A festival featuring panpipes by an ethnic minority community will be organized late this month in northern Vietnam’s Ha Giang Province, which is home to internationally recognized Dong Van Karst Plateau.

The second Mong panpipe festival will take place in the Dong Van old quarter in Dong Van District on August 30 and 31.

The fest will gather Mong panpipe artisans from 19 communes throughout the province, who will compete in playing the panpipe and dancing to the panpipe tunes.

Ethnic minority people’s traditional art forms and games such as tree climbing and crossbow firing, along with displays of traditional ethnic costumes, will also be included in the festival.

Their iconic delicacies such as “men men” (food made from ground corn) and “thang co” (meat soup) will also be offered.

The Mong panpipe is a time-honored, indispensable musical instrument in Mong ethnic minority people’s cultural and religious life.

The instrument is also a means for ethnic young men to express their love for their potential mates.

The panpipe has now become the province’s hallmark souvenir which is available in traditional markets and gift shops.

Tourists joining the Mong panpipe festival can also visit Dong Van Karst Plateau in the same district, which was recognized by the UNESCO Global Geoparks Network in 2010 as one of the 77 geological parks in the world and the second in Southeast Asia, after the Langkawi Geopark in Malaysia.

The plateau remains the only one of its kind in Vietnam to earn the title so far.

Located at an altitude of 1,000m-1,600m, the plateau is one of the Southeast Asian country’s unique limestone areas, which contains significant imprints of the development of the earth's crust.

Up to 80 percent of the plateau’s karst formations are limestone formed by the weather through different natural development stages.

Chang Pung is the plateau’s oldest fossil-geological formation which dates back to 545 millions years ago.

Apart from the geological, geomorphologic and scenic values, the plateau also boasts traditional cultural richness with the presence of 17 ethnic minority groups, including Mong, Dao, Lo Lo, Tay and Nung, who have shared their living space with the karst formations of various shapes for many generations.

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