Following the path from the administrative center of Xuan Son Nation Park for 10km, tourists come to Coi Village - a colorful picture with Ten mountain and terraced fields changing colour by season. In early morning, mist is drifting and bobbing around mountain top making an elysium scenery. In 12th lunar month, the village is brilliant with poinsettia flowers in blossom everywhere.

Settling along the banks of Coi stream at Ten mountain's foot, Coi Village is home to Dao ethnic people with 85 households and 400 villagers. They live by cultivating in the terraced fields and grazing livestock. Especially, they have successfully preserved the rare cocks with multi spurs.

The village has also well preserved Dao cultural characteristics: houses with thatched roof and earthen wall; special ceremonies and rituals like le cap sac, dances (mua chieng, mua rua, mua lap tinh...); traditional foods, costumes, handicrafts (wine brewery, dye cloth)...

In the tourism development strategy in the period 2011-2015, Phu Tho Province has chose some villages, including Coi Village, to develop community-based tourism combining with ecotourism in order to protect ecological environment and preserve cultural characteristics. Since applying the tourism model, the village has significantly changed. 85% households have been rebuilt and equipped with accommodation facilities to serve tourists.

Visiting the village, the tourists have experience on local daily activities as cooking local special food (bamboo shoot soup, cakes made from sweet potato mixed with sesame, melientha suavis soup...), feeding livestock, picking tea leaves on the hill, catching fishes in the stream, brewing wine, dying cloth, visiting two thousand-year old parashorea stellata trees.

Primitive landscape and the villager's hospitality are special characteristics of Coi Village attracting tourists on the way to discover ethnic villages in the North.

Hong Thanh