VN welcomes first New Year foreign visitors

VGP - Japan’s cruise liner Pacific Venus carrying 550 tourists and crew docked at the Sài Gòn Port on February 3, the first day of the Lunar New Year, becoming the first foreign visitors to Hồ Chí Minh City.

February 04, 2011 8:01 AM GMT+7

The tourists, mainly Japanese, are on a five-day trans-Việt Nam tour from January 31 arranged by Saigontourist travel agency. They visited Hạ Long Bay, Đà Nẵng central city, Hội An ancient town and Huế imperial city.

In HCMC, they are scheduled to visit the Nguyễn Huệ flower street, learn about the Vietnamese traditional dress (Áo dài), watch a water puppet performance, make tours of the Chợ Lớn market, the Củ Chi tunnel and the Mekong delta city of Mỹ Tho .

During the New Year festival, Saigontourist also accommodated the cruise liner Amdedea of Germany with 950 passengers and crew on board, mainly Germans. This was an adventure tour of HCMC-Bình Dương –Mỹ Tho from January 31-February 2.

The travel agency will welcome the Costa Classica cruise liner carrying 2,150 passengers and crew from China and Hong Kong to visit Hạ Long Bay on February 7-8.

Also on the first day of the lunar New Year, the Bãi Cháy tourist port welcomed three delegations with nearly 100 tourists from the Republic of Korea, Japan and China to visit Hạ Long Bay, becoming the first tourists in the Lunar New Year to Quảng Ninh northern province.

The port planned to allow about 230 boats with a total of 2,300 tourists on board to visit Hạ Long Bay on the same day.

Earlier on February 1, the oceangoing liner Azamara Club Cruises carrying 600 passengers, mainly Americans, Britons and Germans, docked at the Cái Lân port to visit Hạ Long Bay.