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| Ho Thi Non practices the songs of her village to introduce them to visitors |
We met Ho Thi Non, born in 1994, on a late afternoon during our visit to Doi village. The Co Tu girl welcomed guests with a radiant smile like early summer sunshine. In the space of the guol house, where the sound of gongs still echoes during each festival season, Non told us the story of her village - simple yet captivating like the wind from the great forest.
Since childhood, she had cherished the dream of becoming a tour guide, introducing her ethnic culture to visitors. “At that time, I was only six or seven years old. Once, the village welcomed a group of Japanese visitors. Watching the tour guide stand in the courtyard in front of the guol house introducing the village, I suddenly dreamed of one day telling everyone about the culture of our ancestors,” recounted Non.
However, that dream was once swept into the whirlpool of making a living. After many years working as a factory worker in Ho Chi Minh City, Non still felt the ache of missing her village - missing the sound of rice pounding in the late afternoon, or the creaking of looms during late evenings. She decided to return, just at the “breeze” of tourism began to “blow” toward Doi village.
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| Non (middle) introduces the beauty of Doi village |
The village renovated the traditional house. Local people gathered around building fires and preparing to welcome distant guests. “Our Co Tu people really cherish guests, but we naturally live quietly and speak little. Having traveled far and returned, I became more confident, so I volunteered to be a bridge. I consider myself both a guide and a storyteller, so that Co Tu culture could be told through the voice and heart of someone from within,” said Non with a proud voice.
Guiding guests through stilt houses, stopping by Kazan stream, Non retells the legend of a girl waiting for her lover who never returned, finally transforming into a cool stream that waters the fields. These stories, Non tells with a voice full of love, as if leading visitors to touch the deep breath of the ancient forest and the footprints of ancestors imprinted on stone mountains.
Through persistent learning and participating in many training courses, visiting tourism villages like Dai Binh, Tan Thanh, Tra Que (former Quang Nam province) or Dong Mo (Hanoi), Non gained confidence when telling stories of her village. “Co Tu culture has been deeply absorbed into Non’s heart, so when she tells guests, everything flows naturally, like upstream water flowing to nourish our fields,” said Ms. A Lang Thi Be, Director of the Doi Village Community Tourism Cooperative, speaking of Non with an endearing voice.
Working as the village’s tour guide, welcoming countless visitors, Non still remembers the time she welcomed a group of nearly 100 guests from Quang Nam - Da Nang (former province/city). That day, the sunny weather suddenly turned to heavy rain. The whole village hurriedly set up umbrellas to cover the courtyard, preparing lunch. Guests praised the bamboo rice, smoked meat, ta luc ta lao porridge, various forest vegetables stir-fried and cooked on wood stoves fragrant with smoke. “They said the food had a rich mountain flavor and was very delicious. I was so happy because that’s the flavor of our homeland, cooked by our own people’s hands, filled with village sentiment,” recounted Non, with a voice full of joy.
Community tourism in Doi village is still developing, not yet well-known, and income for local people remains unstable. Therefore, Non cooks for the homestay and participates in promoting local products at periodic markets. But amid this busy life, she still maintains her complete passion. Each time she welcomes strangers to the village, tells stories of her village, and sees the interested eyes of tourists when they hear gongs and drums or taste the rustic food of the mountains and forests, her faith grows stronger.
Non always believes that one day soon, Doi village will become a favourite destination, a familiar stopping place for many people. It is the place where Co Tu culture is not only preserved but also spreads its fragrance with the mountain wind, with the footsteps of distant visitors, reaching far to foreign lands.