The Chinese woman has left Vietnam and it is likely she will be banned from returning to the country.
Authorities in Vietnam’s coastal city of Da Nang have fined a local tour guide for allowing a Chinese tourist to take over and spread distorted information about Vietnam’s history and culture to other visitors.
Tran A Hung was fined VND12.5 million ($548) for failing to manage his client in accordance with regulations outlined in his contract, the city’s tourism department said on Tuesday.
Hung was guiding four Chinese visitors to Da Nang Museum in the central city in late February.
In a video posted on social media on February 28, a Chinese woman identified as Wang JiHong, 48, one of Hung’s clients, taking on the role of a tour guide herself at the museum.
She said the Vietnamese traditional long dress ao dai came from cheongsam, a body-hugging one-piece dress for Chinese women, and although the ao dai is made in the Vietnamese style, it looks the same as the Chinese cheongsam.
JiHong went on to say that: “Vietnam belonged to China in the past but fighting had divided China, and thanks to that, Vietnam was born as a nation.”
Hung admitted that he had not been focused on his job, and had not monitored his clients adequately.
When authorities started looking for JiHong, she had already returned to China.
Da Nang’s tourism department has asked the Ministry of Public Security to ban JiHong from returning to Vietnam.
The company that organized the tour for JiHong and the other Chinese visitors in her group has been fined VND4 million.
Da Nang is one of the top destinations for Chinese visitors in Vietnam. The number of Chinese tourists visiting the city last year rose 25 percent to nearly 600,000.
In the first quarter of this year, Da Nang attracted 1.69 million tourists, up 34.7 percent against the same period last year. More than 819,000 were foreign arrivals, up 58.9 percent.
Vietnam saw a massive 1.36 million Chinese tourists arriving during the first quarter this year, up 42.9 percent from a year ago, official government data show.
Source: VnExpress
