Practice martial arts in the Delta

A tour to the Mekong Delta could be an interesting trip for visitors who want to explore the culture and the daily life of the local people in the southern area of Vietnam. This time, it could offer them a more special experience as the tour operator has added a new feature: a chance to learn some martial arts.

This two-day tour in Vinh Long Province in the Mekong Delta starts in HCMC in the morning. After a sight-seeing trip to the Vinh Sang Farm in An Thuan Hamlet, An Binh Commune, Long Ho District, martial arts instructors will join the tour to explain some martial arts postures to guests and tourists will practice the postures in the fruit garden.

This not only gives guests some hints on how to protect themselves but also helps them reject stress and improve their health. “With elderly people, we will show them some tai chi and describe methods to reduce stress,” said Cao Ngoc Minh, public relations executive of Ben Thanh Tourist, the tour’s arranger.

Tourists practice the martial arts under guide of the martial arts instructor

Vietnam travel

She said that each group of 15 to 20 guests will receive guidance from a martial arts instructor from HCMC. While the elderly people on the tour are offered opportunities to explore the culture, history, and rural scenery of the Mekong Delta, the younger people will spend more time practicing martial arts.

In the evening, tourists will have a romantic dinner on a three level boat and enjoy don ca tai tu (amateur traditional Southern opera). The ideal time for the tour could be on Saturdays, when all the lights of My Thuan Bridge are turned on creating a wonderful view of the bridge and the river.

On the second day, tourists will practice martial arts again, catch fish and bathe in the Co Chien river. At Vinh Sang Farm, tourists will also have the chance to become farmers as they learn more about the daily lives of the southern delta peoples. They will wear ao ba ba (a kind of shirt used by South Vietnamese peoples), and khan ran (bandanna) provided by the farm to catch fish, and try some of the other daily activities of farmers.

Guests who enjoy adventure could try riding one of the many ostriches at the farm who are used to having visitors ride on their backs.

The tour costs VND675,000 per tourist for groups of ten people, VND595,000 per tourist for groups of 20 people.

By SGT

Enjoying barbeque and hot pot dishes in town

When Saigonese people dine out, they often fre-quent restaurants that serve barbeque and hot pot dishes, making the two dishes popular gastronomic trends in HCMC. The restaurants featuring these dishes are often the choices of Saigonese diners because they are ideal places to not only enjoy tasty food but chitchat with family and friends.

Guests who want to have a quiet, airy space to enjoy barbeque and a view of the city center at night can go to the Breeze Sky Bar on the fifth floor of the Majestic Hotel. This Sunday, the bar will introduce a new “BBQ on the Roof Top” program featuring about 20 selected dishes of shrimp, salmon, beef, chicken, and more.

The barbecued meat of each dish will be combined with special kinds of sauce such as apple or peppermint; dishes of salad and deserts are also included. The “BBQ on the Roof Top” program will be offered daily from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. with prices ranging from US$15 to US$24 per dish.

The Breeze Sky Bar with a view of the city center and the Saigon River is open from 10 a.m. to midnight. It also serves an international buffet breakfast, eastern and western food a la carte, plus many kinds of drinks, cocktails, ice-cream and snacks.

Also this July, the Golden Palace Restaurant in the Palace Hotel will introduce a buffet program featuring eight popular kinds of hot pots from three regions to Saigonese diners. The sweet, tasty flavor of the hot pot that attracts many gastronomes comes from beef, goat and shellfish meat, or fish, seafood and curry.



A view of the Breeze Sky Bar in the Majestic Hotel

Hot pot is a dish to share and people can easily see diners gathering around a hot pot chatting happily while putting many kinds of vegetables and meat into the hot soup. The many kinds of ingredients in hot pots are displayed in separated sections for guests to choose from and there will be staff to guide guests when choosing the ingredients for their own hot pots.

The restaurant also offers a dessert buffet corner with tropical fruits, sweet soups, drinks and green tea. Joining this hot pot buffet program, diners will have a relaxing time enjoying the meal with a flow of music in a cozy place. The price is VND144,000++ per person.

Wandering around Hoi An ancient town

Located in the central region of Vietnam in Quang Nam Province, the ancient town of Hoi An, one of six sites in Vietnam granted world heritage status in 1999, is a very popular destination for tourists.

The ancient town is registered UNESCO’s world heritage list as being a well-preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port dating back the 15th to 19th centuries. Besides the ancient beauty of Hoi An, local tourism has turned the town into a must-visit tourism destination for shopping and relaxation with various art and craft, and tailor shops as well as a variety of coffee shops, bars and restaurants along the riverfront.

Touring around town by cyclo is the favorite way of local and foreign tourists. Along Tran Phu Street and the Hoai River are best choices

By providing tourists with diversified services and local cultural features Hoi An has become an even more attractive destination and attracts a large number of tourists each year. To explore the ancient town, tourists can walk, bike or use a cyclo-pedicab to peruse the narrow streets. Visitors need to bear in mind that they will need to stop often, as every corner of the town is likely to attract their admiration. Hereunder are some newly-taken pictures that feature many activities of foreign tourists in Hoi An, proving the everlasting attraction of the ancient town.

Tourists buy lenterns at a shop. At night, the town becomes even more beautiful bye the light of colorful lanterns. Particularly on the first day and 15th day of the month, tourists can see flower garlands and colored lanterns on the Hoai River

Tourists enjoy a painting by an artist at a gallery. The gallery's owner said that some foreign tourists decide to buy paintings soon after the works are completed

Visiting Dray Sap waterfall in Central Highlands

A view of the upstream of Dray Sap waterfall in the central highlands

In the Central Highlands, travelers wandering about 30 kilometers south of Buon Ma Thuot City to Krong No District in Dac Nong Province will find themselves in the misty world of the Dray Sap waterfall.

The Dray Sap is one of a popular group of waterfalls in the Central Highlands including Gia Long, Dray Nur and Trinh Nu (Maiden). It is called the waterfall of smoky mist because Dray Sap in the E De ethnic people’s language means ‘fall of smoke.’


To reach the waterfall, visitors must cross many small slopes and a wooded area where visitors will sometimes see ethnic people with papooses in their back. There are not many tourism services at the waterfall except for a ticket entrance and a beverage booth since Dac Nong Province has not yet started developing tourism services at the popular group of waterfalls.

Visitors begin the journey to explore this giant waterfall by climbing down a moss-grown staircase. There are two ways to discover the waterfall, one is the roundabout route to the top and one will lead visitors to the foot of the waterfall.

Dray Sap Falls extend 500 meters divided into three parts; the upstream, the middle and the lower stream. The water is supplied by two rivers, the Krong No, which means river of the husband in the M’Nong ethnic people’s language, and the Krong A, the river of the wife. There are usually legendary stories associated with famous landscapes and Dray Sap is no exception.

Dray Sap’s legend is about a beautiful E De girl named H’Mi. Many rich M’Nong and E De men love her and propose to her but she denies them because she falls in love with a poor man from her village.

H’Mi usually makes an appointment with her boyfriend to go to work together in the mountain fields. Once, when they sat side-by-side on a mountain rock, a bird-like beast appears and lands near them.

The beast has a large trunk and its trunk drills down into the ground making water erupt into the air. It starts raining heavily and H’Mi changes into a cloud drifting in the sky while her boyfriend changes into an ancient tree.

The ground that the beast bored, turns into Dray Sap Falls. Nowadays, visitors can find a huge ancient tree beside a large rock upstream of the waterfall.

The path upstream of the fall is rather rocky. At first, visitors should climb down the moss-grown stairs and pass a small wooded area. Then, visitors will pass a wooden bridge and mountain fields of the ethnic people. Visitors continue to follow a small path to arrive upstream. Standing at a height of 20 meters upstream, visitors can contemplate the vastness and the mightiness of the waterfall.

Visitors who want to explore the lower stream can return by following the old, rather rocky, path. It is suggested that visitors wear sandals on the journey to discover the waterfall.
By SGT

Quang Nam: Tourism and trade village exhibition fair 2007

The Quang Nam Department of Trade, in conjunction with the Duy Xuyen’s People’s Committee, held a traditional trade village and tourism exhibition fair for the first time in July, in Duy Xuyen District.

The fair attracted the participation of 150 kiosks from 60 domestic and foreign enterprises and traditional trade villages of Duy Xuyen District.


The fair is one of the major commercial promotion activities of Quang Nam Province, with the aim of offering favorable conditions for enterprises to exchange, popularize, and introduce products for market expansion and mutual development and to create shopping and amusement festival days for local people.

This is also a chance for tourists to visit two world’s cultural heritages such as Hoi An Ancient Town and My Son Temple and local trade villages such as the Mai Chau weaving village, Dong Duong mulberry village, and Ban Thach sedge mat weaving village.

The fair will close on July 9, 2007.

Pandanus woos travelers with new services

Tourists ride the all-terrain vehicle, a sea sport game at Pandanus Resort

After 12 years developing as a tourist destination, Mui Ne, in the coastal resort town of Phan Thiet in the central province of Binh Thuan, is the home of some 80 small and large resorts which were built on winding pristine beaches and lie under thousands of coco trees.

Traveling along Nguyen Dinh Chieu Road, travelers have many choices of resorts for their vacations. The Pandanus Resort is among the 80 resorts where travelers can spend their holidays.


The resort is still young compared to others, but very spacious. It was built in 2004 within a ten-hectare tropical garden and with a private beach three hundred meters long.

Scattered throughout the garden are some 130 rooms, suits and bungalows designed with views of the ocean, the landscaped garden or facing the pool area that has a huge free-form pool surrounding an island covered with palm trees.

To make guests feel relaxed and comfortable, the resort offers, among other luxuries, a foot and body massage service on the beach, around the pool, or in the spa.

However, to provide more choices for travelers during their stay, the resort has just set up activities for those who are sports enthusiasts.

Steve Raymond, general manager of the resort, said that last month the Speed Boat Pleasure Company set up operations at the corner of the resort, providing jet ski rentals, snorkeling trips, rubber rafting excursions and fishing trips.

When night falls, at the resort’s Blue Lagoon Restaurant, diners can enjoy a performance by the Philippine group “Stardust” that has joined the in-house traditional Cham band. For families, the resort has just added a ‘kid’s corner’, so that parents can leave their children to play in the supervised games room while they enjoy cocktails and listen to the bands.

Apart from these new activities, there are other things to do while not swimming in the pool or lounging on the widest pristine white sandy beach in the area. Around the gardens are a flood-lit tennis court, a badminton court, a football field, beach volleyball, karaoke rooms, a discotheque, billiards tables, table tennis, complimentary bicycles and a game room.

In addition, the resort is located close to the famous Orange Sand Dunes and Red Canyon. Guests can take a ten to fifteen minute walk to both attractions.

Currently the resort offers promotional rates of US$75++ per night for a superior room, US$90++ for a junior suite and US$99++ for a bungalow.
By SGT

Touring Tien River in the south

Tourists visit Thai Son Isle by boat

The Tien River, a branch of the Mekong River in south-ern Vietnam, flows through an area enriched with alluvium, making the land of Tien Giang and Ben Tre, the two provinces that the river flows through, prime for growing thousands of hectares of tropical orchards.


Lying not far from HCMC, the two provinces attract many visitors coming for eco-tourism, exploring specific features of the land along waterways in the south, and for the hospitality of the locals. Tourists wanting to discover this area can book a new tour offered by some HCMC tourism services.

Joining this new tour, tourists can learn about the daily lives of the local people by visiting traditional three-compartment houses and orchards of the locals, and exploring the surroundings on foot following small paths through the isles.

Tourists can rest at a restaurant nestled in the green trees and bonsai gardens, and taste local fruits and specialties. A special lunch will be served with dishes of grilled or baked recently caught fish. For those who want to catch the fish by themselves, there are many kinds of fishing supplies such as fishing rods, buckets or fishing tackle for them to choose, or tourists can simply join the locals in bailing out water from the ditch and catching fish by hand.

To tour the two provinces, tourists have a choice to go by boat or canoe, the main means of transport here, and pass through canals having green orchards on both sides. The floating market, a unique tourist attraction in the waterway lands of the south, is also a must-see.

In Tien Giang, the Cai Be floating market originated from the establishment of a small town on the banks of the Tien River. The market serves not only as a trading place for the locals but also as an attractive destination. Reaching the Cai Be rivulet’s mouth, tourists can see dynamic trading activities along a large section of the river.

Everyday, hundreds of boats and canoes, transporting many kinds of local fruits, anchor in this section to wait for traders. The area, at this time, is filled with sounds of transportation, laughter and voices creating the special charm of the waterways in the south.

Coming to Tien Giang, tourists can visit landscapes such as the Thoi Son Tourism Area, the Rach Gam – Xoai Mut relics, Tan Phong Isle and more. In Ben Tre, tourists should not miss Minh, Bao and An Hoa isles, and Qui Islet.

Among them, Qui Islet, despite having a small area, still reserves the rural beauty of the waterway lands with hospitable locals. It can be reached by canoe and will offer tourists a breath of fresh air.

The tour to the two provinces from HCMC is a one-day tour by car. There are also homestay services for tourists who want to stay longer.
By SGT