Mid-October 2023 night, heavy rain in Tan Hoa, Minh Hoa (Quang Binh). I lay in the 30m2 room of Hoang Duong homestay, praying for a flood. That strange-sounding wish is also the wish of Tan Hoa people, because this is an unusual land, with an unusual way of doing homestay.
On the evening of October 19, Tan Hoa residents saw the name of their beloved village announced at the award ceremony for Best Tourist Village by UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization).
The majority of people in Tan Hoa are Nguon ethnic group (meaning water source), have their own language but are not considered ethnic minorities because they belong to the Viet - Muong group. Therefore, Tan Hoa does not enjoy preferential policies for ethnic minorities, even though it is located in Minh Hoa district, one of the 61 poorest districts in Vietnam (enjoying policies to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty, aiming at sustainable development under the Government's Resolution 30A/2008 program). But Tan Hoa has now escaped poverty, out of the 30A list.
The entire Tan Hoa commune lies in a valley surrounded by limestone mountains. Every few days of heavy rain, floodwaters pour down, turning Tan Hoa into a "flood center" - a "title" that has been attached to the commune since October 2010 when a historic flood of 12m of water submerged every roof here.
"The water rose very quickly, and people only had time to run to the cliffs to escape. Buffaloes knew how to swim, so they were fine, but countless pigs, cows, and chickens drowned. Military Region 4's helicopters came to deliver food to the hungry, but they flew around and around without knowing where to drop it because the people were hiding in dozens of mountains, and they couldn't see anything. Later, they had to send motorboats to find and determine where to drop instant noodles and drinking water. Two consecutive floods, only seven days apart, made the already poor people here even more miserable," Mr. Truong Son Bai, 72 years old this year, who served two terms as commune chairman, recalled.
Mr. Truong Ba Son - 40 years old this year, a rare person who "escaped" the village by pursuing IT studies in Vinh and getting a job, then returned to his hometown to do tourism to be closer to home - said: "I only had time to take a boat to take my mother, wife and children up the cliff, but I couldn't bring anything with me. The water receded a bit, and when I returned, I saw my house stuck on a bamboo tree more than 100m away.
What a miserable life. It's already miserable on a normal day, then there's the flood. On a normal day, we do all sorts of things but still don't have enough to eat. Every year, in September and October, we're always afraid of floods. We only grow crops that are short-term like corn and cassava. Raising cattle and buffaloes, when the flood comes, the mud will form and kill all the grass, so we have to go all the way to Laos (25-30km away) to cut grass. It would be strange if we didn't leave our country here...".
Leaving the country to make a living is a common denominator in many villages in the Central region, which are "stricken by floods every year". According to the leader of Tan Hoa commune, the population here is over 3,300 people, but there are thousands of young people going to the South to make a living.
"Tan Hoa is much less sad now. At least there are more than 100 young people staying to serve tourism. This season (October), we sit around watching the flood, in the afternoon we gather to drink a few glasses of wine and talk about the weather. We talk happily and not worried like in the past, because every house has a floating house, so let it be, even if the water rises, we don't worry" - Mr. Truong Xuan Hung, vice chairman of the commune, said with a laugh.
Starting the transformation of Tan Hoa, Mr. Truong Son Bai recalled: "In the past, no one expected that caves in the mountains like Tu Lan, Tien cave, Chuot cave... would now become tourist specialties. Fortunately, after 2010, two proposed solutions to save Tan Hoa were to place explosives to expand Chuot cave to help water drain faster when there was a flood, or to move the village to another place, but they were not approved by the provincial leaders and the people. It is true that Buddha does not take everything from people... (laughs)".
Sitting and talking with Tan Hoa people, you will hear them often mention Nguyen Chau A - a famous person in the adventure tourism industry. But A often says that he was lucky. He met Howard Limbert - the British Royal cave expert, who has been attached to Quang Binh for more than 30 years. Without Howard, it would be difficult to research and explore the cave system in this area. Like the cave system in Phong Nha, Tan Hoa, the ancient people only knew the mouth of the cave, when going into the forest, they could only go a few dozen meters deep.
Mr. Ho Khanh, who is credited with discovering Son Doong Cave, often said: "In the past, when we went to the forest, sometimes to take shelter from the rain or to find water, we only lit torches a little bit and did not dare to go deep. It took Mr. Howard and his wife and their associates to find all the nooks and crannies to build an exploration tour."
The same goes for Tan Hoa, there are many limestone mountains and caves, but no one knows what is deep inside. Nguyen Chau A took Mr. Horward's team to explore and learn. In 2011, Quang Binh province licensed his Oxalis Company to survey and test adventure tours of the Tu Lan cave system. By 2014, the Tu Lan discovery tour officially operated with nine tours, at different levels.
The problem is that tourists who finish the cave tour have to return to Phong Nha to rest because Tan Hoa has no accommodation facilities. Who would dare to invest when this land is flooded almost every year? Therefore, the path to Tan Hoa becoming the World's Best Community Tourism Village by UNWTO today is a long story, step by step.
First, as Mr. Ho An Phong, Vice Chairman of Quang Binh Province (previously Director of the Department of Tourism) said: "To develop tourism, the first thing is that infrastructure such as electricity, water, and roads must be good. Until 2014, even with normal rain, people in Tan Hoa still had a hard time because there were no bridges or roads within the commune. It must be said that it was Resolution 30A of the Government that helped Tan Hoa have a complete system of electricity, roads, schools, and stations. Then there was the effort and creativity of the people and the contribution of businesses with heart and vision."
The role of the people, Mr. Phong sees, is the creation of floating houses to prevent floods. Specifically who, "It's hard to say," commented Mr. Truong Son Bai. "In my opinion, it's a common initiative of the people. After the historic flood of 2010, the people of Tan Hoa were pushed to the end of the road, they were forced to be creative. Creativity also comes from folk observations, for example, from ancient times, using banana tree trunks as rafts to load items on to escape floods.
After 2010, when the barrels were available, our people thought of building houses made of light materials and placing them on top so that when the water rose, the houses would rise as well. And so, it was gradually completed to what it is now, each house has pillars about 6-9m high, with iron belts attached so that when the water rises, the house will not be swept away. When the water rises higher, every house prepares ropes to anchor. Now every house knows how to calculate that every square meter needs a barrel. My family of 7 people, building a 35 square meter house needs 35 barrels, costing about 120 million VND. Flood resistant!".
As for livestock, Tan Hoa people have a different way of doing things, also from their experience of avoiding floods. They do not build cattle pens behind their houses. Every 1 or 2 villages reserve a large area of land near the mountain, and each house builds a pen for their cattle to live in. When there is a flood, they can move their cattle up the hill faster. After the great flood of 2010, the government built two large houses on the mountain for people to escape the flood, but after the construction was completed, the flood-proof houses were already built, so now those two large houses like halls have become places for cattle to take shelter from floods - the locals here jokingly call them cow resorts. This unique way of doing things also helps homestay guests not to worry about environmental sanitation like in many other places.
The program of building flood-proof floating houses for Tan Hoa residents has been almost completely socialized. Businessmen and enterprises participating in Tu Lan Race, sympathizing and loving this place, have donated many floating houses. Currently, 100% of households in Tan Hoa have flood-proof houses, about 700 of them.
When people's lives were no longer threatened by floods, accommodation facilities appeared, with the core being Tu Lan Lodge, followed by 10 homestays that all met the same standards as Hoang Duong where I stayed.
The beautiful system of Tu Lan cave, Tien cave, Hung Ton cave, Chuot cave... has appeared on Nat Geo, Lonely Planet, CNN Travel, and is also the location for filming many movies, the most famous of which is probably the Hollywood blockbuster Kong: Skull Island .
These attractive tours have helped Tan Hoa welcome 9,437 tourists in the first nine months of 2023, 9,304 in 2022, and even the peak year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, it had 3,508 visitors.
And Tan Hoa is not just about caves. The cuisine here has many unique features, such as pới. It is a type of steamed cake made from corn flour mixed with fresh, finely ground cassava. The golden pới is eye-catching, chewy and fragrant. In the past, pới to Tan Hoa people was like rice to people in the plains, but making pới was quite hard, so Tan Hoa people now also eat rice, only making pới on special occasions.
With snail dishes, Tan Hoa people only catch male snails, rarely catching female snails to eat to help them continue to reproduce. The dishes of sour fish, grilled pork with lemon leaves, fish soup with giang leaves and green bananas... in this land will captivate those who love to find the unique features of regional culture through cuisine.
During the nights staying at homestays, there are long and exciting conversations with the local people - the hosts, listening to fascinating cultural stories all night long. But behind those cultural charms is an arduous journey of building a homestay. Farmers cannot become tourism CEOs overnight. They cannot promote and find tourists themselves. And in many homestays, the local people become hired workers for businessmen from the lowlands who come to invest - something that goes against the nature of community tourism, so it cannot develop sustainably.
To avoid those mistakes, Nguyen Chau A said he first organized 10 families to run homestays and 10 families to take care of food for tourists. Their source of guests were tourists returning from cave tours. After a trial period, both the hosts and guests were satisfied. On average, each homestay had 15-20 nights of guests per month.
"We invest in them, 150 million VND/house, so we don't leave them to fend for themselves. Each household receives 60% of the income, minus electricity and water costs, they have 7-10 million VND/month. But the ultimate goal of community tourism is for the people to be completely in charge, under the cooperative model. To achieve that, they must be real professionals" - Chau A said.
But where do the people of Tan Hoa who have real jobs in the tourism sector come from? Currently, there are three families in the village sending their children to study at the tourism college in Nha Trang, and three others who are tour guides and safety staff for cave tours are studying at the Saigon Tourism College with funding sponsored by Oxalis. Every year, after the cave season ends, in October, teachers from the school come to the village to teach. This force will be the nucleus in the future to build the Tan Hoa Community Tourism Village Cooperative.
Members of homestay and catering households are also carefully trained. Ms. Duong, wife of Mr. Hoang - the owner of Hoang Duong homestay, said they are taught everything from how to clean the room to what to do and what not to do when meeting tourists.
"It's very detailed, there's a proper test, only those who pass can work as a homestay" - she said. Mr. Bai's two daughters-in-law who are in charge of providing food services also said that they were thoroughly trained in food hygiene and safety and had to renovate the kitchen to meet standards. It's all a journey of continuous learning and adaptation for the people here, to make their village a truly worth-visiting place.
Tuoitre.vn
Comment (0)