Muong Lo Culture & Tourism Festival 2019 receives big US awards

Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam’s Newday Media JSC has recently won a gold prize in the Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Travel & Tourism category of the 17th Stevie Awards for its organisation of the Muong Lo Culture & Tourism Festival 2019.

This is the first time a Vietnamese communication company has won the highest prize in one category of the US-based organisation.

A mass “Xoe” dance, which was performed by up to 5,000 people at the festival, secured a silver prize in the Community Involvement Programme of the Year category.

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, female director Le Hai Yen, author of the script and general director of the programme, will receive the prizes at an online gala event on December 9, instead of receiving directly in the US.

The 2019 Muong Lo Tourism & Culture Festival was held in September 2019 in Nghia Lo township in the northern mountainous province of Yen Bai, attracting over 20,000 participants.

Muong Lo, considered the ancient land of the Black Thai ethnic minority group, is home to 12 ethnic groups. Located 80km from Yen Bai city, Muong Lo valley looks like a giant saucepan covering Nghia Lo township and some communes of Van Chan district.

With the theme of “Quintessence from Legend,” the festival was a large-scale art programme which had been prepared for months.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Do Duc Duy highlighted that Yen Bai is endowed with spectacular natural landscape with high mountains and rivers, along with a long-standing history and great cultural diversity.

The Muong Lo Tourism & Culture Festival was held to highlight the beauty of local landscape and culture, inviting visitors to explore the unique values of the province.

This year’s festival started with a street parade staged by 600 performers from nine districts and towns and an art programme featuring 3D mapping technique.

A highlight of the event was a massive performance of Xoe dance involving 5,000 people of Yen Bai province.

Xoe is a unique type of traditional dance of Thai ethnic communities in the northern region of Vietnam. It depicts the daily life of Thai people and shows their wish for a peaceful and prosperous life.

The dance has been recognised as national intangible cultural heritage and is seeking the honour of being part of the intangible heritage of humanity.


To utilize the folk material, the organizing team made fact-finding tours to far-flung hamlets to understand more about the life and culture of ethnic minorities in Yen Bai, particularly the groups of Tay, Mong, Thai, Muong, Dao, Kho Mu and San Chay.

Meritorious artisan Lo Van Bien rewrote lyrics of a song in ancient Thai language to use in the special Xoe dance performance.

The programme concluded with the engagement of Party and State leaders in the dancing. Director Le Hai Yen said that this was the most beautiful image and memory in her career.

The event contributed to promoting Yen Bai province’s tourism with the number of tourists to the locality in the last quarter of 2019 rising by 30 percent year-on-year.

“I feels very happy as one more time our team is named in such big international awards as the Stevie Awards. Our aspiration to promote the image of Vietnam, and the country’s traditional history and culture to the world is recognized,” said Yen.

The Stevie Awards are a set of eight business awards competitions staged annually by Stevie Awards, Inc. They were created in 2002 to recognize accomplishments and contributions of companies and business people worldwide./.