Pure nature in Moc Chau Plateau

Despite it is in summer or winter, and the days are foggy or full of sunshine, Moc Chau Plateau is always attractive with its dreamlike beauty.

Tea hill with fresh green in Mock Chua Plateau

Located in Son La province, at a distance of 200 kilometers from Hanoi, Moc Chau Plateau is 1,050 metres above the sea level, with an area of about 80 kilometres in length and 25 kilometres in width.
Moc Chau Plateau is famous for a large herd of milk cows, immense tea hills, big gardens of plum and apricot – tree, and large pastures of about 1,600 hectares.
The milk cow in Moc Chau is the black and white cow race of Holland. From this large herd of cows, Moc Chau has developed the experience tourism so that tourists can feed the cows and do the milking themselves.
This kind of tourism also offers tourists to enjoy the fresh pure cow’s milk and have camping over night right in the pasture.
It would be totally relaxing and comfortable to walk on the hill slope of green and soft grass and enjoy the fresh cool air around. Scattered everywhere are the white flowers and in the distance are the green hills hiding in the shadow of the clouds. All those things just make the landscape here so dreamlike.
Tourists can also prepare meat or buy some from the small restaurants in town to have a roasting meal at night just like nomadic people.
Climate is a special tourism resource of Moc Chau Plateau. Usually, the medium temperature is just 200C, with cool summer and dry winter. The autumn and spring in Mo Chau is the season of tea and pine tree. That is the time when the whole plateau will be covered with a beautiful and fresh green color.
One more outstanding point of this place is the Dai Yem Fall. From Pa Hang border gate in Long Sap commune, Moc Chau town, go along the main road about 4 kilometers, there is a junction of two streams, where the fall starts.
Going through the forest, down to a short and sloping section, tourists would see the two streams pour water down from the height of about 100 meters.
Dai Yem Fall stays below the road surface. The lake under the fall is always clean and clear all year round. The scene around is very natural and wild, which makes its beauty so impressive.
A trip to Moc Chau Plateau will promisingly refresh travelers with joyful and peaceful feelings.

Vietnam welcomes 3.43m foreign visitors in Jan-July

Some 460,000 foreign tourists visited Vietnam in July, bringing the total number of visitors to the country in the first seven months to 3.43 million, up 17.3 percent over the same period last year, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO)

The GSO reported that the number of travellers arriving in Viet Nam for a holiday surged 11.3 percent to more than 2 million. Meanwhile, there were 590,000 people coming to the country to visit relatives, up 68.7 percent.
However, the number of visitors coming to work in the country decreased 2.6 percent to 570,000.
The GSO said more than 2.87 million foreign visitors travelled to Vietnam by air between January and July, up 22.6 percent over the same period last year. Meanwhile, the number of arrivals coming by land and sea decreased 3.4 percent and 21.4 percent, respectively.
Chinese tourists continued to top the list of foreign visitors, with 785,700 arriving in the first seven months of this year, up 53.5 percent. Meanwhile, there were 300,700 South Korean visitors and 273,400 US travellers in the same period, up 4 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.
The number of Japanese, Taiwanese, French, Singaporean and Cambodian visitors to Vietnam in the period also surged significantly, the GSO reported.

Vietnamese prefer foreign to local attractions

With domestic tours costing more than foreign trips and their country’s attractions not appealing enough to Vietnamese, many people opt for destinations like Thailand and Singapore.

Thailand attracts 360,000 Vietnamese tourists each year

Figures from the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Culture, Sport and Tourism show that the number of people travelling abroad via Tan Son Nhat International Airport in the first half rose by 30 percent year on year to 485,368.
Dang Nguyen, head of foreign travel at the Ho Chi Minh City-based PIT Tour, said the large number of Vietnamese visitors to Thailand recently has caused a shortage of tourist buses.
“There are sometimes 50 groups of Vietnamese tourists visiting Bangkok’s Safari World Zoo, 10 times higher than usual,” he said.

Tran The Duy, deputy CEO of Viettravel, said the number of package tours to Thailand has jumped by 30 percent.

“Viettravel sometimes has to book 170 seats on Lufthansa Airlines flights between Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok,” he said, adding that four to five Thailand packages are sold every day.

Ta Thi Cam Vinh, head of Ben Thanh Tourist’s foreign travel department, said the company’s Thai partners have declined to accept any more Vietnamese tourists since there are not enough hotels or Vietnamese-speaking tour guides.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand has put the number of Vietnamese tourists in the first six months at 244,882, 37 percent up from the same period last year.

Vietnamese are also visiting Singapore in huge numbers. Goh Tser Puan, director of LC Travel Planners in the island-nation, said hotels are full up until mid-August.

Vietnamese travel agencies blame the slump in domestic tourism to the high costs and the fact that Vietnamese destinations are not attractive enough.

On the other hand, international carriers constantly offer cheap tickets to Singapore and Thailand, making foreign tours cheaper.

Thai Airways International and Turkish Airlines, for instance, are offering round tickets between Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok for USD245 and USD215, while tickets from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City costs as much as VND4 million (USD200).

La Quoc Khanh, deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Culture, Sport and Tourism, said the department had urged closer cooperation between travel agencies and partners like hotels and airlines to reduce prices to boost domestic tourism.

“But we have received no feedback so far,” he lamented.

New road to connect Noi Bai airport with Nhat Tan bridge

Construction of a road that will link Noi Bai international airport with Nhat Tan bridge started this morning, August 1.

The 12.1-kilometre road is part of a credit agreement signed between the Vietnamese and Japanese Governments on March 18, 2010.
Under the agreement, Japan pledged to provide JPY6.546 billion (USD84.34 million) in ODA for the first phase of the project. Japan will provide more capital based on efficiency its implementation.
The project is scheduled to be operational by the end of 2014. At that time, construction of the Nhat Tan bridge and T2 terminal at the Noi Bai airport should also complete.
The road is expected to ease traffic from Hanoi’s inner city to the airport.

Salt parks tipped as tourism destinations

The Union of Science for Sustainable Tourism Development (STDe) plans to promote salt parks to tourists as an environmentally friendly attraction.

Illustration photo

STDe said 70 percent of the country's tourism sector focused on Vietnam 's 3,200km coastline.
Over the next 20 years, the STDe said it planned to cash in on the popularity of the sea by developing a tourism industry around salt production.
"Combining salt production with tourism is a way of capitalising on the popularity of the coast," said Nguyen Thu Hanh, STDe's chairperson.
Building salt parks will help promote the industry and preserve a traditional way of life, she added.
Planned parks would have attractions such as salt caves, slides, mazes, art exhibitions, spas – even salt hotels and villages, she said.
Next month, work will start on a pilot salt park in Ha Long, in northern Quang Ninh Province and on Cat Ba island in Hai Phong.
"But to turn the idea into reality, we need every sector of the tourism industry to participate," Hanh said.
Pham Trung Luong, deputy director of the Institute for Tourism Development Research, said the tourism sector had done little to exploit the central province's coastline over the last 10 years.
"The lack of long-term and proper investment in coastal tourism means we have overlooked our region's natural advantages," he said.