Pushing Tourism Development to New Height

Tra Vinh is a place where sky, earth, river and water converge to create charming scenery and evergreen vegetation. Besides, interlaced river systems bring tourists to immense water domains, to nature and to locally typical fruit gardens in famous tourist attractions like Long Tri Islet, Long Hoa Islet, Tan Qui Islet and Ngheu Islet. Tours to the water world and river islets are very promising as tourists can visit scenic villages along rivers or visit orchards where owning farmer families are living. Forest is also a valuable potential for tourism development, particularly eco-tourism.

 

In addition, Tra Vinh province has dozens of stork sanctuaries with thousands or tens of thousands of storks. Remarkably, a Khmer temple in Dai An and Tra Cu communes is even called the Temple of Stork because a great deal of storks land on it all the times. Stork sanctuaries in Long Huu and Duyen Hai are also very attractive. Tra Vinh City is called a green city in the Mekong Delta because there are hundreds of old trees there attracting tourists far and wide. Locally typical fruits, fish, birds and honey are processed and cooked by rustic specialists.

 

In Tra Vinh, tourists can enjoy themselves in beautiful beaches Ba Dong Sea Ecological Resort. This is the waters downstream of the Mekong River but is hardly affected by alluvial sediment, a good condition for bathing. Apart from Ba Dong seawaters, Tra Vinh province also has Long Toan hot mineral water which is disease curable. Therefore, investors can combine Ba Dong Beach and Long Toan mineral water ore to form recreational and remedial resort.

 

In Tra Vinh, visitors can contemplate the sacred beauty of 141 mysterious Khmer temples where grow old trees and live wild birds and storks, 90 Viet temples and five Chinese temples across the province. They can also drop in on Luong Xuyen Pagoda, Phuoc Minh Cung Pagoda, Ang Pagoda, Hang Pagoda, Giong Lon Pagoda and Giac Linh Pagoda.

 

In addition to common holidays with other provinces, Tra Vinh also has its own festivals which draw a lot tourists like Fish Worshipping Festival at My Long Sea Queen Temple in Cau Ngang district from the 10^th to 12^th day of the fifth lunar month, Chol Chnam Thmay Festival (mid-April), Sel Dolta Festival (15^th day of the eighth lunar month), Ok Om Bok Festival - an event to release wind lights of Khmer people, Vu Lan Thang Festival at Van Nien Phong Cung Pagoda and other pagodas in Cau Ke district from the 25^th to 28^th day of the seventh lunar month.

 

Besides, Tra Vinh is building and developing cottage industry villages to make famous traditional handicraft items like Hom Ca mattress, Ba So nuggets, Xuan Thanh wine, Tra Cuon cake, My Long and Dong Hai seafood. Cottage industry villages are promised to become interesting attractions to domestic and foreign tourists.

 

In 2013, the tourism industry of Tra Vinh province was affected by global and domestic economic downturn. To draw more domestic and international tourists to the province, the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Tra Vinh built and deployed activities in response to the Tourism Stimulus Programme 2013 adopted by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT). In 2013, Tra Vinh province welcomed 298,000 tourists, up 10.37 percent over 2012, including 9,500 international visitors. Tourism revenue was VND75.3 billion, representing a year on year growth of 0.62 percent.

 

The tourism industry of Tra Vinh province is taking advantage of capital sources, including centrally funded capital, local budget and private fund, to restore, repair and renovate cultural and historical relics such as Uncle Ho Temple, Ba Om Pond Cultural - Tourism Site, Khmer-architecture temple relics and Khmer Culture Museum.

Mr Tran Thanh Thuong, Director of Tra Vinh Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said, to ensure the sustainable development, the tourism industry of Tra Vinh province has reviewed and adjusted tourism development plans and built the tourism development plan until 2020, focusing priority investment for tourism infrastructure, human resources training, and historical cultural vestige restoration. The department also takes care of 141 ancient Khmer temples and upholds traditional festivals. The department actively coordinates with functional agencies to proactively advise the Provincial People's Committee to timely circulate policies to encourage traditional cottage industry villages to invest to expand production, particularly handicrafts like bamboo articles, coconut fibre mats, dried coconut shells, and mattress.

 

In addition, the tourism sector will enlist all capital sources to invest in technical infrastructure and build eco-tourism, green tourism resorts in Ba Dong Beach and islands, and complete the construction of tourist destinations nuanced with local cultural identity. It will step up tourism advertising and popularity in domestic and foreign markets while strengthening cooperation with eastern coastal provinces (Ben Tre, Vinh Long and Tien Giang). He stressed that “Once completed, Co Chien Bridge will unlock the traffic access to eastern coastal provinces, helping Tra Vinh to associate with them to form an eco-tourism arc in the southwest of Ho Chi Minh City.”