SAPA VIETNAM INFORMATION
Located in Vietnam's remote northwest mountains, Sapa is famous for both its fine, rugged scenery and also its rich cultural diversity. Sapa is an incredibly picturesque village that lies in the Hoang Lien Son mountain range near the Chinese border in northwestern Vietnam, known as "the Tonkinese Alps". Sapa and its surrounding region is host to many hill tribes, as well as rice terraces, lush vegetation, and Fansipan, the highest peak in Vietnam. However, as a result of a recent surge in popularity Sapa has rapidly become a tourist hotspot where money is the new drug of choice. Don't be put off by the rush, your explorations of the surrounding countryside will be worth the trouble.
Many ethnic minorities, such as the Hmong and the Dao, live in and around Sapa. Many older women in particular make items such as ethnic-style clothes and blankets, to sell to tourists. Striking up a conversation with them can be very rewarding. Sadly, however, doing this in Sapa town itself will sometimes lead to a scrum as a multitude of vendors taste a potential sale.
PHU QUOC VIETNAM INFORMATION
Phu Quoc is a very mountainous and densely forested Island of 1320 sq km, its 48 km in length from south to north and has a population of approx. 80,000 people. Situated in the Gulf of Thailand 45 km west of Ha Tien on the Vietnamese mainland and 15 km south of the coast of Cambodia, Phu Quoc is ringed with some of most beautiful beaches and best seafood in Vietnam. Phu Quoc Island served as a based for French missionary Pigneau de Behaine from the 1760-80s and at one time he provided shelter here for Prince Nguyen Anh (later Emperor Gia Long) when he was being hunted by the Tay Son rebels. During the Vietnam war there was little fighting here but the Island was used by the Americans as a prison for captured Viet Cong. Phu Quoc is not really a part of the Mekong delta and also doesn’t share the deltas extraordinary ability to produce rice & fruit due to its soil quality and inaccessible terrain.
DALAT VIETNAM INFORMATION
Dalat looks like a cross between Vietnam and the French Alps. Many of its hotels and houses are built in a French style. The city spreads across a series of pine-covered hills, with a small lake in the center and surrounded by higher peaks, making for some lovely scenery quite different from the rest of Vietnam. Temperatures are pleasantly warm by day, and quite cool at night, down to perhaps 10C.
Dalat is very much a tourist town. Tour buses by the dozen run up and down its hills, and small hotels line its streets. The vast majority of visitors are Vietnamese on short package tours, drawn by the scenery, vivid blue skies, fresh air, flower-filled parks, and local edible treats. Dalat is a favorite destination for company weekend outings, family get-aways, and honeymoons.
QUY NHON VIETNAM INFORMATION
Qui Nhon was officially founded more than 100 years ago with its forming and developing history going much further back to the 11th-century Champa culture, Tay Son dynasty and Thị Nại seaport from the 18th century. Nowadays Qui Nhon, itself a seaport, is recognized as a second-grade city with a geo-economic priority and an urbanized infrastructure. The government describes the city as one of the three commercial and tourism centres of the central southern coastal region (with Da Nang and Nha Trang).
Qui Nhon has a varied topography, its geography being extremely diversified with such landforms as mountains and forests, hills, fields, salt marshes, plains, lagoons, lakes, rivers, shorelines, peninsulas and islands. Qui Nhon's coastline is 42 km long with attractive sandy beaches, abundant seafood resources and many other natural products of high economic worth. The city's key economic activities include industries, mercantile, export-imports, seaport services, aquatic product husbandry and tourism.
The economic trend, at present, is increasingly service-based at the expense of agriculture, forestry and pisciculture. The GDP breakdown in percentage terms for 1998 is: construction industry 28.40%, service 55.58%, agriculture, forestry and pisciculture 16.02%. Qui Nhon's development goal for the near future is striving to build the city into a dominant seaport in the North-South and West-East corridor as well as into an international industrial, commercial and service-based trading centre with a strong and active role as a regional economic engine. |
