Bien Ho in Gia Lai (Photo: VNA) Gia Lai (VNA) - Endowed with beautifulnatural scenery from lakes and waterfalls to mountains and forests, the CentralHighlands province of Gia Lai is seen as a tourist site free of charge.
Gia Lai is an ideal destination for travelerswanting to explore the wild nature and the unique culture of the centralhighlands ethnic groups who are known for their gong heritage.
When visiting Gia Lai, you do not need to go far to find beautiful scenery.Right in its provincial capital, Pleiku, you can find scenic Bien Ho (SeaLake), Bien Ho Che (Tea Sea Lake), Chu Dang Ya and Ham Rong volcanoes and Chumountain.
All you need is a motorbike to drive around in Pleiku in the sun and wind ofthe central highlands to reach the best sightseeing places in town. You canenjoy the gorgeous view of Bien Ho with its cool and clear air or wander inimmense green tea hills in Bien Ho Che. You can also see beautiful wildsunflowers dyeing yellow the sides of old volcanoes which have slept formillions of years, or enjoy the wild and dreamy beauty of rubber forests intheir season of changing leaves.
For those who loveadventurous trips, Kon Chu Rang and Kon Ka Kinh (an ASEAN heritage park)national parks are recommended. The parks, which are perfect for trekking andcamping overnight, boast gorgeous waterfalls and wild animals and plants.
Not only endowed with pristine naturallandscapes, Gia Lai is also a land imprinted with the cultural traits of thecentral highlands. The gong culture and old habits and practices of centralhighlands ethnic groups, including the Gia Rai, Ba Na, Mo Nong, Cho Ho, XoDang, E De, Chu Ru, S’tieng and Ro Mam, are the major attractions to thisbeautiful region.
The weather in Gia Lai was so nice in December, fully showingthe beauty and prosperity of this bazan red soil region with red-ripeningcoffee plantations, immense green tea hills and rubber forests which arechanging their leaves.
Apart from coffee, Gia Lai is a major grower oftea, rubber and pepper. In the Bien Ho Che area in Chu Pah, around 13kilometers from Pleiku, there are vast tea hills with a total area of more than1,100 hectares. The area was originally the French’s first tea plantation inGia Lai in the 1920s. Gia Lai’s Bien Ho tea is a well-known brand which hasreceived a certificate of high-quality Vietnamese farm produce by the Ministryof Agriculture and Rural Development. The tea is currently exported toAustralia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Singapore.
Gia Lai is also considered the rubber capital of the central highlands. Theprovince has nearly 120,000 hectares of rubber with an annual output of nearly290,000 tons of latex, which accounts for more than 30 percent of the country’stotal output and quadruples the total output of the four remaining centralhighlands provinces.
Walking in huge rubber forests where the treesare changing their leaves in Dak Doa district, we could see Gia Lai’s bigpotential for the so-called “white gold”.
Gia Lai is now a major producer of farm goods in the central highlands, rankingsecond in the region in farming area with over 500,000 hectares of differentcrops. These include 120,000 hectares of rubber, 94,000 hectares of coffee,17,000 hectares of cashews and nearly 17,000 hectares of black pepper.
Gia Lai has a total area of 15,500 km2 and is the second largest province in the country, and thelargest in the central highlands. The province has the climate and soilconditions favorable for growing industrial crops such as coffee, rubber andpepper. With a population of over 1.4 million, including 34 ethnic groups withdiverse and rich cultures and beautiful pristine scenery, Gia Lai has theadvantages for developing tourism./.
