(TITC) – Thanks to beautiful natural landscape and diversified culture, Yen Bai Province has potential to develop community-based tourism. A good case is Ngoi Tu village (Vu Linh Commune, Yen Binh District).
Taking about 2 hours by motor-boat from Huong Ly port in Thac Ba Lake (Yen Binh town), or by cars, motorbike (along Dong Ho road), tourists arrive Ngoi Tu village.
With the lake region characteristics, the weather here is cold in winter and cool in summer. The topography includes rocky mountain, hill, lake, fall, river and stream alternately including Cao Bien mountain chain in the east of Thac Ba Lake and Elephant mountain in the west making a romantic landscape.
Ngoi Tu village is home to Dao, Cao Lan, Nung… ethnic people, mainly Dao quan trang (Dao people wear white trousers) with more than 130 households. The villagers have well preserved traditional handicraft (caving jewelry, embroidering, printing pattern on fabric with wax; making ban paper); culture events (cap sac ceremony - an important ritual of Dao men life, fire jumping festival, wedding ceremony); folk songs (giao duyen singing, ken dancing, stick dancing); cuisine (lam rice, roast meat, manioc wine, rice wine); folk games (stick pushing, walking on stilts, danh yen – similar to badminton); and house architecture. Dao quan trang people live in three room house-on-stilts making from separately components and linking by bolts instead nails. The house has only one stair with odd footsteps.
Ngoi Tu has been invested to become a culture-tourism village aiming to develop community-based tourism combining with ecotourism. Now, Lavie Vu Linh Eco-lodge has come into operation with a traditional 30 year-old house (a typical construction of Dao ethnic people), studio duplex (a traditional wooden and bamboo house, containing 2 studios with 2 floors each), a timber and earth construction in a modern Dao style (6 rooms, up to 3 people each, with a double bed, private bathroom). As a result, local people have benefited directly from services such as: motel, dining, portering, guiding, helping tourists do farmer work, making brocade products, handicrafts or performing folklore.
Up to now, Ngoi Tu has attracted many international tourists from Germany, France, Italy, Australia, and Swiss who feel happy with the environment and hospitality of local people.
Hong Thanh