TRAVEL IN BRIEF 13/3

      Park Hyatt on Asia’s best hotel list
Park Hyatt Sai Gon has been voted "Best Hotel in Asia" at the 13th Annual World’s Best Awards Readers’ Survey conducted by Travel + Leisure magazine.
Readers annually select their favourite providers of travel facilities around the world, naming the very best in travel, from hotels, spas, airlines and cruise liners to cities and islands.
Phan Thiet prepares for fish fest
Phan Thiet is preparing for the Cau Ngu (Fish Worship) festival and a cultural week that will take place concurrently from May 13 to 19. The two events will be held along Ca Ty River and at the Van Thuy Tu Temple, a national cultural site containing some 100 sets of whale bones, including Viet Nam’s largest.
At the festival locals pray to "large" creatures like whales, dolphins and sharks, entreating their spirits not to hamper them on fishing trips and bless them with good catches and peaceful lives.
The cultural week celebrations will give the tourists a chance to enjoy a culinary fair featuring dishes characteristic of the coastal area.
Sea festival gets green light
The Khanh Hoa Province People’s Committee has greenlighted the 2009 Sea Festival to be held in Nha Trang from June 6 to 12.
The programme will feature 70 cultural, art, sport, economic, and scientific events, including a Cau Ngu (Fish Worship) festival. There will also be coracle racing, exhibitions of human chess and calligraphy, and a sand sculpture contest.
Several national records are set to be broken at the festival, including for largest folk orchestra, the largest coastal wifi cafe, the longest piece of embroidered work, and the largest pho bowl.
Other events will include a beach football tournament, an international book fair, and a joint Viet Nam-South Korea concert.
Da Nang launches sex training tour
Around 50 young people in Da Nang have begun a Sex Training Tour offered by Viet Da Travel Agency to learn about sex from health workers and consultants.
"The tour will help raise knowledge about sex by utilising health experts," Sai Gon Times Daily quoted the company’s director, Dinh Van Loc, as saying earlier.
The tour, organised jointly with the Da Nang Youth Federation, began on March 12 and cost VND80,000 a person.
Travel website to begin new services
Travel information network www.skydoor.net is set to launch three new, interactive services next Monday, following a month of trial operations.
The new services consist of an up-to-date travel news website available at http://travelnews.skydoor.net, a travel blog at http://travelblog.skydoor.net, and a user-generated video archive featuring the country’s most popular tourist sites at http://video.skydoor.net.
The latest travel information is automatically posted on travelnews.skydoor.net.
On travelblog.skydoor.net, users can read travel articles written by well-known bloggers, which give a slightly left-field view of travel in Viet Nam.
Saigontourist holds MICE tour
Saigontourist Travel Service Co. is organising a MICE (Meeting, Incentive, Conference, Exhibition) tour for a group of 40 visitors from the US-based CIBA Vision later this month.
The group will enjoy a six-day trip fromnext Sunday, exploring Ha Noi, Ha Long Bay, and the ancient town of Hoi An.
In Hoi An the tourists will spend a whole day on a farm with real farmers. They will be divided into groups for a team-building game of cultivating rice before tasting some local specialities.
The company will organise a MICE tour for 40 other American tourists who will visit Viet Nam on a package tour combining travel and study of Vietnamese cuisine.