Ha Tien Town: Coastal Modern Tourist Destination

The Ha Tien town has a historic span of 300 years and is famous for a cluster of landscapes such as Dong Ho, Thach Dong and Mui Nai. Ha Tien is also well-known for commercial ports built during the Mac Cuu dynasty 300 years old, which have existed till now with lots of potentials for the country’s sea economic development.

 

Ha Tien is home to numerous cultural and historic relic sites recognized as national and provincial relics like the Ha Tien prison, the Xa Xia pagoda – a war remnant, the Phu Dung pagoda, Tam Bao pagoda and the mausoleum of Mac Cuu, the wall of Tong Tran palace, Ba Ma Chau pagoda, Than Hoang temple. Each landscape is associated with the reclaiming of virgin soil and the defending of land of the Ha Tien people. Ha Tien is also the land of festivals with 44 large-scale events held every year. Particularly, the Tao Dan Chieu Anh Ca festival has been passed through the generations and lots of poetry and literature have been kept and preserved as valuable assets.

Ha Tien Town is endowed with a cluster of landscapes called the Ten Sights by people in bygone days, and is nowadays an attractive destination of around 800,000 and one million visitors per year. The number of visitors is believed to increase further if the town creates tourism products and services apart from natural beauties. Currently, there are 11 projects, mainly in the tourism field and totaling VND177 billion, are being run in the Ha Tien town. The town is also calling on enterprises to invest into the tourism areas involving the Ten Sights such a Mui Nai, Thach Dong, Da Dung, Dong Ho and Den Mountain. Lots of projects to build the luxurious urban areas, and resort sites next to the river gate of Dong Ho have been licensed. Under the instruction of the government, by 2010, Ha Tien Town will develop into a tourism urban area and earn VND185 billion from the non-smoking industry. The target is not too difficult if the town’s tourism potentials are exploited logically and ensure sustainable development.  

 

The Xa Xia border gate has officially been upgraded into an international gate since late May 2007, marking a significant milestone in the locality’s development of border gate economy. Ha Tien Town is also chosen to build industrial zones under the development plan of national industrial zones by 2015. This will become a place to gather agricultural products and seafood from the neighboring areas and Cambodia’s provinces through the Xa Xia border gate.   

 

At present, Ha Tien is being given lots of prioritised policies on investment, with the aim to turn the town into a luxuriant border urban area, facilitating trading activities via the border. The 52.5-hectare Xa Xia non-tariff zone and a 2.4 hectare duty-free shop, tally valued around VND180 billion, are being urgently carried out to boost the development of cross-border trading activities. In the time to come, the Ha Tien border gate economic area will play a role of an important gate for trade exchange of Kien Giang province and the entire Mekong Delta region with some countries in the Southeast Asian region. Currently, Kien Giang province’s tourism sector and coastal provinces of Cambodia and Thailand have joined hands to open sea and coastal tours crossing the three nations, of which Ha Tien Town will play an important role in the liaison. Apart from the deep-water port Hon Chong, located in Kien Luong District, Kien Giang province, which is able to receive 20,000 DWT ships (it expects to raise the capacity to welcome 60,000 DWT ships by 2020) and the Bai No-Ha Tien sea port, Ha Tien town owns a strategic status on both roads and waterways.     

 

In addition, Ha Tien is promoting lots of urban development projects with the total investment of VND2.084 trillion. Of the volume, the central invests VND92 billion to upgrade the Highway 80 including the To Chau Bridge and the road throughout the inner town and VND141 billion to develop the traffic system within the city and roads to serve the tourism development. New urban areas have been building on the two banks of the Dong Ho River and the Bai No area, expanding the town towards the sea.  

 

Ha Tien Town People Committee has just approved a project to declaim the sea to build the South Ha Tien tourism urban area, invested by the Ho Chi Minh City-based Nhan Dat Trading - Construction Consultancy and Designing Co., Ltd. with a total capital of VND226 billion. The project is scheduled to cover an area of 100 hectares. The project will include a tourism service centre, luxurious resort site and an ecological system of green tree gardens surrounding urban areas, sports on sea, trading centre and public services.

 

Lately, the province’s people’s committee has nodded for investment into several islands under the Hai Tac (Pirate) archipelago under the Tien Hai island commune, Ha Tien Town to develop sea-related ecological tourism sites. So far, there have been two investors licensed. One is the Kien Giang Seafood Joint Stock Company to hire six islands to open tours for resort, fishing. The other is the Ho Chi Minh City-based Nhat Tam Company to hire the Hon Tre Island, the biggest in the archipelago, to invest in resort tours and to build an international-standard film studio.