Phu Quy Island - Beautiful landscape

 120 kilometers southeast of the Phan Thiet Sea, lies ten beautiful islands which comprises the known Phu Quy District. From the range of islets, Phu Quy Island is deemed the largest with 16.5 km2 in area and a population of about 25,000. With its long stretch of white sandy beaches and dense coral reefs, only the rocky, northern half of the island is inhabited. Endowed with beautiful landscapes which include vast rows or casuarinas trees, the entirety of the island is very pristine.

Though the place holds a lot of beautiful sceneries and important cultural sites, the speedier development of its neighboring islets have helped Phu Quy maintain its paradise-like visage and its pure state. With cool climate year-round, crystal-clear waters and fascinating coral reefs, the island is a great place to keep close touch with nature and enjoy a calm and serene atmosphere ideal for summer getaways or romantic settings.

Among the places to see around the island is the famous lighthouse that sits on Cam Mountain. Not only the lighthouse provides tourists the best view of the island’s romantic landscapes and beautiful rock formations, the people in the island also take pride on it as it is one of the only two lighthouses in the country that runs on solar energy. On the same mountain lies the Linh Buu Pagoda, one of the many pagodas and temples that have graced the island for so long. An Thanh Temple which holds remains of gigantic whales worshipped by the locals along with the 18th century-built Linh Quang temple are two of the nationally-recognized cultural-historic sites embedded in this beautiful place.

Apart from that, as Phu Quy’s name means “rich and precious”, the island indeed has vast reserves of mineral resources and perfect fishing conditions. In fact, its waters are considered the most important fishing grounds in the central coast of Binh Thuan province where a wide and diverse marine life dwells in. Snappers, groupers, tunas and sharks are among its most common products, yet the abundance of squid makes it the island’s specialty.

Viewing the island from the north, it resembles giant mackerel emerging from the sea, thus, Phu Quy is commonly referred to by the local residents as Cu Lao Thu (Mackerel Island).

What To Expect

Because of its distance, Phu Quy’s major sources of electricity are diesel-driven generators. As the place do not have disco bars and active night life, with a few karaoke bars around however, power in the whole island is switched off every night close to midnight until early morning the next day. However, along with the recent developments around, a network of electricity is developed on top of the modern road systems, schools, medical stations and tourism services put up in the locality.

The island may be pretty far from Vietnam’s mainland, but ATM machines are available as well as hospitals with X-ray services. They also provide a decent mobile phone coverage and internet cafes are easily accessible. As the island does not have as active tourism activities than its neighbors, there are only few guest houses available at present (about 100,000 VND for a night’s stay). Visiting the market gives you opportunity to enjoy the island’s freshest catch and have it cooked for an extra fee. You can take a nice walk along the shorelines while enjoying the stunning view of the beach, or perhaps read a good book or take the opportunity to just simply relax and enjoy the peace and quiet away from the chaotic city noise. Friendly villagers often approach you and offer coconut milk drinks for sale, sugar canes and freshly cooked Cha Gio (Vietnamese spring rolls).

Getting Around the Island

There is no public transport available in Phu Quy, yet renting a motorbike (80,000 VND for a full day, or 50,000 for half-a-day, without fuel) is the easiest way to get around the island. At present, better roads are constantly developed and more vehicles might be expected in the near future.

Traveling to Phu Quy

You can travel via road to Phan Thiet, and from there you can take the ferry boat bound for Phu Quy (140′000 VND one way). Since schedules of ferries greatly depend on weather conditions, there are no fixed departure schedules. On favorable weathers, the boat departs from Phan Thiet harbor every three days.

A phone call to the harbor better helps you plan your trip ahead, but if you have the chance to drop by, they usually put up a sign on the waiting boat which says when the next departure is expected. It is advised to come an hour early before the departure to find a comfortable seat since the travel could get uncomfortable due to cargoes taken aboard. Normally, the trip takes about 6 hours, but when the waters are not calm and weather is not so favorable, it could stretch up to over 9 hours. Don’t forget your visas since registration of passports on their immigration office is required upon arrival.

Ha Giang Stone Plateau

    *Area: 7,884.3 sq. km.
    *Population: 673,300 habitants (2005)
    *Capital: Ha Giang Town.
    * Districts: Dong Van, Meo Vac, Yen Minh, Quan Ba, Bac Me, Hoang Su Phi, Vi Xuyen, Xin Man, Bac Quang, Quang Binh.
    * Ethnic groups: Viet (Kinh), Tay, Dao, H’Mong, San Diu.

Located at the highest latitude in Vietnam. The annual average temperature varies between 24 and 28ºC. Ha Giang Town is 320km from Hanoi. Ha Giang is on National Highway No.2, 34, 279 linking to Yen Bai, Cao Bang, Lao Cai provinces in turn. Tourist can buy embroidery such as handkerchief, haversack, and dress with colorful, fine pattern. They also take part in enjoyable market-day of local ethnics. The people and natural scenes here are unlike anywhere in Vietnam.

Attractions

Khau Vai Love Market
Every year on 27th day of the third lunar month in Khau Vai Commune, Meo Vac District, Ha Giang Province. This is the place for couples in the region to make a date, and it is also the place for former lovers to meet each other, and look for boy or girl friend.

Dong Van Highland
In Dong Van District, 146km far from Ha Giang Town, Ha Giang Province. Dong Van has a lot to offer: mountains, forests, hidden grottoes and caves, and many valuable plants for medical purposes. Dong Van Highland is situated 1,025 m above sea level and is inhabited by the Tay and H’Mong ethnic groups. The temperature is approximately 1oC in winter and reaches 24oC on the hottest days. The plateau provides famous products such as Hau plums, peaches, and persimmons without seeds. Dong Van apples are as big as pears. In Dong Van, numerous valuable plants used for their medicinal value are found, including ginseng, anise, and cinnamon. Dong Van is very beautiful with mountains, forests, hidden grottoes and caves, multicoloured orchid forests, plum and peach trees, persimmon orchards, and more. Visiting Dong Van, one can see Pho Bang, also called Pho Bang Street, which was built a long time ago and features multi-storey houses made of clay bricks and tile roofs. Visiting Dong Van on Sundays, one can shop in a very original mountain market where all kinds of goods and multicoloured clothes can be purchased.

Sapa - lovely town in fog

Despite its commercialization during the last seven years, Sapa is still a must-see on any northern Vietnam itinerary. On a clear day you will treated to views of steeply terraced rice fields, towering verdant ridgelines, primitive mud-thatched villages, raging rivers and astounding waterfalls.

Nestled high in the Tonkinese Alps near the Chinese border, Sape was built as a hill station during French colonial days, to serve as a respite from stifling Hanoi summers. These days, weekends are still the biggest draw in this crumbling hill-tribe center. Visitors from the capital flock to Sapa for a glimpse of the famed "Love Market," a trek to local hill tribe villages, or an ascent of Vietnam's highest peak, Fan Si Pan.

Some eight ethnic groups inhabit Lao Cai province: Hmong, Dao, White Thai, Giay, Tay, Muong, Hao and Xa Pho. The most prominent in town are the Red Dao, easily identified by the coin-dangling red headdresses and intricately embroidered waistcoats worn by the women, and the Hmong, distinguished by their somewhat less elaborately embroidered royal blue attire. Groups of ethnic Hmong youngsters and women can be seen hauling impossibly heavy, awkward baskets of wood, stakes, bamboo, bricks, mud and produce. Deep in the valleys surrounding Sapa, the Muong Hoa River sluices a wild, jagged course among Giay, Red Dao and White Thai settlements, their tiny dwellings poking out of the neon rice fields like diamonds on a putting green. One- to four-day treks are offered by a handful of outfitters. Guests sleep in tents or in the homes of villagers, their gear hauled by Hmong porters. Be warned: Despite what the local innkeepers will tell you, both the Hmong and the Dao really do not enjoy having their photographs taken unless they're paid for it. It's a certainty that any brochure you see of smiling, care-free ethnic hill people was shot under a Screen Actors Guild contract.

Sa pa is famed for its "Love Market" – sort of a cross between a peacock mating ritual, a Middle Eastern arms bazaar, an Amish square dance, a bad Pavarotti concert and Bangkok's Patpong (except here the people wear clothes). On Saturday nights, Red Dao hill tribe youths of both sexes congregate in a weekly courting rite, singing tribal versions of Loretta Lynn love songs to woo the opposite sex. The songs are highly personalized and boast of the composer's physical attributes, domestic abilities and strong work ethic. While Dao women are indeed highly industrious, the men, it seems, prefer to spend most of their time drinking, smoking opium or sleeping, only occasionally slapping the rump of a lethargic bovine moving more slowly than they are. Few of their songs, though, are about drinking, smoking opium, sleeping or slapping rumps.

Topping out at 3,143 meters, Fan Si Pan has become the Mount Everest of Vietnam, with queues of yuppie trekkers in their latest TravelSmith "totally-packable" rainwear forming mountaineering traffic jams at base camps. Footprint Travel can arrange guided ascents.

Sapa itself is a somewhat bedraggled village meshing crumbling, mildewed French colonial architecture with the pencil-thin, brick-and-concrete mini-hotels that have become so ubiquitous in recent years all across Vietnam. This neglected, cultural mishmash would be an eyesore in any place less spectacularly scenic than Sapa. Because of its Shangri-la-like setting, Sapa actually seems quaint – a tranquil, restful village. Which is, of course, what the French originally intended the place to be. Amenities are limited unless you choose to stay at the Four Star Victoria Sapa, a sprawling alpine campus nestled discreetly into a hillside in the center of town.

The best times of the year to visit Sapa are in the spring and fall. Summers tend to be rainy and muddy, while winter temperatures can drop to the freezing mark (Sapa ushered in 2000 with snow!). Weather really does make a difference here, because the spectacular scenery is all but blotted out when there is cloud cover and rain. Ignore the other Nikon-toting tourists in the villages and get out into the countryside, where you just may still catch a glimpse into hill-tribe life of a couple of centuries ago.

Vietnamese people

Although there are as many as 60 different groups of people living in Vietnam, the majority of the population are the Viet people. Of the 78 million people living in the country, 85 percent are what we refer to as Vietnamese. They live primarily in the lowlands of Vietnam. Three-quarters of the population of Vietnam live in rural villages. A vast majority of the citizens are rice farmers, and live in the lowlands where there is fertile, easily irrigated soil. Where the ancestors of the Viet people came from is not completely known. They were probably farmers that moved gradually into the northern part of Vietnam from China, and slowly moved south, pushing other native people like the Champa out or up into the mountains as they migrated along the coast.

One of the larger minority groups in Vietnam are the H'Mong. They immigrated to the lowlands of Vietnam during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Before the war between North and South Vietnam, they were involved in foreign and rice trade, and remained somewhat independent from the Vietnamese people. Later, however; new laws and regulations forced most to abandon their ways of life, and many fled the country.

Two other minorities living in the lowlands include the Cham and the Khmer. The Cham are descendants of the Champa kingdom that existed along the central coast for thousands of years. Now there are only about 50,000 of their people left living as fishermen and farmers in scattered villages along the coast. The Khmer, of Cambodian decent, live and have lived for a long time in the swampy Mekong Delta, south of Ho Chi Minh City. They are more numerous than the Cham people. mountain girl

The other residents of Vietnam live in the mountainous regions of the country. They, as a group, are commonly called the Montagnards. In the northern mountains, along the Chinese border, live tribes that have migrated there in the last several centuries. Some of the more common of these include the Tai, Nung, Meo, Yao, Muong, and the Tay. The Tay are by far the most numerous of the northern people. To the south, in the central highlands, are the Rhade and the Jarai peoples. They are descendants of nomads who came to the central coast in the third or second millennia BC, and have since been pushed up into the highlands. Now they live mainly by slash and burn agriculture. For centuries, the mountain people lived in isolation and were suspicious of lowlanders. They maintained only limited communication and trade with the Vietnamese. In the last fifty or so years, the Vietnamese have tried both peacefully and forcefully to integrate them into their society, and they have found themselves in the middle of several wars. Now the Vietnamese government is implementing programs to improve and develop communities, bring lowland Vietnamese people into the mountains, and educate the children of these Montagnards, while still allowing them to maintain their heritage. people

Vietnam is the 13th most populous country in the world. Their official language, Vietnamese is spoken throughout the country, but dialects vary between the north, south, and center. English is common in larger cities and is taught in schools, and French is also spoken in various parts of the country. Vietnam has an 88 percent literacy rate. Their national script is called Quoc Ngu. It was introduced by European colonists, and utilizes the Roman alphabet (the alphabet used for English).

The Vietnamese people, and the many minority groups living with them have created a unique culture and form of society. They have held onto their heritage and pride throughout countless struggles and wars, and are still striving to integrate and unite all parts and people of their incredible country.