Phu Tho Province boasts significant potential for tourism development, driven by its diverse and captivating natural landscapes and an extensive cultural heritage system. In addition to the local tourism product development efforts, Phu Tho has prioritized enhancing collaboration with neighboring Northwest provinces to optimize tour operations and cultivate highly competitive and sustainable tourism products.
Tourists are captivated by the scenic beauty of Long Coc tea hill in Phu Tho province
Phu Tho is the cradle of Lac Viet culture, the centralized abode of ancient Vietnamese people in the Van Lang era ruled by Hung Kings. Over thousands of years of history, this land still retains the legacies of the early dawn of the nation, illustrated by a great wealth of tangible and intangible cultural heritages.
Currently, Phu Tho is preserving and promoting historical and cultural values with all types from archaeological vestiges, historical revolutionary legacies, architectural and artistic relics and scenic landscapes, with Hung King Temple recognized as a special national historical and cultural relic. Apart from historical communal houses, temples, pagodas, shrines, archaeological sites and artistic architectural works, Phu Tho also preserves a treasure of unique intangible cultural heritages like popular festivals, beliefs, traditional industrial villages, performing arts, folk songs, folk poems, fine arts, culinary culture and customs of ethnic minorities. Particularly, Xoan singing in Phu Tho and Hung King Worshipping in Phu Tho are recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritages of humanity.
In addition to its advantages of colorful humanistic tourism resources, Phu Tho has an extremely diverse and rich natural tourism resources. Lying in the buffer zone of the Northeast region, the Red River Delta and the Northwest Region, Phu Tho’s geographical position is as a regional centerpoint. As an intersected point of Red River, Da River and Lo River and the western gateway to Hanoi, Phu Tho is a transshipment hub and economic exchange hub between Red River Delta provinces with Northern provinces of Vietnam and Guangxi and Yunnan provinces of China. Phu Tho is located in the belt of important traffic routes such as National Highway 2, Noi Bai - Lao Cai Expressway, Ho Chi Minh Highway, Trans-Asia Railway, and the riverway from China through Northwest provinces to Phu Tho and then to Hanoi, Hai Phong and other localities. Leaning its back on the mountains and hills and facing the vast Red River Delta, Phu Tho is blessed with many beautiful landscapes such as Bach Hac intersection where the “three rivers converge” with legendary stories about the extraordinarily sacred water; Ao Gioi Suoi Tien (Heavenly Pond, Fairy Stream) that is endowed with a majestically wild beauty; Ao Chau Pond and Van Hoi Pond featuring fresh, poetic and charming natural landscapes; Thanh Thuy hot mineral water mine with large reserves and therapeutic attributes; Xuan Son National Park that is endowed with caves, fauna, flora and charismatic natural scenery. These are extremely valuable resources for developing many types of natural tourism.
Based on its advantageous tourism resources, Phu Tho has invested in tourism development, researched and developed unique tourism products typified with cultural heritage values linked with the ancestral land of Vietnamese nation, especially the two intangible cultural heritages of humanity - “Xoan singing in Phu Tho” and “Hung Kings Worshiping Beliefs in Phu Tho”. This is one of the directions that Phu Tho tourism sector has endeavored to implement to date. Some tourism products of Phu Tho are gradually making an impression on tourists such as student tours to the “roots of the nation”; “Xoan singing in time-honored villages” tours; Hung King Temple tours linked with Hanoi - Lao Cai, Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang tourist routes; enjoying Thanh Thuy hot mineral water - listening to Xoan singing in Dao Xa Communal House - exploring Tuong Bo craft village; community eco-tourism products in Xuan Son National Park; and Thanh Thuy tourism products linked to discoveries in K9 Da Chong tourist area.
Visitors from Southern provinces of Vietnam embark on a journey to explore the Northwest region
In addition to developing local tourism products, expanding cooperation with Northwest provinces and Ho Chi Minh City is also a focus of Phu Tho province. The workshop on "Promoting cultural heritage and landscape values of Northwest terraced fields in tourism development cooperation" chaired by Ha Giang province was an opportunity for Phu Tho province in particular and Northwest provinces as a whole to concretize, promote and effectively utilize their potential, advantages and values of tourism resources and especially foster the values of cultural heritages, scenic spots and terraced fields - the unique features of the Northwest region. In recent years, Phu Tho has been one of the leading provinces to establish cooperation with other localities to introduce highly effective tours like spiritual tourism routes along the Red River formed by Phu Tho, Yen Bai and Lao Cai provinces; tourist routes interconnecting three scenic terraced fields of Mu Cang Chai - Sa Pa - Yuanyang County (China); tourist routes along National Highway 32 from Phu Tho - Nghia Lo - Mu Cang Chai - Sa Pa to Yuanyang County. In the tourist route cooperation of eight expanded Northwest provinces with Ho Chi Minh City, Phu Tho is the first destination in the Northwest discovery journey along National Highway 32C linking Hung King Temple - Long Coc - Xuan Son - Mu Cang Chai; and Phu Tho - Lao Cai tourist route via Noi Bai - Lao Cai Expressway with different and interesting experiences for visitors.
However, tourists in cooperation programs have low visiting and staying time in Phu Tho. They do not have much time to experience and explore Phu Tho tourism. Therefore, to promote inherent advantages of tourism resources, enhance the tourism image of the ancestral land and realize the goal of making Phu Tho a key tourism area of the region as per the Government's Vietnam Tourism Development Master Plan to 2020, with a vision to 2030 and prove its position and role in Northwest tourism development cooperation, Phu Tho is carrying out solutions to diversify and improve the quality of tourism products associated with competition, market expansion and market search strategies, especially amid global integration trends. In the coming time, Phu Tho will continue to strengthen tourism promotion at tourist attractions and resorts and further develop tourism product lines by unlocking local resources; exploiting monuments, heritages and landscapes, developing spiritual tourism, countryside tourism and community tourism linked with heritage values of terraced landscapes; and direct local agencies to expand tour cooperation with neighboring provinces, including Phu Tho - Ha Giang tours.
With the above solutions, Phu Tho province is aiming for sustainable and responsible tourism and strengthening its appeal to domestic and foreign tourists.
Thu Trang,Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Phu Tho province
Source: Vietnam Business Forum
Vietnamese
October 2024
Hanoi