One can experience a slice of authentic rural lifestyle, 5km from Nam Dinh Province’s Xuan Thuy National Park’s headquarters in the coastal Giao Xuan Commune. It is the site of a community-based ecotourism project by the centre for marinelife conservation and community development (MCD).
The village of 10,000 people has 12 households, where tourists can stay overnight during their trip to Nam Dinh.
According to Cao Quoc Chung of Indochina Travel (VidoTour), the company has co-ordinated with the village to set up a community-based tour of the local surroundings.
"We want to make tourists’ visit here a positive experience, especially foreign visitors," Chung said.
Tourists can gain hands-on experience of rice farming by using buffalo drawn plough and planting, watering or harvesting rice, depending on the season.
Bicycles are a favourite mode of transport for people staying in the village. For VND45,000 (US$3), visitors can rent a bike for three hours and take a 10km circuit around the village.
From the village centre, tourists ride along a canal and gaze at locals net fishing – a traditional by-trade in the area. From there, they can proceed to a sea dyke to witness indigenous birds feeding near oyster farms and the bustling Tien Lang fishing dock.
Although rice farming is still the dominate breadwinner in the region, the presence of fishing and oyster farming has jumped in recent years.
Home-made fish sauce is a big industry there. Farmers can show visitors how the indispensable Vietnamese condiment is made firsthand.
From the dock, travellers ride up the coast to see traditional wooden houses with soil floors and layered roofs of thick sedge. The oldest house in Giao Hai Village was built in 1945 and still shelters three generations of the Tran Thi Tuong family.
The local outdoor markets, as can be expected, is often crowded in the mornings as throngs of people busily go about trading.
When the sun dips down, travellers can spend VND80,000 ($5) on a home-stay with a local family, and an additional VND50,000 ($3.1) for a meal.
They can also grind rice with a stone mortar – a necessary part of rice production in rural Vietnam.
Visitors can catch a performance of a traditional opera, cheo – just as it has been done for centuries. Amateur artists, singers and musicians perform cheo on a sedge mat without the aid of modern facilities.
Stilt walking, a typical cultural performance of the northern coastal province is also included in the home-stay.
"We want to be hospitable and introduce visitors to the real life here, outside of the city," said Phung Thi Thin, chairwoman of Giao Xuan Village women’s union.
Community-based eco-tourism in the village only began this year and expects to drum up more visitors into and beyond 2008.
Birdwatching tour
Located 150km south of Hanoi is Xuan Thuy National Park, a 7,100ha haven and favourite of birdwatchers and community-based ecotours.
As a wintering site in the East Asian-Australian flyway, from March to September it is possible to glimpse the black-faced spoonbill and the spoon-beaked plover – two rare birds listed in the International Red Book of Endangered Species.
Visitors can hire a boat from the park’s headquarters to Con Xanh hillock and outer Con Ngan in the Hong (Red) River estuary – where they can discover western white pelicans, black-headed gulls and red-headed egrets in the Tra River.
Park director Nguyen Viet Cach says that over the years management has gone to great lengths to not only protect the park’s unique natural environment, but also provide the best possible conditions to view endangered birds.
Visitors can also take advantage of the many hiking trails within the park’s limits. Strolling through the wetlands, one might happen upon an unusual species such as the sander’s gull, spotted greenshank and spoon-billed sandpiper
| Nam Dinh entices ecotourism |
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