In June 2018, we were honored to be invited to the Mekong Tourism Forum. It is a travel conference that promotes, discusses and solves tourism issues of the greater Mekong subregion. With the theme ‘Transforming Travel – Transforming Lives’, MTF 2018 was set in full steam. There was much anticipation in the air and after months of waiting, we finally were able to attend the conference.

Choice of destination

Last year the Mekong Tourism Forum was held in Luang Prabang, which we did attend. This year, Nakhon Phanom, a northeastern province in Thailand was the host. Nakhon Phanom was a great choice because not only is this destination beautiful, quaint and relatively undeveloped, it is a gateway to the rest of Mekong region.

The view of the Mekong river from our hotel and most of the activities revolving around the forum were amazing. On one side – adorned temples, bike lanes and alluring architecture under foreign influence. On the other side of the river, spectacular limestone cliffs and lesser developed villages of Laos.

The city and countryside of Nakhon Phanom are simply so charming.  It’s as if the city mimics the river – serene, peaceful and slow-moving. A place you go to fill your soul and live the slow life.

The conference itself was held at the Nakhon Phanom university.

Speakers with experience

It’s the speakers that make a conference successful. Their expertise and inputs are critical because that is where the takeaways are. At MTF, we had a lot of speakers from different industries but with a common passion – travel and improving travel in some way.

One speech in particular resonated with me and that was transforming travel by Jeremy Smith. He talked about how travel and tourism have changed things for the worse and how we need to mitigate it. He also touched on the use of plastic and how it has degraded the environment.

In addition to keynote speeches, there were a couple of panel discussions as well. Topics included Plastic Pollution, Buddhist Tourism, and an Experience Mekong showcase.

Pledge to ‘no-plastic’

One of the ways the Mekong Tourism Forum was ‘walking the talk’ of transforming the way we travel and live our life is to make a pledge for reducing the use of plastic. The amount of plastic we use is staggering – over 8 billion tons and that number is a modest estimate. In Thailand alone, everything is given in plastic bags or plastic wrapping.

Throughout the event, there was not a single plastic bottle or utensil being used. they even gave a complimentary bamboo straw by BambooLao to each of us, which is awesome.

While not always easy, we also made a pledge to do our very best in reducing our use of plastic. At the forum, we learned a good way to figure out how to start making small changes in reducing single-use plastic. First, write down what plastic you use in your everyday routine. Make sure you note down every single one, no matter the size. If it is a yogurt container, that counts as one. A wrapper for a candy, that is one too. Water bottles, coffee cups, whatever. Once you got that number down, the second step is to figure out which ones can you eliminate. The point is to get that number down as low as possible until you are completely plastic-free.

We’re not plastic-free but we will hopefully get there.

Village sessions and post tours

You can’t have a travel conference without actually doing a little bit of travel and exploring. They had also organized immersive tours where we visited different villages in Nakhon Phanom. We were divided into different thematic groups – adventure, ecotourism, heritage, wellness and more. I had joined the adventure tourism group. Basically, each group goes to a different traditional village where we learn about their local life and customs. After, we sit down with the locals and discuss the thematic topic.

In our case, it was about adventure. We talked about how the region can develop adventure tourism. In the end, we decided that it would have to focus on the soft adventures – bicycling in and around the villages, learning how to cook their dishes, learn to farm, etc.

In addition to the village sessions, we also had the option to take part in post tours. You could either join a biking adventure around town, take a city tour by tram, explore a fishing village or visit a Thai-Vietnamese village. Lucky for us, we did a special blogger tour that involved a bit of everything.

Overall experience

The Mekong Tourism Forum was well organized. Well sort of. There were several hiccups in logistics and timing but all in all, it was executed quite well given the resources and time. There were a lot of moving parts and many different units were working together. They did a good job of making it all work. I had a great time and learned quite a lot, and met some influential and successful people.

I’d surely want to visit the next Mekong Tourism Forum, which is going to be in China! Awesome!!