La Pan Tan Village, Mu Cang Chai

Introduction to La Pan Tan Village

Mu Cang Chai is a highland district of Yen Bai province, more than 300 km from Hanoi along Highway 32 to the northwest, this is a favorite destination for many tourists. Every year, around the beginning of September, when the rice is ripe, thousands of tourists come here to admire the most beautiful terraced fields in the country. The entire hills and mountains in Mu Cang Chai are a brilliant yellow, this is also the best time to explore the beautiful scenery of the Northwest highlands.

Tu Le town is a tourist destination not to be missed when coming to Mu Cang Chai, coming here you will admire the beautiful green terraced fields of the people of Lim Thai and Lim Mong. Through Tu Le town, looking down from Khau Pha pass, you can see the golden terraced fields with ripe rice. This is the first place of the "Kingdom" of terraced fields.

As far as the eye can see, La Pan Tan terraced fields follow each other from the stream bank, climb the hill, follow the mountain, and the fields disappear into the clouds. The closer to the district center, the more fields there are with all kinds of fancy shapes, there are fields like crescents, there are fields that are round like a golden tray, there are plots that flow around the mountainside, but there are also places that look like wings and sea waves when the rice paddies sway in the wind.

The H'Mong make up 90% of the population here, 8% are Thai and only 2% are Kinh. The Thai people set up villages in the low hills, making wet rice in the valleys. The vast remaining rugged mountains and forests are part of the H'Mong people.

At altitudes of nearly 2000m, where both buffaloes and cows cannot climb, but with rudimentary agricultural tools such as knives and hoes, the H'Mong people work diligently to create fields, sometimes only a few square meters, or even smaller. They are good at climbing passes and turning these highlands into thousands of terraced fields. The fields at each level hug the slopes of mountains and hills, in all 13 communes and towns of Mu Cang Chai, there are terraced fields everywhere.

Cultural Information

Visitors have the opportunity to participate in the rice terraces festival held around mid-September every year. The festival takes place with countless traditional activities of the H'Mong people such as tug of war, goat fighting, blindfolded catching pigs, shooting crossbows, throwing arrows, etc.