Vietnam Breaking News

Most Chinese travellers willing to stay at B&Bs: survey

Most Chinese travellers willing to stay at B&Bs: survey
About two-thirds of travellers in China said they would choose to stay at bed and breakfasts or home-style guesthouses while travelling, according to a survey released by the China Youth Daily on February 6.
The survey, which interviewed 2,010 people, found that 59.4 percent of travellers were satisfied with these inns, the newspaper reported.
Those interviewed said they like these inns because they can experience local customs and cultures, and the services provided are often personalized, the survey found.
Such guesthouses often have unique architectural styles and decor, and their prices are usually good, they said.
About 51.3 percent of those surveyed said they or those they know have had bad experiences when staying at these inns. The biggest problems are insufficient support facilities and hygiene, according to the survey.
The survey showed 64.2 percent of the travellers hoped authorities could step up quality approval for guesthouse operators, and 55.9 percent suggested staff of these inns receive professional training.
Among those interviewed, 52.2 percent were born in the 1980s and 25.8 percent were born in the 1990s, according to the report.
 
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Most Chinese travellers willing to stay at B&Bs: survey

Most Chinese travellers willing to stay at B&Bs: survey About two-thirds of travellers in China said they would choose to stay at bed an...

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Vietnam among Top 15 most Instagrammed cruise destinations

Vietnam among Top 15 most Instagrammed cruise destinations
With up to 40,000 mentions among 1.8 million Instagram posts tagged from ships and ports around the world, Vietnam ranks in the global Top 15 of the most Instagrammed cruise destinations on SeaHub, a cruise deal site.
Cruise visit on Ha Long Bay. Photo: Lead Travel
The list aims to identify the destinations, activities, and time of year that are most popular for social media cruisers. 
Vietnam stands together with countries known for their beauty, such as Canada, Japan, and Russia. Some 10,000 Instagram pictures of Ha Long Bay were posted, according to SeaHub.
Thanks to a coastline of 3,000 km, Vietnam has a host of beautiful beaches, bays, and islands that are ideal for sea travel, such as Ha Long Bay, Tra Co Beach, the islands of Co To, Quan Lan, Ngoc Vung and Cai Chien (in the northern province of Quang Ninh), Nhat Le Beach (in the central province of Quang Binh), Lang Co Beach (in the central province of Thua Thien Hue), My Son Beach (in the central city of Da Nang), Ly Son Island (in the central province of Quang Ngai), Quy Nhon Beach (in the south-central province of Binh Dinh), Tuy Hoa Beach (in the south-central province of Phu Yen), Nha Trang Beach (in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa), a series of islets such as Tam, Ong, Tre, Swallow, Binh Ba and others (in Khanh Hoa province), Phan Thiet Beach, large sand dunes, and the new tourist site of Phu Quy Island (in the south-central province of Binh Thuan), and many beautiful beaches on the country’s largest island, Phu Quoc, off the southern coast.
Vietnam also has a rich network of lakes, rivers, canals, and grottoes that also promote the development of boat trips, especially in the Mekong Delta. Last year, leading US lifestyle magazine Food and Wine named a cruise in Vietnam one of the eleven best trips on the globe for retirees. 
It suggested either a river tour in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City or a boat tour on Ha Long Bay, a world natural heritage site with magnificent limestone rock formations rising from the sea.
The UNESCO-listed Ha Long Bay has always been one of Vietnam’s best-known tourism magnets and which many international travel sites have selected as one of most amazing natural wonders in Asia. 
It was used to film the Hollywood blockbuster “Kong: Skull Island”, which hit theaters last March. The best time to take a trip to Ha Long Bay is from April to October.
The number of cruise ships visiting Vietnam was 404 in 2017, putting the country sixth among regional cruise tourism markets, according to the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA). 
The volume of cruise travelers from Asia has increased from 774,000 in 2012 to more than 3 million in 2016. The projected number for 2017 was 4.2 million.
“Vietnam has become an increasingly popular destination for guests from the US, Australia, and Europe as well as Asia, and cruising is one of the best ways to explore this magnificent part of the world,” said Mr. Farriek Tawfik, Director of Southeast Asia at Princess Cruises. 
“In response to this demand, we have significantly expanded our itineraries to offer passengers a choice of sailings and exciting itinerary options.”
Princess Cruises, owned by the US-based Carnival Corporation, one of the world’s largest travel and leisure companies, brought over 58,000 visitors on 22 calls to Vietnamese ports last year, such as Phu My, Nha Trang, Da Nang, and Cai Lan. 
It has recently announced it will increase the number of ships docking in Vietnam, and hence passengers, this year, with the latter to rise over 40 per cent compared to last year, as demand for cruises to the country grows.
Vietnam is one of the fastest-growing tourism markets in the world, welcoming 12.9 million international visitors in 2017, up 29.1 per cent against 2016.
VN Economic Times
 
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Vietnam among Top 15 most Instagrammed cruise destinations

Vietnam among Top 15 most Instagrammed cruise destinations With up to 40,000 mentions among 1.8 million Instagram posts tagged from ships an...

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Passengers via Tan Son Nhat airport to rise 25% during Tet

Passengers via Tan Son Nhat airport to rise 25% during Tet
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There will be nearly 26,300 take-offs and landings, up by 20% from the 2017 Tet occasion, according to the Southern Air Authority.
Carriers had plans to increase their flights by 10-15% from the 2017 Tet to meet the travel demands during the country’s biggest festival.
Airlines, by December 26, had registered to increase nearly 3,000 flights and 582,000 seats on 22 routes from and to 18 domestic airports for the Tet Holiday.
Flight routes with additional flights and seats include Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport to Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat Airport (790 flights/158,000 seats), Tan Son Nhat Airport to Thua Thien – Hue province’s Phu Bai Airport (335 flights/67,000 seats), Tan Son Nhat Airport to Khanh Hoa province’s Cam Ranh Airport (324 flights/66,000 seats) and Tan Son Nhat Airport to Da Nang Airport (262 flights/51,000 seats), as well as Tan Son Nhat Airport to Nghe An province’s Vinh Airport (185 flights/36,000 seats) and Tan Son Nhat Airport to Thanh Hoa province’s Tho Xuan Airport (182 flights/37,000 seats).
Earlier, Deputy Minister of Transport Le Dinh Tho urged the aviation industry and relevant state bodies to work to minimize flight delays and cancellations during the Tet holiday.
According to Bui Minh Dang, deputy head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam’s transport division, the aviation industry saw a significant growth of around 19-20% in 2017. It served about 62 million passengers in 2017, an increase of 19% from 2016.
In 2017, the average On-time Performance (OTP) of airlines was estimated at 87.7%, higher than the global average of 75-79%. Most of delays and cancellations have occurred due to severe weather like storms or mist or during public holidays.
 
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Passengers via Tan Son Nhat airport to rise 25% during Tet

Passengers via Tan Son Nhat airport to rise 25% during Tet There will be nearly 26,300 take-offs and landings, up by 20% from the 2017 Tet ...

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Hue imperial relic site offers free entry during Tet

Hue imperial relic site offers free entry during Tet
<div class="article-photo">The Tomb of Khai Dinh, part of the Complex of Hue Monuments (Photo: VNA)</div>
Thua Thien – Hue (VNA) – Vietnamese visitors to the Hue Imperial Relic Site will be exemptedfrom buying ticket during the first three days of the 2018 lunar year (February16 to 18), said Director of the Hue Monuments Conservation Centre Phan ThanhHai.
On the occasion, the centrewill also organise various activities celebrating Tet (Lunar New Year) at therelic, including the guard changing ceremony, performances of lion dance, royalcourt music and royal games.
The centre will re-enact a ceremony to plant the Neu pole at theImperial Citadel on February 8 (the 23rd day of the 12th lunar month).
This year, Thua Thien – Huewill continue to develop “Hue-One Destination, Five World Heritages” tour(including the Complex of Hue Monuments, royal court music, woodblocks andimperial records of the Nguyen Dynasty and Chinese-script poetry on Hue royalarchitecture).
Preservation will be made toa line-up of architectural works like Kien Trung palace, the Purple ForbiddenCity (Tu Cam Thanh) and Duc Duc tomb. The preservation centre has applied hightechnology to preserve landscapes at the relic site.
The Hue MonumentsConservation Centre welcomed 302,000 visitors, including 262,000 foreigners, inJanuary, a year-on-year surge of 30 percent.
During the three-day CalendarNew Year holiday alone, the former imperial capital city of Hue received over35,000 visitors, 80 percent of whom came from foreign countries.-VNA
 
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Hue imperial relic site offers free entry during Tet

Hue imperial relic site offers free entry during Tet The Tomb of Khai Dinh, part of the Complex of Hue Monuments (Photo: VNA) Thua Thien – ...

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Tulip flower festival to open in Nha Trang

Tulip flower festival to open in Nha Trang
NDO – The largest tulip flower festival in Vietnam will take place at Vinpearl Nha Trang from February 8 to March 2 (from the 23rd day of the 12th lunar month to the 15th day of the first lunar month).
Covering an area of more than 1,000 m2, the festival will bring together hundreds of thousands of tulips, of all kinds and colours. Alongside the natural garden architecture in the temperate, outdoor gardens and lakes at Vinpearl Nha Trang, the flowers bring visitors into a spring filled paradise.
The Tulip Flower Festival at Vinpearl Nha Trang is one of the earliest tulip festivals in the world in 2018.
The event will also kick off the annual Flower Festival held at Vinpearl Nha Trang.
Accordingly, Vinpearl Nha Trang will orrganise the festival by bringing together some of the most unique plants from all over the world.
The effort is part of the strategy to upgrade the quality and service to the international five star standard of Vinpearl’s system, aiming to provide travellers with a perfect and impressive holiday experience.
 
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Tulip flower festival to open in Nha Trang

Tulip flower festival to open in Nha Trang NDO – The largest tulip flower festival in Vietnam will take place at Vinpearl Nha Trang from Feb...

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HCM City promotes itself at India’s tourist fair

HCM City promotes itself at India’s tourist fair

HCM City promotes itself at India’s tourist fair Director of the municipal Department of Tourism Bui Ta Hoang Vu told the Vietnam News Agen...

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Smelly but delicious: Shrimp paste of Ninh Bình

Smelly but delicious: Shrimp paste of Ninh Bình
‘Mam tep’ (shrimp paste) may sound quite intimidating dish, but don’t let the pungent smell prevent you from trying the interesting specialty of Gia Vien district, Ninh Binh province.
Gia Vien shrimp paste is made pretty much the same way as traditional shrimp sauce, yet the ingredients are quite different – locals in Gia Vien make the paste from tiny shrimp.
The process is quite simple – thinh, salt and water are added to shrimp, the mixture is then put into a terracotta pot within a month. The longer it is preserved, the higher quality the shrimp paste is.
Making shrimp paste is not difficult but it requires care in every step and exact amounts of ingredients [thinh and salt]. To make shrimp paste, fresh tiny shrimp should be cleaned within two to three hours. Otherwise, the shrimp dies and that batch of shrimp paste would not meet our standard quality.
The tiny shrimp is in season in November and December, when the river water turns a bit unclear and muddy.
Shrimp paste is commonly used as a type of dipping sauce or added to stirfried pork. Those who do not want to use shrimp paste for dipping, can stir shrimp paste with boiling oil, and add dry onion slices, garlic and ginger.
 
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Smelly but delicious: Shrimp paste of Ninh Bình

Smelly but delicious: Shrimp paste of Ninh Bình ‘Mam tep’ (shrimp paste) may sound quite intimidating dish, but don’t let the pungent smell ...

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