Dream from small village
La Pan Tan used to be the “capital” of opium, at one time 99% of the population were Hmong people living on agriculture. By 2010, opium was completely eliminated. Now on this land is the green of corn and rice, the pink and yellow of peach and mustard flowers. Day by day, La Pan Tan has changed its “reputation” to become an attractive tourist destination for domestic and foreign visitors.
Located on the top of Khau Pha, nearly 2,000m high, La Pan Tan "heavenly peak" possesses an attractive natural picture with majestic terraced fields, rolling hills and the indigenous culture of the H'Mong people. In addition, this place also attracts tourists with the pure beauty of canola flower fields, hillsides covered in pink color of wild peach (to thick).
A Su was born into a farming family in Ta Chi Lu village, La Pan Tan commune. At the end of 2017, with a university degree in engineering in hand, A Su applied for a job in his field, but after a short time, he no longer found it suitable. The young man also encountered many difficulties in finding a job closer to his family.
However, necessity is the mother of invention. Even when he was still in school, he regularly followed news about Mu Cang Chai and saw that his hometown was becoming more and more well-known, with more and more tourists coming every spring and fall. A Su confided: "Sometimes, visitors to Mu Cang Chai are so crowded that there is no place to stay, they have to ask to sleep at the school, the committee or even camp overnight by the stream, which is very dangerous."
Seeing the tourism potential of his hometown, the Mong man hopes to build his own homestay so that visitors to Mu Cang Chai will have more decent places to stay. This job will not only help his family earn a better income than farming but also promote the image of his hometown.
“I am luckier than many people in the village because I was able to go to university, so I always had the idea of doing something other than farming and contributing more to my community,” A Su shared. From the years of following and nurturing that dream, in 2018, after getting married, he and his wife decided to take out a bank loan to start a homestay business.
Do tourism from scratch
The job is different from his major, he confided, he had to learn from zero. Not only that, his parents are farmers without any savings, he just graduated from university with no experience, no job, and the bank could not lend him a large amount of capital. The difficulties piled up on A Su's dream of doing tourism, but he still kept his determination to "do something else".
With a small capital, A Su bought an old stilt house to use the upper floor for guests to stay on the lower floor as a restaurant and bar. This is a model he learned from previous homestay areas such as Sa Pa, Mai Chau, Moc Chau...
However, the small homestay that opened at the end of 2019 had not welcomed many guests before it had to temporarily close due to COVID-19. During the two years of the pandemic, tourism was almost completely frozen, but he did not give up and worked in the fields, saved every penny to renovate the house, plant trees, study more, and patiently waited for the day he could welcome guests again.
A Su's house is currently the highest homestay in Mu Cang Chai district with an altitude of 1,500m, located halfway up the mountain, with a view of the terraced fields valley in front. Standing here, you can see the entire national landscape of terraced fields in 3 communes (La Pan Tan, Che Cu Nha and De Xu Phinh), or further away, observe the entire territory of Mu Cang Chai district. From A Su's homestay, it is only 3km from Mam Xoi hill, 3km from Hau De waterfall, 3.5km from the thick flower forest of Trong Tong and Trong Pao Sang villages...
From a community homestay with a capacity of 20 guests, A Su has now built two more bungalows to serve families and couples who like private space. Decorating the homestay with local products such as brocade, bamboo, trees, wild peach blossoms... A Su not only saves costs but also creates a cozy, friendly feeling for visitors to the house.
Not stopping at building facilities, A Su met Mr. Duong Minh Binh, Chairman of CBT Travel - who is known as the homestay wizard - to support consulting on how to do community tourism, and to participate in training courses of the province to improve knowledge and professional skills. Meanwhile, A Su's wife, Lu Thi Tang, registered to study cooking at the KOTO Humanitarian Vocational Training Center in Hanoi to learn how to cook for tourists.
After 5 years of trying, A Su's efforts have brought sweet results. He and his wife have paid off part of their bank debt, expanded many relationships with homestays, travel agencies, online booking sites... so they have attracted a more stable number of guests. Tourists coming to La Pan Tan not only come during the rice harvest and flower seasons, but also stay and go on tours all year round. The life of the whole H'Mong family in the village is more prosperous, with the hope of a bright picture for sustainable community tourism development in La Pan Tan.
