The Love Market Festival will take place on May 11-12 in Meo Vac district’s Khau Vai Commune in the northern mountainous province of Ha Giang.

Photo: The Sinh Tourist

The festival aims to preserve and promote the cultural values of the local ethnic groups and to attract visitors thereby stimulating the socio-economic development of the northernmost area of Vietnam.

The activities of the festival include love song performances, a cake making contest, horse racing, a food festival featuring the unique food of the ethnic people, a ritual ceremony, and traditional handicraft showcases. Visitors will have a chance to dress in the ethnic people’s colorful costumes and ride horses to find their “lover,” which is a typical activity of the festival.

The hundred-year-old festival, which is held annually in the third lunar month, is a popular meeting place for ethnic groups in the locality, particularly for those in love. 

Legend has it that a couple who was deeply in love but was forbidden to be together because they hailed from differed ethnic groups made the promise to meet once every year in Khau Vai on the 27th of the third lunar month. 

Since then, on the 27th day of the third lunar month (May 12 this year), local ethnic women and men have been going to the market wearing their best traditional costumes. Here they’re free to meet their ex-lovers in public. No one gets angry or jealous because the meetings at the market are meant to be temporary and aren’t intended to cause harm to any relationships.

The festival draws thousands of tourists from across the country and abroad every year.

At the festival, visitors can explore the famous beauty of Ha Giang namely at Dong Van Karst Plateau Global Geopark, Lung Cu Flag Pole, Ma Pi Leng Peak and Dong Van Town Old Quarter.

VN Economic Times