Viet Hai: potential tourism village

“Viet Hai in Cat Ba District, Hai Phong City is a potential tourism village in a near future,” said Colonel Phuong Minh Quang, Second Commissioner of the Border Guard.

Sustainable model

In implementation of the policy of the High Command of Border Guard on helping local people to develop economy and ensure national defence and security in border and island communes, the Hai Phong Command of Border Guard applied a tourism-oriented economic development in Viet Hai commune, Cat Hai district from now to 2015.

Colonel Phuong Minh Quang said: Viet Hai commune has fewer than 80 households and they are living in a valley in the heart of Cat Ba National Park. Actually, Viet Hai is not a popular geographic name in Hai Phong.

Viet Hai is surrounded by mountains. It takes 50 minutes to travel by ship from Viet Hai to Lan Ha Bay. Colonel Quang said in a happy voice that the Border Guard will work with local villagers to apply the community tourism project soon. The target needs methodical, scientific and systematic processes like building livestock farms to raise boars, porcupines, civets and gecko, erecting fishing cages, planting food crops and medicinal herbs, developing cultural, sporting and tourism products, persuading local villagers to build truly Vietnamese traditional houses and to accommodate tourists, etc.

Deployment plan

The Command of Border Guard has set up a steering committee to direct participating units to implement the project. Officers and soldiers are sent to the village to guide them to cultivate their land and keep their farms, to teach them English and first aids. The Command of Border Guard works with communal authorities to organise transporting teams. After the training, a village will be able to work as a tour guide and an accommodation host.

In a near future, when the community tourism in Viet Hai develops, it will attract many tourists thanks to its local cultural identity, natural people. In Viet Hai, visitors will easily release their daily tiredness and boredom when they are free in a primitive village.

The Command and the communal authorities are closely coordinating to bring the new model into life soon. In a near future, the community tourism will surely give a new facelift to Viet Hai but it will not harm the primitiveness and pure beauty. – VCCI

Tags: Cat Ba Island, Vietnam Tourism