A transnational caravan tour on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam

The number of overland tourists has increased by an annual average of between 20 and 30 percent, but many experts said it should have been much more.

“Vietnam has a land border of 4,550 kilometers with several neighboring countries that includes 100 border gates in 25 provinces,” Nguyen Van Tuan, head of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), said at the seminar.

Nearly 250 officials and experts from local tourism authorities and agencies in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand attended the International Seminar on Vietnam Overland Tourism in Da Nang City.

Tran Xuan Hung, director of Viking tourism company in Ho Chi Minh City, said he had gone to Hanoi all the way from Moc Bai Border Gate in Tay Ninh Province just to obtain a permit for six cars taking a caravan tour from Vietnam to Cambodia.

Many tourism agencies also said they had to waste a lot of time waiting for procedures at border gates, especially on weekends and holidays and when the applications are submitted outside of office hours.

An increasing number of Vietnamese want to take caravan tours to Thailand, but few of these tours are available due to complicated procedures in both countries, said experts.

Several tourism firms said Laos could be a good example of how to simplify procedures for caravan tours. There, it takes only one week for a travel company to apply and receive approval for a caravan tour, while the same procedures take between two and three weeks in Vietnam.

Immigration procedures for caravan tours at border gates in Laos were also easier than in Vietnam, according to travel agencies at the conference.

Hung also suggested allowing caravan tours with left-hand drive cars to enter Vietnam through more border gates. Currently only seven border gates in the central allow such vehicles through.

Caravan tourists wanting to visit Hanoi, HCMC and Ha Long Bay in left-hand drive cars have to enter Vietnam at far-away border gates.

According to VNAT, local and foreign tourism agencies organized nearly 200 caravan tours from 2006 to 2008, with 3,500 cars and 11,000 tourists passing through the national border in such tours.

They are among an average of between 60,000 and 90,000 overland tourists that visit the central region every year.

Around 20 percent of the total tourists visiting Vietnam every year take overland routes.

VietNamNet/Thanh Nien