Ha Giang province is famous for its rock plateau, the climax being Dong Van Karst Plateau, and mountains, jungles, caves, rivers and streams with dense flora and fauna systems. The first impression on visitors is its grandiose nature which is the abode of colorful ethnic groups. Each village of local people like H'mong, Tay, Nung, Lo Lo, Dao, Muong, Pa Then and Thai has its own history and culture.
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In the tourism development strategy, Ha Giang Province focuses on the formation of community tourism-based cultural villages where ethnic minorities live. They are considered as an important driver to fulfill successfully national target program on new rural development.
The number of visitors to Ha Giang has increased dramatically in the last two years. According to statistics from tourism authorities, 300,000 domestic and foreign visitors came to Ha Giang in 2010 and 330,000 in 2011. Tourism revenues topped VND280 billion, nearly trebling the amount in the 2009 - 2010 period. These figures are quite significant for a poor province like Ha Giang. The priority given to the development of community and eco-tourism sites certainly contributed to tourism development, job creation and increased income for local people.
Up to now, 17 community tourism-based villages are under construction and 29 other ones have come into operation such as Tha hamlet, Tuy village (Ha Giang City); Lung Tao, Khuoi Lac hamlets (Vi Xuyen district); Nam An, Ban Khiem hamlets (Bac Quang district); My Bac hamlet (Quang Binh district); Ban Lan hamlet (Bac Me district); Nam Dam hamlet (Quan Ba district); Lung Cam Tren hamlet (Dong Van district); Ban Tong hamlet (Meo Vac district)… These culture villages have become special tourism products which attract more and more tourists to Ha Giang.
In the culture villages, transportation systerm has been improved, houses have been upgraded, many households have invested in building bathrooms and toilets, some community houses-on-stilts are designed to organize cultural events and reception service…; environment is protected, local people livehoods are going up.
Ha Giang Province issued a set of criteria applied for community tourism-based cultural villages. Accordingly, the chosen villages have to be ethnic village, meet standard of cultural institutions, and have cultural tourism village’s convention. Especially, rural roads must be asphalted, concreted, or paved ensuring convenient transportation. In addition, the villages must have basic infrastructure; clean, green, beautiful environment; cattle cages moved away from home or wall-surrounded in order to ensure environmental sanitation; waste collection and treatment systems must be installed. The villages should ensure the density of population with equal living standard and no poor household. Houses must be built in ethnic traditional structure. Traditional handicrafts must be preserved in order to protect unique culture characteristics.
The main objective of economic development strategy is the sharp change in rural and mountain areas of Ha Giang. Now, many districts of province have decided to build a model of combining cultural tourism villages with new rural development. This shows the close relationship between policies of culture and tourism development and rural development in Ha Giang province.
Translated by Hong Thanh