The Khmer Krom

Go all the way south in Vietnam, to where the Mekong fans out into nine arms before dissolving into the sea, and you enter a world unlike any other corner of the country. The air is heavier here, sweeter; coconut palms lean over canals the color of milky tea; and in the middle of a rice paddy flat as far as the eye can see, a golden spire suddenly rises toward the sky like a flame. This is not a Vietnamese pagoda with its sober, curved roofs. It is a Khmer temple, its gables carved with nāga serpents and dancing deities, crowned in gold and red. You are among the Khmer Krom (người Khmer), a people who have lived here since long before the word "Vietnam" existed, and whose lives still revolve around Buddhism, rice, and the pagoda.

A people of the delta, between two worlds

The Khmer Krom are the Khmer of the Mekong Delta. The word Krom means "below," "of the south": they are, literally, "the lower Khmer," as opposed to the Khmer of neighboring Cambodia. They share with them the language, the round, looping script inherited from India, the religion, and much of their customs. Yet they are Vietnamese citizens, long settled in the southern provinces such as Trà Vinh, Sóc Trăng, Bạc Liêu, An Giang, and Kiên Giang. Their history is that of a region that was first a margin of the ancient Khmer world before becoming, over the centuries, the southern tip of the Viet nation.

This in-between status shows everywhere. At the market, a grandmother sells her fritters, switching effortlessly between Vietnamese and Khmer depending on the buyer. Within a single family, people celebrate both the Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Tết) and the Khmer New Year. Children learn the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet at the public school and the Khmer script at the pagoda, in the evening or during the holidays. This dual belonging is not experienced as a wound but as a quiet richness: you are of the delta, you are Vietnamese, you are Khmer, and it all holds together.

• They are one of the 54 officially recognized ethnic groups in Vietnam.
• Their home is the Mekong Delta (đồng bằng sông Cửu Long, "the plain of the River of Nine Dragons"), in the far south.
• They are mostly Theravada Buddhists, like Thais, Laotians, and Cambodians — not Mahayana, as most Vietnamese are.

The pagoda, the beating heart of the village

To understand the Khmer Krom, you have to step into one of their pagodas, the chùa in Vietnamese, the wat in the Khmer tradition. It is not merely a place of worship: it is the center of gravity of the whole community. The pagoda grounds hold the evening school, the library of palm-leaf manuscripts, the festival hall, sometimes the only large shade tree to gather under. When a child is born, when someone dies, when the rainy season comes, it is toward the pagoda that people turn.

The architecture, for its part, is breathtaking. The roofs are stacked in pointed tiers, their corners adorned with nāga, those mythical many-headed serpents that, according to legend, protected the meditating Buddha by spreading their hoods above him. The walls are covered with frescoes telling the life of the Buddha; gold dominates, blazing under the sun. Inside stands a great seated Buddha, serene, one hand touching the earth. The smell of incense and waxed wood hangs permanently in the air.

At the heart of this religious life are the monks (sư sãi), recognizable by their saffron or bright orange robes. Among the Khmer Krom, as throughout Theravada Buddhism, it is traditional for a young man to enter the monastery for a time — a few weeks, a few months, sometimes several years. There he learns to read Khmer and Pali, studies the texts, and above all learns to become a good man. A son who "takes the robe" honors his family; it is said that this merit reflects back onto his parents. Each morning the monks set out barefoot through the village to collect their food in a bowl: villagers place a ladle of rice, a fruit, a little fish, and gain in return a bit of spiritual merit. This daily, silent gesture weaves the bond between temple and village better than any speech.

The rhythm of festivals

Khmer Krom life is punctuated by great festivals that mark the year and that no visitor to the delta ever forgets. The most important is Chôl Chnam Thmây, the Khmer New Year, celebrated in mid-April, at the end of the dry season, when the earth waits for the rain. People clean the house, put on their finest clothes, bring offerings to the pagoda, and sprinkle one another with scented water to purify themselves and wish each other happiness and freshness for the coming year. For three days, the pagoda overflows with music, dance, laughter, and incense.

Then comes Sen Đôn Ta, the ancestors' festival, a cousin of the "day of the dead": people honor their departed relatives, offer them rice and dishes, and believe that during this time the souls return to visit the living. It is a moment both solemn and gentle, all filial respect.

And then there is the most spectacular, Óoc Om Bóc, the festival of the veneration of the Moon, at the autumn full moon. People thank the Moon for the harvests and the water. In Sóc Trăng it culminates in the famous boat races (ghe ngo): long, slender craft, decorated in vivid colors, where dozens of rowers paddle in unison to the rhythm of drums and shouts, in a joyful uproar. Thousands of spectators crowd the banks. It is living ethnography, but it is first and foremost an enormous popular celebration.

• Chôl Chnam Thmây — the Khmer New Year, in mid-April, with its sprinkling of water.
• Sen Đôn Ta — the ancestors' festival, turned toward the departed.
• Óoc Om Bóc — the veneration of the Moon and the pirogue races.

Rice, water, and the table

As everywhere in the delta, material life rests on rice (lúa in the field, gạo once husked, cơm once cooked). The Mekong Delta is Vietnam's granary, and the Khmer Krom have farmed here for generations. Two, sometimes three harvests a year, following the rhythm of floods and rains. The whole landscape is made of paddies, canals, low dikes, and ferries crossing the arms of the river.

Khmer Krom cooking blends the flavors of the delta with distinctly Khmer touches. You find freshwater fish in every form, fermented fish paste (Khmer prahok, cousin of the Vietnamese mắm) with its powerful taste that perfumes dishes, curries fragrant with coconut milk, thick noodles. The bún nước lèo of Sóc Trăng, a vermicelli soup in a broth of fermented fish and lemongrass, epitomizes this meeting of cultures. The sweetness of the south, the richness of herbs, the force of fermented fish: in a single bowl you taste a whole history.

A language and a script all their own

For the learner, the Khmer Krom are a reminder of an essential truth: Vietnam is not monolingual. Here, people speak Khmer, a language of the Mon-Khmer family, entirely different from Vietnamese in its sounds and grammar, and written with a rounded alphabet inherited from ancient India — the same one you find on the temples of Angkor. Many Khmer Krom are naturally bilingual, moving from Khmer at home and at the pagoda to Vietnamese at school, at work, in administration.

It is a fine lesson in humility and openness: to learn Vietnamese is to learn the national language of a country where dozens of other languages also resound, each carrying its own vision of the world. When you pass, on a street in Trà Vinh, a golden pagoda between two coconut palms, remember that behind its walls another language, another script, another calendar have been passed down — quietly, for centuries — and that all of this, too, is Vietnam.

Vietnamese to remember

• người Khmer ( nguh-oy Khmer) — the Khmer, one of the 54 ethnic groups
• Khmer Krom (Khmer krom) — the "lower Khmer," those of the delta
• đồng bằng sông Cửu Long (dong bang song koo-oo long) — the Mekong Delta, "the plain of the River of Nine Dragons"
• chùa (choo-a) — the pagoda, heart of the village
• sư sãi (suh sigh) — the Buddhist monks
• Phật giáo (fut zao) — Buddhism
• lúa (loo-a) — rice in the field; gạo (gao) — husked rice; cơm (kuhm) — cooked rice
• ghe ngo (geh ngo) — the racing pirogue of the festivals
• Sóc Trăng (sawk trang) — a province emblematic of the Khmer Krom
• Trà Vinh (tra vinh) — another major Khmer Krom home
• Tết (tet) — the Vietnamese Lunar New Year
• cảm ơn (gam uhn) — thank you, a word that opens every door