(TITC) – Ta Phin commune (Sa Pa town, Lao Cai) is developing
a rural tourism model associated with preserving and promoting traditional
cultural craft villages in a sustainable, inclusive and multi-valued manner.
This is a pilot model of Sa Pa town to combine new rural construction and rural
tourism development.
Ta Phin is the first community tourism village of Sa Pa town. The village is famous for its pure nature scenery, majestic mountains, and distinct customs and cultures.
Coming to Ta Phin, visitors can experience traditional handicrafts of the local people such as participating in picking medicinal leaves and preparing bath medicines, learning how to use herbs; learning how to make brocade fabric, embroider patterns according to the traditional process of the Dao and Mong ethnic groups; learning and practicing the processes of forging, weaving flax, making beeswax printing models on brocade of the Mong people…
To improve the quality of tourism in Ta Phin in particular and communes and wards in general, Sa Pa District is implementing many solutions, focusing on linking tourism products to highlight quality and image for tourists. Accommodation facilities, eco-tourism areas, and experiences are linked with establishments that produce products from traditional crafts, which offers visitors opportunity to experience. The tourist village will become an “ecosystem” with the participation of many “links” from individual establishments.
With this approach, people not only have income from tourism activities but also develop the consumption of products from traditional crafts (bath medicine, brocade, bamboo and rattan crafts, buffalo skin drums). Besides, promoting the consumption of traditional handicraft products also contributes to preserving the unique cultural identity of the local ethnic community.
In Ta Phin, visitors will meet Dao and Mong women sitting in groups, holding in their hands bundles of spun flax or brocade sheets dyed indigo to embroider patterns. Brocade products or brocade embroidery experiences are also interesting tourist products of this locality. Two groups with similar interests in sewing and embroidery were established with the participation of more than 100 local women. They often share embroidery patterns, innovate products, and motifs to better suit tourists.
Similarly, the bath medicine products of the Red Dao people in Ta Phin commune not only offer experience of picking and bathing medicinal leaves at resorts and accommodation establishments like before, now visitors can easily find packaged bath medicines, bottled concentrated bath medicines, herbal extracts… with many designs, convenient for tourists to buy and transport.
Traditional crafts in Ta Phin are now one of the unique tourism products, attracting many tourists to experience. Therefore, developing craft village tourism is one of the important solutions to promote economic growth, enrich tourism products and preserve ethnic cultures.
Currently, Sa Pa is focusing on integrating existing tourism products, highlighting the characteristics of Ta Phin tourism, including craft villages such as medicinal baths, Red Dao products, agricultural products and intangible cultural products of the Dao ethnic people. This is also a model for developing tourism in rural areas, aiming to preserve and promote traditional cultural craft villages.
Tourism Information Technology Center
