TRAVEL IN BRIEF 2/5

21:56' 02/05/2008 (GMT+7)
Ben Thanh Tourist arrange tours for Hue
Thien Mu Pagoda.
HCM City-based Ben Thanh Tourist has launched three new tours to the ancient city of Hue during the Hue Festival 2008, running June 3 through 11. The tour spans three days and two nights.
Day 1 will include a morning visit to famous tourist spots such as the Thien Mu Pagoda, the Nguyen dynasty’s royal palace and Dong Ba Market. In the afternoon tourists will return to the royal palace for the festival’s programmes including jazz and rock and roll performances, Russian art, traditional South Korean dances, a Canadian circus troupe and the American band Kimotion.
Tourists will spend their second morning enjoying street performances, such as a re-enactment of the coronation of emperor Quang Trung, and various compeitions. After lunch, the tour will visit the tombs of emperors Tu Duc and Khai Dinh. Evening shows at An Dinh Palace will include the South Korean mask dance and installation art.
The tour costs between VND3.9mil and VND4.05mil per guest.
Thap Ba festival opens in Nha Trang
The Central provinces’ large ethnic Cham population was seen at the Thap Ba (Goddess Ponagar Tower) Festival in Khanh Hoa Province’s Nha Trang City last Saturday.
Ponagar Tower often receives devotees worshipping the goddess Thien Y A Na, the mother of the Cham people who taught them to grow crops and protected them from natural disasters.
This year’s event drew in more than 40 groups of pilgrims from across the country and some 25,000 visitors.
Journos head to City via Lion Air flight
One week after Lion Air resumed Jakarta-Singapore-HCM City service, the Indonesian ‘hybrid’ carrier organised a familiarisation (FAM) trip to HCM City for 12 journalists from Jakarta and eight from Singapore to introduce HCM City’s attractions to Indonesian and Singaporean tourists.
The journalists are from mainstream and popular magazines, according to Chandran Rama Muthy, Lion Air’s senior manager of Sales and Marketing.
During their four-day visit to Vietnam, the group got a taste of the region by shopping at night markets, navigating the city’s frenetic streets, indulging in Vietnamese coffee, and visiting the Cu Chi guerrilla warfare tunnels.
Vietnam tourism advertised in Thailand
The Viet Nam Consulate General in Khonkaen (Thailand) and the tourism departments of Thua Thien-Hue, Da Nang and Quang Nam organised a programme around the theme "Central Viet Nam – An Attractive Destination".
The programme is aimed at promoting tourism between Northeast Thailand and Central Vietnam. It attracted around 40 travel agents, hotels, restaurants and health clinics in the northeastern Thailand and more than 20 businesses from Central Vietnam.
Vietnamese travel agent representatives pitched the tourism potential of places, events and cultural festivals, in particular the June 3-11 Hue Festival.

Ha Long tourism festival draws 10,000

More than 10,000 people attended last Saturday’s 2008 Ha Long Tourism Festival at Bai Chay Ferry in Quang Ninh Province, according to the Quang Ninh Tourism Department.

About 3,000 professional and amateur performers strutted their stuff in a street parade. Other highlights included an exhibition of 10 model cars decorated with flowers, six large moving stages, 100 tourist boats, dragon boats and dragon ferries.

A fireworks show on Bai Chay Bridge in the Luc estuary closed the festival with a bang.

Vietnamese firms to join seven more international tourism fairs in 2008

Vietnamese tourism companies and travel agencies will make a showing in seven more international travel fairs this year in order to advertise potential tourism products and bring in more foreign tourists, according to the Viet Nam National Administration for Tourism.

The seven international fairs include the JATA tourism fair in Japan, the PATA Travel Mart in Thailand, the Top Resa in France and the Trade Show Fair in the US in September, the Shanghai CITM fair in China and the AITEX fair in Cambodia in October, and the WTM fair in the UK in November 2008.

This year Vietnamese firms have already participated in the ATF international tourism 2008 in Thailand, the world’s largest tourism fair, ITB in Berlin and the Intour Market in Russia.