Do Son Buffalo Fighting Festival, Hai Phong Festivals, Vietnam Travel

lthough the Do Son Buffalo Fighting Festival is officially held on the 9th of the 8th lunar month (around in September) in Hai Phong,Vietnam, preparations start several months before. Fighting buffaloes must be carefully selected, well fed, and trained. The selection of the official fighting buffaloes starts in May when qualification matches take place in small villages. Only 6 buffaloes will participate in the final fight.
The festival begins with a procession to the communal house where offerings from several little villages are presented to the gods; such gifts include a buffalo, a pig, and a basket of sticky rice. The procession, in which the buffaloes are covered with red cloth, also includes 12 young Vietnamese men, also dressed in red, who take the buffaloes to the fighting circle.
After the young men perform the "Opening the match" dance, a pair of buffaloes are led into the fighting circle. The two buffaloes fight until the defeated gives up and run away. The winner then goes on to fight another buffalo until a final winner is determined.

Want a tour to/including Hai Phong?
Fill out the form below to tell us your interests, your schedule and people in your group to Vietnam and/or countries around. Your private travel consultant in Indochina Odyssey Tours will contact you within 0.5 - 23.5 hours to give you a proposal including a tentative itinerary tailor-made for you and the most competitive price IOT can offer. Not all information is necessary in this form, but the more you tell us, the better we can serve you.