When traveling in Southeast Asia you can easily spot the people who have been to Vietnam, because most don a traditional conical hat. The large circular straw accessories are a fun costume for tourists, but an essential everyday tool for the Vietnamese.
Almost every woman from the rice paddies to the busy streets of Saigon wears one for shade from the sun and shelter from the rain.
They have been doing so for at least 3000 years. Images of the hat were found painted onto Ngoc Lu drums from the Bronze Age dug up in the Red River Delta in the Northern part of the country. That means conical hats were invented in Asia around the same time as the earliest systems of writing.
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