Great potential

Ethnic minorities account for over 88 percent of the population of Bac Kan Province, including the Tay, Nung, Dao, Mong, Kinh, Hoa and San Chay, offering a treasure of tourism resources. Among the unique treasures of the mountainous province some 200 kms north of Hanoi are the ATK Cho Don special national historical relic site, the Na Tu a historic vestige site visited by the late Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, and Ba Be Lake.

Many special traditional festivals of ethnic minorities are still preserved to this day such as the Ba Be Long Tong festival, the Xuan Duong love market, and the Mu La Pac Nam festival.

Located in the tropical monsoon climate area, at an altitude of 500-1000 meters above sea level, Ba Be Lake has a wild and poetic beauty with cool and pleasant air. The green colored lake offers swimming, boating and fishing, and cycling on the winding roads around it.

One of the most interesting experiences is canoeing on the lake bed and stopping at tourist attractions like Ba Goa Island, Ao Tien, and An Ma Temple. Other attractions include Pac Ngoi village, the Fairy Cave, Na Dang waterfall and Thac Gieng stream.

Unique food specialties available in the lake region include roasted suckling pig, hill chicken, upland sticky rice, steamed bamboo shoots with meat, Ba Be sour shrimp paste, wild vegetables, steamed river fish, shrimp and grilled bananas.

Ba Be Lake looks like a water-color painting

Attracting strategic investors

Despite such great potential, when Vietnam tourism witnessed the strongest growth ever in 2019, Bac Kan could only receive 500,000 visitors.

According to experts, the biggest bottleneck for Bac Kan’s tourism development is the asynchronous transport infrastructure. Therefore, the province is determined to build local routes connecting to the Na Hang tourist site (Tuyen Quang Province) to develop tourism. In the 2021-2025 period, it is expected to invest more than VND7 trillion in the transport sector, focusing on building the Cho Moi-Bac Kan City highway and the tourist route from Bac Kan City to Ba Be Lake, connecting to Na Hang.

Bac Kan focuses on favorable support mechanisms and policies aimed at attracting strategic investors in large-scale tourism complex projects, especially accommodations, entertainment facilities and high-class resorts. The province also encourages businesses to launch start-ups, innovate, and diversify tourism products and business models suitable to the local advantages.

Bac Kan provincial authorities have set goals of making the Ba Be tourist area into a national tourist site by

2025, welcoming at least 32,000 international visitors and one million domestic tourists. By 2030, the local

tourism spot is expected to receive around 50,000 foreign arrivals, 1.7 domestic tourists and total revenue

from tourism of over VND2.5 trillion.

Thanh Tam