Ho Chi Minh City’s first Golf Festival kicked off at Tan Son Nhat Golf Course on Wednesday afternoon, serving as an important milestone for the city’s golf tourism.

The event, which is set to wrap up on Friday, is jointly hosted by the Ho Chi Minh Department of Tourism and the Vietnam Golf Association.

The festival features the Cup Ping Vietnam 2023 tournament, which attracts some 1,000 golfers.

The participating golfers are entrepreneurs from localities across the southern region.

The golf tournament is aimed at contributing to popularizing the city’s tourism products and services among local and international golf communities.

According to the municipal Department of Tourism, Ho Chi Minh City made great strides in tourism post-COVID-19, fueling the city’s socio-economic recovery and growth.

Apart from tourism promotion activities, the city is focusing on launching new products to diversify tourism services, as well as offer new experiences to tourists.

Notably, the city is moving toward developing golf tourism based on the potential of its two major golf courses, Tan Son Nhat and Thu Duc.

Vietnam has over 100 golf courses. In 2019 and 2022, the Southeast Asian country was picked as the world’s best golf destination by the World Golf Awards, local media reported.

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Twenty schools in Dong Thap Province, southern Vietnam have involved students in growing organic vegetables at school gardens in a bid to enrich their knowledge about farming and prove the model of such gardens.

The vegetable gardening at these schools is part of an organic farming project backed by Seed To Table, a Japanese non-profit organization.

The Dong Thap Agricultural and Rural Clean Water Service Center said on Tuesday that the project has been implemented at 20 schools in 10 districts and cities of the province, producing remarkable results.

Via the project, which was launched in 2019, 20 net-roofed houses have been built to plant organic vegetables, while participating students have been equipped with farm uniforms.

Furthermore, signboards have already been placed at the vegetable gardens.

Many schools are growing legumes and flowers to develop an ecosystem in their gardens, while some others have planted vegetables to harvest and sell full-grown plants to residents and teachers.

As a way to get knowledge about organic farming, the students engaging in the vegetable gardening were told to report their study results in terms of the maturity of vegetables in different soil conditions, the growth stages and cultivation methods of mustard and peanut farming for soil improvement, the growth of vegetables after the volume of organic fertilizer is changed, and the status of organic farming.

A group of students at Nguyen Du High School in Cao Lanh City was assigned to study the maturity of organic vegetables in different soil conditions. 

Their study results showed that among two vegetable beds with the same area and volume of seeds, one which received a double volume of organic fertilizer was much more productive than the other with a normal amount of the fertilizer.

During the vegetable gardening process, teachers always accompany students and help them absorb knowledge about organic agriculture and raise their awareness of environment and ecosystem protection.

In 2023, the project, funded by Seed To Table, will be expanded to three more schools in the province. 

Besides, seven groups of farmers, including 13 households, have joined the project to farm organic plants on a combined area of 2.8 hectares in line with Vietnamese PGS standards. Each kilogram of full-grown vegetables which are yet to be labeled is priced at VND20,000-40,000 (US$0.85-1.7).

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Cultural tourism was chosen as the main theme for the Vietnam International Travel Mart – VITM Hanoi 2023, scheduled for April, with an aim at promoting Vietnam’s traditional and modern culture to international visitors.

Developing cultural tourism products

With cultural tourism as the main theme, this year’s expo is expected to encourage tourism businesses to study and design new travel products by making the most of unique values of the country’s traditional culture and its heritages, according to the Vietnam Tourism Association (VITA), the expo’s organizing board.

The cultural diversity of 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam has given the Southeast Asian nation a big advantage in attracting international visitors.

“We need to review our travel products to develop specialized cultural ones while introducing the concept of cultural tourism to vocational schools.

“A step-by-step roadmap is needed to develop and promote cultural tourism,” Vu The Binh, chairman at the VITA, said at a press conference of VITM – Hanoi 2023 on Tuesday morning.

VITM 2023 to feature ongoing issues of Vietnam tourism 

This year’s event, which is also the time to look back at a 10-year journey of VITM, will include a range of tourism promotion activities, including business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) meetings.

A number of hot issues in the local tourism industry will be tabled for discussion at the event through a forum on the development of Vietnamese cultural tourism and a seminar on measures to reduce plastic waste in the field.

As of March this year, businesses from more than 50 provinces and cities in Vietnam, along with 15 countries and territories had registered to join the VITM – Hanoi 2023, which will take place from April 13 to 16 in the capital city of Hanoi.

The expo will offer numerous travel products and special discounts to visitors.

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