Overseas Vietnamese are excited to return to their homeland during the traditional lunar new year festival. Some of them spend their holiday visiting their relatives or attending traditional festivals while others are interested in exploiting their homeland’s beautiful landscapes. Today’s Discovery Vietnam introduces some interesting tours for overseas Vietnamese during Tet.

For overseas Vietnamese who return home and stay in HCM City, tours of Chau Doc An Giang, Phu Quoc and Condao are the most popular. Nguyen The Vinh, Deputy Director of the Saigon Tourist Company says overseas Vietnamese account for between 20 and 30% of their customers."Overseas Vietnamese are key customers of Saigontourist. Our trademark is a prestigious one among overseas Vietnamese. Their favorite tours are to the Mekong River Delta, Chau Doc, Phu Quoc, An Giang, Da Lat, Da Nang, Hue and Hanoi. They often invite their relatives to join the tours, so sometimes, our tours include people from Australia, France, the US, Canada and Germany", said Vinh.

Hoan Kiem lake is a popular tourist site in Hanoi

Mr. Vinh says overseas Vietnamese like to join tours with other Vietnamese people to learn more about life in Vietnam. But, the tour guide plays the most important. "Our tour guides are trained on how to deal with overseas Vietnamese, who sometimes don’t want to talk about the past or may have some unusual food preferences. These customers are interested in learning about culture, festivals and rural areas, so tour guides have to be knowledgeable about these things", added Vinh.

These days, the HCM City Youth Tourist Joint Stock Company is busy arranging tours for overseas Vietnamese. "Many overseas Vietnamese book tours for two or more. They spend the whole month traveling to Nha Trang, Hue and Hanoi. Overseas Vietnamese accounted for between 20 and 25% of our customers this year. A 3-day tour of Phan Thiet costs about 14 million dong per person, Ninh Chu is  2 million dong, Nha Trang 2.6 million and Da Lat 1.8 million dong", said Mr. Le Van Hung, the company's Director.

Prices of tours this year rose between 15 and 20%, but the number of customers remained unchanged. Mr Hung says tours of pagodas anc churches are also popular with overseas Vietnamese."We offer a lot of tours of Phan Thiet, Ninh Chu, Chau Doc, Ha Tien, Phu Quoc, Da Lat, Nha Trang, Hue and Hanoi. The tours are similar to those of last year but we changed some destinations. People often dress up during the New Year, so in addition to tours of beautiful landscapes, we also take them to pagodas and churches", said Mr. Hung.

Trans-Vietnam tours are the most popular among overseas Vietnamese. These tours often last from 15 to 18 days. Overseas Vietnamese welcome the Spring with peach flowers, green sticky rice cakes and parallel sentences in the north, then travel southward to sample the traditional Tet customs of Hue and end it Vietnam’s southern region enjoying local food specialties prepared for Tet.