Lac village, Chieng Chau commune, upland Mai Chau district (Hoa Binh) has been a tourist attraction for a long time. Beside the conservation and promotion of traditional value of local culture, people here are aware of protection of environmental hygiene that creates attraction for tourist, especially foreign tourists.
With more than 100 households that comprise of nearly 350 inhabitants, main source of income of Lac village residents is from agricultural production and sometimes receiving foreign tourist to visit and study local culture. From 1991 up to now, eco-culture tourism service has been established and developing. Annually, Lac village receives about 3.000 foreign tourists and tens of thousands of domestic tourists. At the moment, there are 23 households in the village doing tourism service. Therefore, environmental hygiene is becoming more pressing. During previous years, due to unplanned tourist service development, environmental condition in the area is gradually polluted with rubbish and waste water. Almost all wells in households are rudimentarily dug without water treatment. Inside the house, the use of old cooker and in-house cooking habit causes the smoke and dust pollution. Untreated animal excrement also makes environmental pollution and unaesthetic impression on tourists. In order to deal with such problem, it should raise awareness of people in the protection of environment and commune authority has provided training courses on environmental protection awareness to help people to manage and collect wastes. Lac village also pays attention to the building the waste collection system to gathering rubbish with the scale of 5 to 10 households per point, storing rubbish with close cover, using bio-gas cooker and improved cooker, improving well water, applying EM technology in cultivation… In order to make people strictly followed, Lac village has established common rules on protection of environment. Such activities have been actively responded and implemented by Lac village residents. Thanks to that, tourist often come back to visit this area because they have good impression on cultural and ecological environment of Lac village.
