The village near the waves

With an area of 95,5ha and 365 households, Ha Quang Bac hamlet is peacefully located on the Central heritage detour connecting two cities Da Nang and Hoi An. Local people life here has bound up with sea along with catching of marine resources near the sea coast for generations. Ha Quang Bac has not only an advantages position being between two tourism center of the Central but also many outstanding tourist resources including the wild wide beach, cultural values of trade village and seaside festivals.

Since the investment projects for building resorts had been revoked, Ha Quang Bac has become an ideal place for community tourism development in order to maintain the unspoilt village, change subsistence of local people and contribute to to preserve cultural values of coastal region. Although the project has not implemented yet, aspiration for a change is existing gradually in each of the people here. Mr. Le Van Mien -  village chiefs of Ha Quang Bac said the information about the project of community tourism development in the village makes everyone happy because they will not be worried about land clearance. Futhermore, they will continue to closely attach to the land, house of them and expectations about better future when tourism come with the village.

In fact, the area of trade and services has played a priority role in socio economic development strategy of Dien Duong commune in recent year. Beside Ha Quang Bac, tourism activities in some where are also focused and efficiently exploit. Particularly 2014, The Thong Nhat beach was put into service to meet the need of relaxation and recreation of people and visitors. Up to now, there are over 520 individual businesses in commune operating in service and tourism sectors, have relative growth rate with commercial value and service reaching VND 144,5 billion accounting for 69 % of the entire local economy in 2014. Mr Tran Minh Hoang, Chairman of Dien Duong Commune People's Committee affirm that tourism development will be the most appropriate way to  transfer economic structure, , especially when Dien Duong commune is becoming the ward. Therefore, Ha Quang fishing village shall be carefully considered by the district and the province before making a suitable development model. "Consultants have helped district to redevelop the fishing village with an area of about 10 hectares for for the construction of community tourism village, this also is the project in development policy of marine tourism in the province", said Mr. Hoang.

Hense, district and province will also

According to Mr Le Tri Thanh, Chairman of Dien Ban District People's Committee, the intact culture values of traditional fishing village along with activities attaching to the sea is the advantage of Ha Quang Bac.  There had been project for planning land clearance to build resorts in former times but that didn't happen keeping out of the concerns about breaking up landscape and village culture. Therefore, community tourism is sustainability strategy of Ha Quang Bac in the next time to make cultural values here come specific tourism products through which livelihoods and life of local people will be improved. "Doing well this model is the way proving that urbanization does not mean we must clear everything then we rebuild again. Focusing on urbanization development but still maintaining the village culture identity and associating with many other factors to more sustainably develop is the new way of thinking. If that model is well done,  it will be widely spread at many other localities", said Mr. Thanh.

To implement above steps, Dien Ban District has invited some International organization such as UNESCO, JICA (Japan), ... to do research finding out the most suitable development approach for tourism in Ha Quang Bac. In parallel with that, planning, rearranging tourism village are also implemented to conduct to embarked on building the community toursim village model when having favorable conditions. Mr Thanh said: "This place certainly will be invested in developing tourism, but we should not be in hurry. We must be think how to do first, then district will focus on the planning and educate people's awareness of doing  tourism. Let's do it after there are the good planning, the participation of international organizations and the consensus of local people. This is long-term vision, it must be able to be over 10 years".

In the survey of UNESCO experts at Ha Quang Bac recently, Dr. Duong Bich Hanh - Head of Culture Department of UNESCO Office in Ha Noi estimated that Ha Quang Bac is one oF the few fishing villages having notable edge remaining along the central coast. If it Ha Quang Bac exploited properly, formally, it will attract many tourists, especially odd visitors will come to visit and experience ... "I think developing Ha Quang Bac tourism follow community model is suitable to visitors have more experiences about the activities of the fishing village. In addition, through preliminary survey, I saw there are many cultural history monuments such as the memorial house of family line, communal house, mausoleum ... If they are turned into the stories with colors of village culture to tell for tourists, they are able to be exploited" Dr. Hanh offers suggestion. Besides, according to Dr. Duong Bich Hanh, although Ha Quang Bac is not in the new rural and its structure is a rural village or rather a traditional fishing village with characterized rural, that is also an advantage for UNESCO being able to support according to the new rural way. However, support doesn't mean building how many metre of road or how many school ... UNESCO only provides professional support such as planning, developing some services, tourism products;  repairing the village streets, alleys; blowing stories into tourism products, turning each tourism product into a story; supporting models and producing tourism products associated with the the distinctive characteristics of the village as well as improving the skills of local people in welcoming tourists ... "In general, the support is very diverse, depends on what the village need and what is the strengths, at that time specified activities will be able to be presented for using cultural resources to turn it into what people are able to be benefited. In addition, it is neccessary to have the consensus and opinions of local people. This will be a process and a problem which is not easy to require a lot of parties participating in solving. We definitely  will come back here many times again", said Dr. Hanh.

Development direction of a community-based tourism village was designed so that the expectations about the change of Ha Quang Bac will come true in order to the difference on the coastal axis of Dien Ban in the near future. At the same time, the project will also open new approaches in exploiting advantages of beaches to develop tourism in future so that people actually become owners being able to benefit from their cultural and natural resources. That is sustainable development.