(VNF) - The Ban Flower (Orchid Tree) Festival 2017 will take place on March 12^th together with the fifth Culture – Sports – Tourism Festival in the northern province of Dien Bien.

2015 Hoa Ban Festival kicked off in Dien Bien city. (Source: Internet)

According to Pham Viet Dung, Head of the provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the highlight of this year’s festival will be a pack-bike competition where participants are wearing the clothes of conscripted labourers or ethnic people in the northwestern region to push pack-bikes carrying food weighing 150kg from National Road 279 to the the Dien Bien Phu Victory Monument on D1 Hill.

This activity aims to illustrate the Dien Bien Phu Operation of the Vietnamese people and army over 60 years ago.

Within the framework of the festival, the expanded northwestern region’s Miss Ban Flower Contest will be held for the first time, attracting participants from eight northwestern provinces and other localities across the country.

According to the organising committee, the event will include an opening ceremony with an art performance themed “Colourful Ban Flower Season”, an exhibition of local ethnic groups’ cultures as well as traditional games and a folk singing and dancing festival.

Held in 2013 for the first time, the Ban Flower Festival 2017 and the fifth Culture-Sports-Tourism Festival aims to promote Ban flower, a feature of Dien Bien province and the northwestern region, and boost local tourism.

It is also part of activities for the Year of National Tourism 2017, themed “Colours of the Northwestern Region”.

Ban flower, a kind of flower unique to the northwestern mountainous region, often blossom in March, brightening many Dien Bien streets. (Photo: Internet)

The white and purple Ban flower, scientifically known as Bauhinia Variegata, is typical to the northern mountainous region of Vietnam and often in blossom in spring./.

( Compiled by VNF )