HA GIANG – With 5 million dongs of contribution and 5 years of cooking, leading guests trekking, Trieu Kinh has built a house and a homestay, welcoming guests since 2015.
Hoang Su Phi District is one of the most attractive tourist destinations, famous for its terraced fields, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each season when the rice is ripe. In addition, this is also a community tourism destination invested and developed, with many homestays serving tourists not only during the ripe rice season but also at any time of the year. The highlight of which is the homestay village, Nam Hong, in Thong Nguyen commune, about 33 km from the center of Hoang Su Phi and 77 km from Ha Giang city.
To Nam Hong village, you just need to ask the indigenous people, no one does not know about the Kinh Homestay of Trieu Menh Kinh (1986). In 2007, finishing grade 12, Mr. Kinh was asked by his father to enter Panhou Village eco-resort to build and complete houses and gardens. Although manual work was heavy in the early days of working, he helped him a lot in the years when he opened a homestay.
At the end of that year, he learned to cook for 3 months to help with the kitchen of the resort. Thanks to diligent, knowledgeable cooking, and knowledge about the local culture, a young man from the Red Dao is arranged to be a guide, transporting map for guests trekking in villages. Those were also the early days when Mr. Kinh was in contact with tourists.
In 2009, Mr. Kinh went to the military service, spent 2 years training in the military environment, and started to wonder about the need to change for himself, his family, and his homeland. But the thought was still just a thought, not knowing what to do next, so he continued to return to Thong Nguyen as a tour guide to take guests.
In 2012, a class on homestay operation and community-based tourism development of the EU for 8 Northwest provinces was held at Hoang Su Phi. The teachers from the information center of teaching, seeing that Kinh was fascinated, introduced him to take 2 more courses on point-and-point instructors and English.
Also thanks to these first tourism teachers, he learned about the Sapa O’chau center of the inspired H’Mong girl Tan Thi Shu. There, he learned English communication, every weekend, he was taken with professional guides to accompany him on tour, down to the homestay in Sa Pa while studying and practicing. This process of walking and learning is the luggage, also the motivation for him to see the road ahead of him.
It was not until 2012 that Nam Hong village, Thong Nguyen commune was connected to the electricity grid, and during Mr. Kinh’s years as a hired laborer, the road to the village was still a dirt road. In 2013, although he has not completed the course in Sa Pa, he still chose to quit his job in Panhou Village, focusing on building houses to both live and welcome tourists with the amount of only 5 million rubles over the years. It was not until 2015 that the family’s house on stilts was completed and the road to Nam Hong was poured with concrete.
Without mentioning too much about the difficulties, Mr. Kinh just slowly said: “Community based tourism cannot be done alone, it must have human resources, it must have the contribution of the whole family and the community”.
Initially, his guests were very few and small, all brought and introduced by other guides. Gradually the rumors spread, by 2018, travel companies knew about his homestay and contacted to bring more tourists. Among the coming guests, many people came back because they loved the people, landscapes and cultures of all ethnic groups in Hoang Su Phi. When he does not have electricity, he has not used the phone yet, and he still receives a letter from old visitors.
In 2016, his homestay project was surveyed and supported by Hevetat, a Swiss non-governmental organization, and opened a training class. The whole Nam Hong village from zero to travel, that year alone, 4 households borrowed money to make a qualified homestay. After nearly 5 years of implementation, Nam Hong village has 10 homestay households, mainly ethnic stilt houses, with 3 resorts to be completed by the end of this year. More and more tourists know about this place.
Initially, the village mainly welcomed Western European visitors to the village trekking or photographers, now Nam Hong has welcomed a large number of Vietnamese and Western visitors. The village has a 16-seat passenger car road to take place, all homestays have electricity, free Wi-Fi for guests.
Most visitors come to Hoang Su Phi during the ripe rice season (August – October) to admire the golden terraced fields around the hillsides. But Mr. Kinh said that Hoang Su Phi has many other interesting things, guests can join a trekking tour for 2 – 7 days through many different terrains, climb mountains, hunt clouds, or eat and sleep at home. breaking the customs and food of many indigenous ethnic groups such as Dao, La Chi, Tay, Nung, H’Mong, Pa Then …
Not only opening a homestay to welcome popular guests, Mr. Kinh realizes that he needs better and more attractive services. The owner of the homestay and his brothers in the house discusses, together, to invest in a new resort is Hoang Su Phi Bungalow with 14 rooms. Guests come here to stay in private rooms with windows, balconies overlooking the enchanting terraced fields, restaurant, playground and swimming pool.
In early 2020, he and 6 households in Ho Thau commune (about 40 km from Nam Hong) open a new community-based tourism project called Ho Thau Eco Village (Ho Thau Ecotourism Village). The project started in March 2020, completed in 4 months. But due to the sudden and long-term influence of Covid-19, construction is still unfinished.
Thanks to the contact with many tourists, tourism experts … the people of Nam Hong village have a higher sense of awareness, from environmental hygiene to national cultural identity. But over the years as a village leader and party secretary, Mr. Kinh realized that his homeland tourism still has many shortcomings besides the good aspects, people doing tourism are not equipped with adequate knowledge, so the quality of homestay not high and uniform.
To overcome this, he himself initiated training classes from English to tourist service rules. Classes are usually open in the summer when there are foreign volunteers and students teaching. In addition to the desire to improve the quality of homestay services at home, Mr. Kinh also hopes that tourists will come to Thong Nguyen as well as Hoang Su Phi all year round, exploring not only the rice terraces but also other beauties of here. Follow vnexpress