Women dancing mua xoe, a traditional dance of Thai ethnic group

The 11th Northwestern Ethnic Cultural, Sports and Tourism Festival will take place in Lai Chau Province from March 28-31, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced on Tuesday.

All six provinces in the northwest mountains will be participating: Lao Cai, Yen Bai, Lai Chau, Dien Bien, Son La and Hoa Binh.

The purpose of the festival is to publicize the cultural characteristics of different ethnic groups and to advertise what the region has to offer tourists. Also, this year is Lai Chau’s centennial (1909-2009).

The organizers are promising new features and activities this time, the most prominent being a mua xoe, a traditional dance of the Thai ethnic group, with more than a thousand participants.

Performed in the opening ceremony, the dance will set a national record for number of participants.

For most of the four days, the center of the festival will be a fair of 200 to 250 stalls selling craftwork, traditional musical instruments, and the cooking of the H’mong, Dao, Thai, La Hu, Giay, Ha Nhi, Cong, Lu and other ethnic groups.

As usual, there will be many music concerts and artistic shows, displays of different ethnic costumes, and various other exhibitions.

There will also be popular folk games like tug-of-war, stick thrusting, crossbows and bolts, badminton, cloth ball-throwing and humming-top playing.

A good crowd should turn up for the beauty contest where tour guides will crown the “Beauty of the Northwestern Region.”

For the more commercially minded, there will be a seminar on developing tourism in the northwestern region attended by business people and government officials.

The opening ceremony in Lai Chau People’s Square on March 28 will start at 8 p.m. and be broadcast live on Channel VTV2 and the Voice of Vietnam radio station.