Children from ethnic minority groups play on vast fields of buckwheat flowers
in Ha Giang Province, 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Tung Duong. 

With Vietnam doing well in controlling the Covid-19 outbreak, a series of tourism and cultural festivals are scheduled to take place in the upcoming weeks. 

Bac Ha Winter Festival is to be organized from November 20-22 in the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai, home to resort town Sa Pa.

This year’s festival will feature a culinary event, street parade, night market, music programs and a horse race, giving tourists opportunities to explore the ethnic H’mong culture. Bac Ha is home to 14 ethnic minorities, mainly H’mong who make a living cultivating maize and rice on the rocky cliffs.

The horse race is one of the highlights of this year’s festival, scheduled to kick off on November 21.

A neighbor of Lao Cai, Ha Giang Province will host the annual buckwheat flower festival at its Dong Van Stadium on November 28.

The festival, featuring a marathon, photo contest, along with culinary and art programs, aims to promote the distinctive H’mong and Thai cultures and honor the value of buckwheat, a local staple grain.

This year, as part of the festival, a series of activities will be held to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Dong Van karst plateau in Ha Giang being recognized as a global geopark by UNESCO.

The festival, lasting until early December, will feature the beauty of blooming white and pastel-pink buckwheat, annually cultivated after the summer-fall rice crop.

In the Central Highlands, a brocade culture festival will occur in Dak Nong Province from November 24-29. The festival will occur at Dak Nong's tourist attractions including Dao Noi scenic area, Gia Nghia Town and Gia Nghia Lake.

Authorities in the Central Highlands province of Gia Lai will host a week-long event from November 20-26 allowing tourists to admire the blossoming of yellow wild sunflowers in Chu Dang Ya Commune, 30 km from Pleiku Town, capital of Gia Lai and home to a century-old extinct volcano.

Wild yellow flowers bloom in Chu Dang Ya Commune, Gia Lai Province.
Photo by VnExpress/Chu The Dung.

Vietnam's current count of active Covid-19 cases is 122 and 35 deaths from the disease in a population of 96 million have been recorded to date. The country has passed two months without community transmission.