ngư (Twin Fish), because it is shaped like two fish emerging from the sea. The island mainly consists of two mountains, one is some 130m high and the other is 90m.

The island has been honoured by poets over the ages, who praised its charm and peculiar shape.

Travelling by motorboat is the fastest way to get there. When disembarking from the boat you will see a beautiful road along the shore of the beach covered with pebbles. Upon going further into the island one can visit the tranquil Ngư Pagoda, constructed in the 13th century. The pagoda is dedicated to Buddhism, as well as Hoàng Tá Thốn – a military general of Nghệ An Province who helped lead the fight against the Yuan-Mongol invaders.

The ancient pagoda is also home to two precious 700-year-old lộc vừng (barringtonia acutangula) trees, which are so old and large that their branches have to be supported by solid wooden pillars.

One to remember: Lan Châu is a must see when visiting Nghệ An. — Photos hoahoctro.vn

Animals like weasels, lizards, goats, and monkeys wander freely around the island and can often be caught sight of in the daylight. They are mostly animals rescued by Nghệ An rangers from smugglers and reintegrated into the wild.

From Ngư Island you can take another 10-minute boat ride through the windy, crystal clear waters to get to Lan Châu Island.

Lan Châu is a highlight when one visits Nghệ An Province. This island offers travellers beautiful and peaceful beaches with rocky cliffs of various shapes and sizes.

Here, visitors can catch a spectacular view of Cửa Lò and Cửa Hội beaches and Ngư Island.

Paradise: There’s no shortage of stunning views on Lan Châu Island. — Photos hoahoctro.vn

Busy seafood port

Cửa Hội is one of the largest fish ports in Nghệ An. In the early morning, when the mist is still hanging over the sea, Cửa Hội is already hustling and bustling with large and small ships and boats carrying tonnes of seafood.

While local merchants are busy seeing to baskets of seafood, some fishermen spend their time resting in the boats after a long night of fishing.

Visitors can buy freshly caught seafood here at a reasonable price including fish, squid, crabs, and clams.

Alternatively, they can join a tour with the locals to catch squid at night just off Cửa Lò Beach.

Hustle and bustle: Cửa Hội is one of the largest fish ports of Nghệ An. In the early morning, Cửa Hội is already bustling with large and small boats carrying seafood. — Photo baonghean.vn

The small local boats will go out to the sea from 7 pm. As long as the weather is fine, you can contact with the locals and join them any day. The season for catching squid is generally from April to July, while the squid moves closer to the shore to breed. It is advisable to rent a motorboat to save time, and take you to where the squid can be found.

A boat for up to four people costs around VNĐ300,000 to 500,000 (US$13 to 22) and will take visitors to 2 to 3km from the shore.

The locals are experienced fishermen who are willing to teach you to catch squid and make sure you to have a good time.

The fishing rods are long bamboo hooks with a fake shrimp attached to a glowing wire. The glowing light of the hook will attract squid as they mistake it for a real shrimp.

Squid in Cửa Lò is small, about the size of three fingers.

Local fishermen will carry a small stove and cook for visitors. Eating grilled squid in a small boat at sea at night is a memory that will leave a fond impression of Nghệ An in your mind. — VNS

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marketingadvisorvietnam · 6 years

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Nghệ An: a relaxing getaway - Travel - Vietnam News | Politics, Business, Economy, Society, Life, Sports

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