1 Suddenly I remembered my first immigration. Everything came back like a slow motion movie.
That year I was 10 years old, getting on a canoe from Vang wharf of Le Son village to Minh Cam wharf (Tuyen Hoa district, Quang Binh province). It was also the first time I knew that Gianh river flows through beautiful villages and has bends, the river leans against the majestic limestone mountains. (When I grew up, I thought, the image of the river leaning against the mountain is like a girl with loose hair leaning against the muscular chest of a boy)...
2 “… Cruising on the Russian rivers also takes you to places that are difficult to “reach” by road, such as the ancient town of Yaroslavl, a symbol of the development of architecture and style during the Tsarist period. Or the strange city of Uglich with the stone house of Grand Duke Dmitry built in the 15th century… Located on Lake Onega, Kizhi Island will attract you with its unique wooden architecture, most notably two wooden churches that still retain their pristine beauty and were built in the 18th century”… Those are the glowing introductions of a travel company about river tours in the land of the White Birch.
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But the real experience was many times more magical when in 2014 I had a 10-day trip on the rivers of Russia. When the boat stopped at a village along the river, we seemed to see a “scene” with characters from hundreds of years ago coming out of Russian literature. Those were women wearing floral scarves selling salted fish and raspberry jam by the riverbank next to a row of apple trees laden with fruit. Or a man sitting on a wooden boat fishing, behind him, a bright yellow forest. Then, while walking, suddenly seeing a garden full of flowers, there was a woman wearing a floral scarf covering her head, pushing open the wooden gate and stepping out, holding a wooden ladle in her hand… At each stop, visitors are immersed in the memories of the land with different, fascinating stories about the characters and history of that place that seem to hold people back and not want to leave.
What we have learned on the shore makes most tourists no longer feel that the tiny room on the boat during the long trip is inconvenient. During that trip, we, a group of journalists from Vietnam and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Focus Travel - Mr. Dang Bao Hieu - the organizer of the trip - had many "pocket talks" about the dream of river tourism in Vietnam. That is also the premise for us to join together to organize the contest "Stories of the Rivers" ten years later (from March 2024 to September 2024).
3 We - nearly a hundred people (including writers, journalists, tourism businesses and cultural and tourism management officers of some southern localities) had two trips "wading" the Mekong River on the boat La Marguerite of Focus Travel Company.
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Unlike the trip to Russia, our impression only stopped in the middle of the river with the beautiful ship, inspired by the famous movie "The Lover" , rather than stopping on the shore.
Unfortunately, the majority of tourists on the beautiful 5-star boats on the Mekong River are not Vietnamese. “The journey makes me very sad because this boat runs in Cambodia more than in Vietnam. The boat runs on the river of your country for 5 days, the remaining 3 days run in Vietnam,” Mr. Dang Bao Hieu pondered. And his efforts to connect with localities along the Mekong River are his way of finding solutions to increase the journey in Vietnam for his boat, of which Vinh Long is a proof.
“For the Mekong River, calling for the development of riverside products to revive tourism requires connecting localities together, synchronization, and leadership. If not at the state level, it could be at the regional level.” - With 17 years of working in the tourism industry, including 7 years as Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee in charge of tourism, Mr. Tran Huu Binh (writer Binh Ca), former Vice Chairman of the Ninh Binh Provincial People's Committee, shared his 'lifetime' experience.
4 If you come to Ho Chi Minh City in the last days of this year, it will not be difficult to recognize the two banks of the Saigon River are incredibly brilliant. The beauty of a "Riverside City" with over ten million people must start from the unrealistic dream of the city's leaders; and also daring and capable businessmen like Nguyen Kim Toan, director of Thuong Nhat Company Limited (investor of the Saigon Waterbus waterway tourism service chain), who is considered a pioneer in waterway transport in Saigon and the whole country.
Mr. Dang Bao Hieu, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Focus Travel: Quang Binh River is short and steep, so investing in luxury cruises like on the Mekong River is not feasible and requires suitable solutions. Quang Binh needs stories, landmarks and typical dishes, so that tourists can not only experience the peace on the river but also feel the local cultural imprint. Quang Binh rivers can become heritage rivers, cultural rivers, traffic rivers and economic rivers… bringing benefits to the locality if the water surface, river banks and riverside land funds are well exploited. If the province wants river tourism to reach the “big sea”, it must develop long-term plans, clear “bottlenecks”, and have appropriate policies to attract and invite investors. |
On the canoe trip from Bach Dang wharf to Can Gio, across Long Tau river, listening to Toan talk about the early days of opening the river bus, we suddenly remembered the image of Ho Chi Minh City leaders sitting on a boat on the Seine River (France) in 2022, right after the Covid epidemic ended. Since then, the Saigon River has changed significantly every day. Mr. Truong Minh Huy Vu, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Institute for Development Studies, shared: Ho Chi Minh City leaders have made field trips to learn about models and experiences in developing waterway transportation and tourism in developed countries, where famous rivers flow through; to have appropriate policies to exploit the advantages of rivers. Currently, a master plan along the two banks of the Saigon River has been and is being formed.
During the trip from Bach Dang wharf to Can Gio, I - an immigrant of more than half a century old, while watching the hustle and bustle on the wharf and boats and watching the big ships leaving the river mouth to the sea, looking out at the vast horizon, I dreamed again about traveling to my hometown Gianh River.
5 In the book “Stories of the Rivers” (including 56 works selected from nearly 500 entries), there are over a dozen rivers of Quang Binh appearing with famous writers and journalists. Kien Giang, Nhat Le, Gianh, Long Dai, Son rivers - the hometown rivers appear through the pages of their writings, flowing like their love for their birthplace that is always present.
After the award ceremony of “Stories of the Rivers” at a hotel along the Saigon River, a group of journalists from Quang Binh Newspaper went down the Mekong River to participate in a discussion about the tourism potential of Vinh Long, an upcoming stop on the La Marguerite boat trip (thanks to the natural connection of the contest program). Their article “Awakening the Rivers” published in Quang Binh Newspaper later accompanied and encouraged me - a person who is always thinking about what can be done to connect the flow of my hometown rivers to the ocean.
“Each river in Quang Binh with its historical depth is an emotional story. Those are the legends about Nhat Le River through the ups and downs of history, Gianh River as the border during the Trinh-Nguyen conflict or Son River with the World Natural Heritage Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park…” - it seems that day, I shared with my hometown journalists many, many passions about how Quang Binh rivers can become typical tourism products.
The conversations on the boat between the group of journalists and the experts on the boat recorded in two parts of the article, if listened to and continued, perhaps in the future, the rivers of Quang Binh will be less painful.
Luong Thi Bich Ngoc
Source: https://www.baoquangbinh.vn/dat-va-nguoi-quang-binh/202501/dau-dau-nhung-dong-song-2224080/
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