Vietnam Travel & Tourism

The participants will have a chance to win special out-door trips by sharing their best holiday experiences in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia).

ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA, a leading adventure tour operator in Indochina, has launched a travel writing contest 2011 for travelers from across the world.
The participants will have a chance to win special out-door trips by sharing their best holiday experiences in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia)
The participants are encouraged to write about their interesting stories, nice memories or any impressive experiences that made the holidays to be the time of their lives.

The winner will receive a trip for 2 persons costing from $700–>$1000 depend on their selections of out door activities including Trekking, Cycling, Motorcycling, Kayaking in wide areas of Indochina.

The entries can be made by email to event@activetravel.asia in 350 – 1000 words and must be original works of the participants along with the entrant’s name, e-mail and telephone number by 20th October 2011.
All eligible entries will be posted on ATA’s facebook page and 2 travel news sites Activetravel Magazines & Vietnam Adventure News. The winner is the entry that has the amount of LIKE ranked highest on facebook page plus on 2 travel news sites.

PRIZE

The winner will receive the prize based on their selection of out door activities such as: Kayaking Halong Bay, Motorcycling Ho Chi Minh Trail, Trekking Luang Prabang, Cycling Angkor Wat… These tours are designed especially for 2 persons, costing from $700 – $1000. This must be a memorizable exploration & real experience of lifetime
3 incentive prizes are also available for 3 entries ranked following the winner. The prize is a city tour with the private tour guide for 2 people plus some valuable extra.

For full details of information, please visit: The ATA Travel WritingCompetition 2011

Active Travel Asia (ATA) is offering Great Summer Promotion 2011 in Vietnam and Cambodia. These promotions are guaranteed by luxurious adventure tours, add-on values and reasonable prices.

Active Travel Asia kicks off Special Summer Promotion 2011 covering all kinds of adventure tours include trekking, biking, motorcycling, kayaking and family adventure in Vietnam and Cambodia. All promoted tours are in Vietnam (http://www.activetravelvietnam.com), Cambodia (http://www.activetravelcambodia.com) and three others between Vietnam and Cambodia (http://www.activetravelshop.com). Depend on the value of tours; travelers are got special value-added services.

With this promotion is starting from May, 1st to Sep, 31st 2011, ATA guarantees the best Vietnam and Cambodia travel packages with good prices as well as attractive add-on values as below:

• Travelers book tours and services with ATA under US$ 300, ATA offers free visa approval letter.

• Travelers book tours and services with ATA from over US$ 301 to US$ 1000, ATA offers free visa letter, free water Puppet Show and free 2-hr rickshaw guided tour in Hanoi’s Old Quarter

• Travelers book tours and services with ATA from over US$ 1000 to US$ 2000, ATA offers free visa letter, Free water Puppet Show +and free half-day guided city tour.

• Travelers book tours and services with ATA from over US$ 2000, ATA offers free visa on arrival, free airport transfer (2 ways) and free guided half-day city tour.

Conditions:

• This promotion is applied for group size from minimum 1 person to maximum 4 persons. If group is bigger than 4 persons, the promotion for 4 people is applied for the group.

• This promotion is applied for booking from May, 1 to Sep, 31

The promotion provides travelers real experiences in hidden Indochina (Cambodia and Vietnam travel) with add-on valued services. This makes it suitable all types of groups and those who love any kind of adventure activities.

For the whole Summer Promotion of Cambodia and Vietnam Tours, please refer to http://www.activetravel.asia/special_offer/ or contact ATA at info@activetravel.asia

With the add–on values from this Great Summer Promotion 2011 of ATA, the hesitance will be replaced by the smart decision from who are exited in traveling and getting more real experience.

# # #

ACTIVE TRAVEL ASIA (ATA) is established in 2006 and has grown to become one of the Indochina’s leading adventure travel companies. ATA offers a wide selection of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar adventure tours, including hiking and trekking, biking, motorcycling, overland touring and family travel packages.

The 125-cubic-centimetre engine of the scooter was screaming for forgiveness, throwing off so much heat it burned through my jeans, singeing my leg hair.

All morning I’d been mercilessly holding the throttle wide open, climbing hills so steep it seemed like the bike might die any minute under the weight of my wife and me. We maneuvered around potholes the size of bomb craters at full speed (which was about 80 kilometers an hour, downhill, with no wind), just trying to keep a faint trace of our guide’s rear tire in sight as he pulled ahead effortlessly on his 250-cc Suzuki dirt bike.

We finally caught up to our guide, Quang, on the other side of a long tunnel at the top of a mountain pass. He pulled over for a bathroom break in the thick growth that borders the road, explaining to us that [...Read more]

People who had traveled to Vietnam agreed that it was an interesting experience in general, but the bicycle tours definitely brought more adventurous excitements.

Vietnam borders Cambodia, Laos and China. Its coastline is 3,200 kilometers. The climate is tropical monsoon climate with dry and wet seasons, and it can be extremely hot and humid depending on the elevations.

Because the technology makes traveling easier than it was hundreds years ago, today people fly from places to places to experience the different cultures in various countries. Vietnam, however, is one place that people think it is the place left in the world that is so close to the “reality.” Many destinations have not yet been explored by travelers.

Vietnam is a bicycle-friendly country. Many people use bikes to commute in Vietnam. If you choose this method to sightsee in Vietnam, time can be the issue. Plan a trip with time flexibility to ensure a good quality trip.

Vietnam biking tours

Cycling in Vietnam, time and energy [...Read more]

Do you indulge in traveling and investigating various cultures around the world, especially travel Vietnam and Indochina? If the answer is yes, we will provide you some travel tips which help you to save money for your indulgence.

TRAVELING BY AIRWAY
Flight ticket: you should make a plan and spend time on surfing some websites of different airlines on the internet. Therefore, you yourself can compare the prices given by those airlines in order to choose the best route for your flight. [...Read more]

Dong Van Stone Plateau welcomed nearly 4,000 domestic and foreign tourists during Lunar New Year’s Eve (Tet), bringing total tourism turnover of VND 3 billion, Vice Chairman of Ha Giang’s People Committee Mr. Sen Chin Ly said. On the first day of Lunar New Year, the northern mountainous province of Ha Giang received a large number of tourists travel to Vietnam to visiting landscapes.

Coming to Ha Giang on Tet holiday, tourists not only had a chance to enjoy traditional festivals of ethnic groups such as buffalo-fighting, cock-fighting festivals…, but also joined in their traditional folkgames. According to the Ha Giang’s official, the province had organized sporting cultural activities and traditional festivals as well as well-prepared tourism promotion activities to attract tourists to Vietnam . [...Read more]

A 15-minute drive and 20-minute boat ride from Dalat, you can climb into a makeshift seat atop an elephant and begin a bumpy and pleasant ride into the jungle, guided by a tiny, barefooted man who straddles the elephant’s head with ease.

Tea and English

Sometimes I remember the story beginning as we stepped out of the airport, greeted by a wave of oppressive humidity and hundreds of Vietnamese holding signs for someone named “Nguyen.” Getting into a Vietnamese taxi that wove its way through a sea of cars and bikes and motorbikes that would’ve terrified us had we not been too tired to care after the 17-hour flight. But in reality, we spent our first two hours in Vietnam trying to leave the airport. Trying to convince the customs officers that, although we did attend a Baptist university, we weren’t there to convert the defenseless masses. Our first encounter with a communist nation.

The entrance to Tan Son Nhat airport, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Most visitors to Vietnam have come to experience what they imagine is a culture about as foreign to their own as any still in existence. But what most Vietnamese are anxious to show visitors is how well they can speak English. As we walked [...Read more]

Three days and two nights in Vietnam’s nature reserve, an experience with ethnic tribes on rice terraces amidst a limestone landscape. Our guide knows this place by heart, every turn of the ridges and hidden waterfalls and shorter trails, every native house where tourists like us will have to stay.

We set off in pairs, in puny 100cc motorbikes riding through 130 kilometers of the country’s ephemeral rural setting – the rice paddies that may one day give way to modern development, small towns bustling with artisans and vegetable markets, vast plantations of sugar cane, and the vision of what was once the heart of Indochina.

The Pu Luong conservation area is Vietnam’s answer to ecotourism. It was declared a reserve only in the past two years, effectively putting a stop to logging and keeping the enclave as alluring and authentic as possible in the eyes of foreign tourists who see Vietnam with a weight for history in this corner of Asia.

A solitary farmer works silently in the rice terraces inside the Pu Luong reserve.

On our first day, we arrive in the small village, the southern edge of the sprawling 17,200-hectare nature park in Thanh Hoa province. Mid-afternoon, we chance upon high school students pedaling home in their bicycles, wearing their blue-and-white jacket uniform. All the girls have ponytails down the length of their backs. They smile at us. They know this park is gaining reputation among foreigners.

But it feels as though it is just us, the first [...Read more]

The idea of Vietnam conjures strong images in the Western mind. Many come from a few iconic Vietnam War films. The country still features those lush rustic landscapes, peaceful now, of course, but modern Vietnam has grown beyond the definition of misty paddy fields and peeling houses, captivating as these certainly are.

Sapa Field, Vietnam

Remnants of war – the Cu Chi tunnels near Saigon, for example – have been preserved for visitors to witness. However, the Vietnamese [...Read more]