"Revolution" in Lo Lo Chai, Village Secretary attracts Western tourists to the stone plateau
Báo Dân trí•21/10/2024
(Dan Tri) - Lo Lo Chai was recognized as a community cultural and tourism village, and was named on the Ha Giang tourism map at the end of 2018. Dong Van district leaders asserted that it was a revolution.
Lo Lo Chai was recognized as a community cultural - tourism village, named on the Ha Giang tourism map at the end of 2018. Dong Van district leaders affirmed that creating such a tourist village is a revolution. The "revolution" was initiated by the village leaders... Nestled next to Lung Cu flagpole, at the foot of Dragon Mountain, the small and pretty Lo Lo Chai village (Lung Cu commune, Dong Van district, Ha Giang) shines brightly at the headland of the country. Under the shade of the sa tree, peach and plum trees in front of the yard are old mossy yin-yang tiled roofs, peaceful rammed earth houses and stone fences typical of the rocky plateau... After stopping to show the way to a group of more than ten foreign tourists to find a homestay (community accommodation) on the edge of the village, the Party Secretary of Lo Lo Chai Vang village, Di Tinh (born in 1976), continued to brew and introduce the Shan Tuyet tea of the high mountains of Ha Giang, which is sold and served at his homestay. Mr. Tinh's house, made of nearly half a meter thick earthen walls, is cool, has 3 rooms, 1 ground floor, and 1 spacious floor, completed in 2018, and is the family's second homestay to be put into business. The house has 3 single rooms and 1 communal floor with 20 mattresses, serving up to 30 guests. The owner waved his hand and smiled, introducing the property: "Now this place must be worth... billions of dong. The house next to the rice and corn warehouse, I also renovated it and turned it into a room, the guests love it. My whole family stays behind to live and cook for guests to eat, drink, and have an additional source of income." Secretary Vang Di Tinh, a Lo Lo ethnic, was one of the first people to do tourism in the village. In 2011, along with two other households, Mr. Sinh Di Gai - Village Chief and Su Diep Pai, Mr. Tinh's family opened a food service to serve tourists coming to Lung Cu flagpole, turning to the village. Since then, there have been 6 more households raising local pigs, black chickens, growing vegetables... supplying several shops. At that time, there were very few customers, not many, just doing that, but no one talked about developing tourism and services. From the original restaurant, in 2017, Vang Di Tinh "took another step", renovating the family's house, expanding it, building it to be more spacious, and turning it into a house for guests to stay in the village. Mr. Tinh's and Mr. Gai's houses became the first households to welcome guests to eat, stay, and experience life with the family. Determined to do it properly, to "get it right", the village party secretary went all the way to Hanoi to study and be trained on how to be a receptionist and provide services to tourists. In 2018, Mr. Tinh continued to build a second homestay, right in the middle of the village, with 3 rooms, 1 collective floor, the largest community accommodation facility in the village at that time. At that time, he cooperated with a tour operator (travel agency) to invest, exploit, and bring guests to the itinerary of backpacking in Ha Giang and the Dong Van stone plateau. "There are a lot of guests, my 2 homestays are often full. The revenue during peak times, when operating all 13 rooms, is about 5 million VND/day. Including food and service costs, it is nearly 10 million VND/day", said Secretary Vang Di Tinh. From tourism alone, Mr. Tinh's family earns 150-200 million VND per year. In addition, the hard-working man still maintains farming, invests in a family-scale chicken and pig farm in a separate area, works in the fields, and goes to the fields to have a source of food to supply the family kitchen as well as the restaurants in the village. The family's life and economy are now "no longer a concern". The entire Lo Lo Chai village is now doing professional tourism, every house and household is visibly getting richer thanks to participating in the "smokeless industry". From the first two households, Secretary Tinh's and Village Chief Gai's, to open their doors to welcome guests, up to now the whole village has 58/118 households doing homestays, many of which have 2-3 establishments, providing many different services, from accommodation to cuisine, entertainment, and health care. To change the face of the entire poor village at the end of the river and the end of the mountain, Secretary Vang Di Tinh said, he and the Deputy Secretary and Head of Sinh Di Gai village as well as other Party members in the Lo Lo Chai village Party cell had to work together for many years, step by step doing many things. First, they had to successfully build a homestay in their own house before being able to mobilize other households in the village to follow suit. When Mr. Tinh started building a second homestay in 2018, the economic movement in the village took off. By the end of that year, 19 households had implemented the community accommodation model, turning their family homes into facilities to welcome guests, stay together, and live together. At that time, the village leaders had to "hold hands and guide" households to arrange their houses to accommodate guests, such as dividing into separate rooms, providing bedding, making comfortable toilets, etc. And most importantly, according to Mr. Tinh, they had to propagate so that the whole village understood and agreed to move production activities out of the village. If the barns and food warehouses can be moved out of the house, the farming, swiddening, and livestock raising activities can be separated, the newly built and repaired village roads and alleys will be spacious, the new living space will be clean, safe, and comfortable for guests. When the whole village implements this, the scene of tourists covering their noses and frowning when entering the village will no longer exist, and they will be afraid to think about staying overnight. "Party members go first, the village will follow," Secretary Tinh concluded, "that slogan... is so true!" (slogan). The Lo Lo Chai village Party cell with 5 Party members at the beginning (in 2000, when Mr. Tinh took on the position of secretary) later developed to 20 people, playing a big role in organizing the whole village to do tourism. The Party cell has its own resolutions on this issue. The goals are set out one by one, clearly: increase the rate of households participating in tourism and service activities; re-plan production; renovate village roads and alleys; restore and protect the characteristic stone walls; Maintain the traditional design of rammed earth houses; eliminate houses using fibro-cement roofing sheets, switch to synchronous yin-yang roofing tiles... All movements, plans, and specific activities must start from the "comrade secretary", then go to the Party members in the Party cell and their families to spread to the whole village. "When I first started doing homestays, many households came to ask if it was difficult, if there was any income. I honestly shared that it was difficult at first because I didn't know how to bring guests, but gradually I figured it out. If we could get a few more households to join, we could join forces to invest in advertising so that guests would know and come. When the whole village is doing it together and there are many guests, we have to know how to share with each other", Mr. Tinh said. The problems that arise later, such as competition between households, homestays, conflicts, room price comparisons, land and boundary disputes when the value of real estate increases... all need the secretary and village chief to step in and resolve. Even when his homestay had many guests, while other households had fewer guests, the village leader had to proactively regulate, reduce, and lead the guests to other houses. Taking the lead in each task, convincing the community like that, the person with "20 years of experience as a party cell secretary" was able to lead Lo Lo Chai to become the outstanding cultural tourism village it is today. The Lo Lo secretary reflected: "It must be said that doing good business brings prestige and convenience for me to carry out my duties as secretary. A prosperous economy gives me the conditions to fulfill my obligations, to be a role model in all work and movements, so people will agree and support me. My family is not necessarily the richest in the village, and I don't have much money to support everyone, but I am willing to lend money when there is a household that needs to invest according to the standards and common criteria set forth." "Being a secretary is difficult, it takes a long time to gain experience. In the village, understanding each person's personality, treating them with sincerity, and then getting people to share. When many problems arise and need to be handled, the most important thing is your persuasiveness," Mr. Tinh cited the story of correcting the behavior of some people who cling to and ask for money when tourists want to take photos with them. Commenting on the person who has held the position of Party cell secretary in his village for more than 20 years, Mr. Vang Di Dan said: "Mr. Tinh is the pioneer in building motels and homestays in Lo Lo Chai, dynamic, up-to-date, and developing strongly. He was successful in his first attempt, and the following year he opened another home. With more guests, he moved his whole family to the kitchen area in the back, and turned the whole house into motels. With tourism, our village has developed rapidly, changing its entire appearance like this. Now, even old buffalo and cow barns, my villagers can "convert" into bungalows, earning 600,000-700,000 VND/night. What a wonderful innovation" (bungalow - resort). According to the official of the Commune Farmers' Association, being the first, leading and successful, becoming well-off has helped Mr. Tinh gain more prestige, have a convincing voice with the whole village so that now every household is doing well, united, and unified from cleaning the common alleys, preserving the landscape, culture to learning skills, thinking to serve tourists. According to Vice Chairman of Dong Van District People's Committee Nguyen Van Chinh, the key factors, pioneers at the grassroots level such as Secretary Vang Di Tinh, Head of Sinh Di Gai village in Lo Lo Chai village have a particularly important role in all areas, activities in the community, in which economic development is the most important content. They are the locomotive pulling the whole village, the whole village up. The model of community tourism in Lo Lo Chai is highly appreciated by both domestic and international tourists, creating a big echo for Ha Giang. "To create such a tourist village is a revolution. And here, the Secretary and the Village Chief are the pioneers, we consider them to be the initiating factors, very important. They are the people we 'target' first to spread the policy because they have built up prestige and voice in the community", Mr. Chinh commented. With good economic thinking, both the Secretary and the Village Chief quickly grasped the district's instructions to moderate and adjust activities in the village to be consistent, preserving and promoting the characteristics of their ethnic group. This is a point that the Vice Chairman of the district is particularly fond of. He compared that when tourism first started in many other villages, households often sprung up spontaneously, expanding and repainting their houses inconsistently, losing their quality, easily leading to flamboyance and chaos. Mr. Chinh recalled a recent incident, Lo Lo Chai built a large welcome gate, painted steel frame, decorated with red flowers... majestically right in front of the village. The district leaders quickly called Secretary Tinh and Head of Gai village, warning that this would do more harm than good, affecting the village's landscape, blocking tourists' view of Lung Cu flagpole. The two village leaders realized the problem, and just the next day, the whole village agreed to remove this "out of place" welcome gate, even though hundreds of millions of dong had been invested in making it.
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