CONNECTING CULTURE AND SUSTAINABLE TOURISM: FIELD TRIP OF NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE STUDENTS TO THE NORTHWEST VIETNAM

In early December 2025, the Center for Nature Conservation and Development (CCD) accompanied lecturers and students from the College of Alice & Peter Tan – CAPT (National University of Singapore) to study the sustainability of community-based tourism models in Pung Luong commune (Lao Cai province) and Ngoc Chien commune (Son La province).

During the 5-day journey, the CAPT lecturers and student interacted with homestay representatives, tourism cooperatives, traditional craftsmen, and community leaders such as village heads and elders, thereby exploring the community from various perspectives within the lives of the H’Mong people in Lao Cai and the Thai people in Son La.

The meetings helped the students understand the community through the way they collaborate to preserve traditional crafts, such as making costumes and “banh day” (sticky rice cakes); and explore how the H’Mong and Thai people organize their lives through beliefs, architecture, rituals, customs, agricultural farming, and community-based tourism right in their own homes. Through this approach, the issues of nature-culture conservation and economic development – improving quality of life – were clearly demonstrated.

The households participating in community tourism provided the young people from CAPT with a warm welcome and enthusiastic exchanges, helping them understand more about community cohesion as well as sustainability within a community working together in tourism. The trip also evoked many reflections and emotions for CAPT members regarding the harmony between conservation and development, in the context of the rapidly changing socio-economic landscape in Vietnam specifically and Southeast Asia in general.

CCD has been conducting numerous research and cultural experience trips in mountainous provinces with the goal of promoting the beauty of Vietnam to international friends, while directly supporting households and cooperatives implementing community-based tourism models in these localities. We believe that tapping into and interpreting indigenous cultural and natural elements with understanding and respect is the appropriate and sustainable direction for ethnic minority communities in local tourism development.

For more details or to discuss the design of nature-cultural experiences in Vietnam, please contact: info@ccd.org.vn