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

Trans-Asia Bridge Span Festival – A friendly art space

On the occasion of celebrating important events in 2007, Quang Tri Province planned to organize a series of festivals, especially the second “Trans-Asia Bridge Span Festival” from July 24 to 30. The festival is expected to make Quang Tri an interesting place for tourists.

The second “Trans-Asia Bridge Span” Festival will host participation from numerous art troupes nationwide. Particularly, during the festival, apart from exhibitions, fairs, sport competitions among the provinces of Vietnam, Thailand, Lao, and Myanmar, there will be a four-night festival among Indochinese countries with cultural performance items from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

The second “Trans-Asia Bridge Span” Festival will also introduce the Quang Tri international fair and exhibition 2007 model, held by the CIAT. The fair and exhibition attracts participation from domestic enterprises and enterprises from Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, and China.

In 2004, the first “Trans-Asia Bridge Span” Festival created an attractive art playground. The Vietnamese side had the attendance of art troupes from Quang Binh, Hue, Danang, and Quang Nam. Numerous foreign art troupes took part in the festival, with a variety of art performance items such from Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and China.

2007 is the year marking numerous significant events for Quang Tri Province, such as the 100 year anniversay of late General Secretary Le Duan’s (death? Birthday?), 35 years since Quang Tri’s Inpendence Day, and 60 years of the dead and wounded soldiers day.

Apart from the festival, Quang Tri will also hold some activities such as the “Quang Tri Festival – April Memory”, “Night Ancient Citadel” festival, and “July Gratitude Festival”.

Source : CPV/HNM

A restaurant of Vietnam’s country life

On the way from Nha Trang to HCMC, travelers can easily find a small signboard at Km5 telling the way via a small street to Thon Viet Restaurant. Literally, the meaning of the restaurant’s name is simply Vietnamese Village, implying a place that promises guests the quiet and peaceful atmosphere of the country life of Vietnam.

Without the signboard, guests could hardly find the way to the restaurant nestled under the lines of betel trees, the green fields and trees. Passing a garden, guests will see the restaurant that was opened only a couple of months ago with waitresses in ao ba ba, the traditional dress of southern women in the village.

Construction of the village-style restaurant was closely supervised to every decoration detail by the owner, farm engineer Nguyen Trung Binh. Either side of the pathway in the restaurant is decorated with flowers and grass. Here and there in the restaurant are the water wells, small bridges across small canals, the Lunar New Year Poles and long-handle buckets.

Typical images of the Vietnamese village seem to be well depicted in Thon Viet Restaurant where guests could find a flock of chicken walking around the area to look for rice, the banana and bamboo trees, the eartherned jars to hold water with the dippers made of coconut shell.

Diners can choose many outdoor corners in the restaurant to have their meal such as behind the banana trees, by the bamboo bridge or the small pond, feeling like they are dining in a village.

Thon Viet serves many kinds of traditional rural dishes, each of them being displayed in baskets or panniers or wrapped in banana leaves and guests will be served with fresh vegetables, which are grown around the restaurant, according to Binh.

Diners will find it enjoyable tasting the fresh, piping hot dishes such as fresh grilled anabas and amaranth soup and rice in clay pot in the natural setting of the Vietnamese village, which could bring guests an authentic Vietnamese dinning experience.

Thon Viet Restaurant is located at Km5 on 23-10 Road, Vinh Diem Thuong, Vinh Hiep Commmune, Nha Trang City, tel: (058) 892 340, fax: (058) 871 185.

By SGT

Like a shy lass sleeping in the mountain

The landscape on the way to Si Ma Cai

Mountain adventurers like to compare Si Ma Cai in Lao Cai Province to a shy lass with discrete charms sleeping in the mountain as the beauty of the little-known village lies in the quiet and simple daily lives of different people.


Si Ma Cai is not as frequented as Bac Ha or Sapa, also located in the mountainous province, since it is nestled at the far end of a road near the border with China. Many travel tips are awaiting in the village, although traveling there requires visitors to hold onto their hats and their seats either in a car or on a motorcycle depending on the means they use to travel the nearly 40 kilometers of bumpy, winding road from Bac Ha.

In recent years, the charms of Si Ma Cai have been awakened and have become attractive to travelers by the flower-colored clothes of the ethnic peoples H’Mong and Red Dao, by the greenery of mountains and hills, and by the legends.

Local people explain that Si Ma Cai means a horse market or a place where horses are tied. However, H’Mong people like to talk about Si Ma Cai as a place for legendary horses whose steps resound on the hills and mountains of the region.

Of course, there are no legendary horses in Si Ma Cai now, but visitors can hear the steps of horses pleasantly harmonize with the footsteps of ethnic peoples on the long trip from the hills and mountains to the village’s center market, particularly on Sunday.

The quiet Si Ma Cai turns bustling on Sunday as H’Mong, Dao and other ethnic peoples arrive from different directions for a hill-tribe market. There, they buy and sell meat, vegetables, fruit, clothes and other necessities of life as well as swap fun stories after a week of hard work.

The Si Ma Cai market remains distinct to its origins since locals sell what they harvest from the forest and business is just a matter for locals, not traders bringing items from Hanoi or elsewhere to sale there.
By SGT

Banks bank on property

The majority of commercial banks still rely on real estate as collateral assets for providing loans to small- and medium-sized enterprises.

The IFC, the World Bank’s private sector arm and the Vietnam Bankers’ Association, recently completed a survey of lending practices showing that 93 per cent of banks prefer property as collateral for commercial loans.
Most businesses assets, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), are usually movable.
Sin Foong Wong, IFC’s country manager for Vietnam, said: “Better access to credit is crucial to achieve more widespread business growth in Vietnam, particularly for SMEs that now generate 60 per cent of GDP.
“Most of these firms cannot finance their operations through formal means because they cannot meet the collateral requirements of Vietnam’s financial institutions. Currently, Vietnamese banks rarely lend without property as collateral,” he said.
According to the survey, SMEs’ moveable assets which are worth billions of dollars, could be put to productive use and contribute to economic growth if businesses could use their assets to secure the financing they need to upgrade and expand.
To address this challenge the Ministry of Justice, with the IFC, Mekong Private Sector Development Facility (IFC-MPDF), together with the World Bank’s Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS) has worked for the past year to improve the legal framework for asset based lending.
According to experts, as experience with other reforms shows, effective implementation was needed to maximise impact.
This includes computerising National Registration Agency operations for secured transactions and educating financial institutions about the reforms and how to profit from asset based lending.
Nguyen Thuy Hien, National Registration Agency director general for secured transactions (NRAST), said: “Vietnam needs to complement the legal reforms with an effective collateral registry. This will give financial institutions the quick and accurate information they need to make good lending decision.”
“Having this information available on an easy-to-access secure website will greatly enhance information flows, and make it easier for all parties involved,” she said.
NRAST is an institution under the Ministry of Justice, set up in 2001, with the objectives of undertaking administrative functions related to secured transactions (developing policy and a legal framework) and directly managing the operations of the registration agency for secured transactions, including leasing, sales with retention of ownership, and sales of the right to collect debts.
After nearly four years of operating, the NRAST has registered almost 15,000 secured transactions. Nearly 900 bank head offices and branches have registered as “regular clients” with the registry.
By VIRVietnam travel