The One and Only Film Review

In the documentary, Ultimate Journeys Vietnam, produced by the Discovery Channel, displays a strong sense of culture that is found throughout Vietnam. Being cut off and isolated from western influence, has allowed the Vietnamese people to develop a strong independent culture, with Great influences from Thailand and France. Isolation from other countries has also resulted in Vietnam being one of the poorest countries in the world.

Vietnamese woman drinking snake blood

Snake Wine

The Vietnamese people subscribe to a number of superstitions. Among them, many foods are believed to be good luck. In North Vietnam it is common to eat dog, whereas in the United States, that would be considered a crime. This highlights the differences between western and Vietnamese civilizations. Snakes blood is considered a delicacy and another good luck ritual throughout this proud country. Vietnam not only uses the snake for its blood, they also ferment the snakes for the use of snake wine(pinyin), which women will sell at the market. Seafood and rice is also very common at these markets.

The market is where the women have an opportunity to be a part of the community and interact, it is their responsibility to sell merchandise. The men of the family will harvest and hunt for goods and are in charge of money. After the market women hand all the profit over to the man of the house. However it is not unheard of for a women to run a business, and handle her own finances. This is an example of the spread of capitalism currently enriching Vietnam.

70% of the population in ‘Nam contributes in the harvesting and growing of rice. When kids are not in school many of them do not get breaks like we do, they will be helping their families with the rice harvest instead. This causes families to grow very close, another admirable value of the culture. Vietnamese children shown to be raised with good work ethic, strong family bonds and the utmost respect for their elders.

Partially because of it's poverty, but mostly because of massive population most people get around the seemingly chaotic streets on various types of mopeds. Many Adults and kids wear masks because the pollution in the major cities is so bad people have trouble breathing. This is because of the massive amount of mopeds there. Only the rich are able to afford motorcycles but there are people who can get cars. And when you  drive a car you are much safer when on the roads.

So we thought that the movie was good. Although there were some parts that we thought didn't have to be in the movie but those parts still added to the movie and showed some of the culture in Vietnam and if they took those parts out then we wouldn't know about them and we wouldn't know the effects that they have on Vietnam. The movie was very interesting and we liked how the movie showed different events in different order, At the start they showed the outside of the major cities and how there is just rice farms but when they go in to the cities they talk about the culture in the cities and how people are in them.

So the movie had a good overview on everything that Vietnam is like then they go in depth on those things so I would recommend watching this if you would like to learn about Vietnam and how the culture is there.