Falling in love with the golden season in La Pan Tan-Travel

The terraced fields here really captivate people, especially in the ripe rice season or the pouring water season.

La Pan Tan is a small commune about 16km from Mu Cang Chai. Only the name La Pan Tan really made an impression. We traveled from Hanoi in the morning and reached La Pan Tan in the afternoon. The road going through Khau Pha pass is so beautiful that there is no rush to go, it also stops at stops to watch the winding pass, and also comes to the paragliding area to see the parachutes flying overhead. The reason we chose to stay at La Pan Tan is because it is near the famous terraced fields in Mu Cang Chai. La Pan Tan is small, the road crossing “skewed” by a few dozen meters is the end of the street.

Seasonal day in La Pan Tan

The night in La Pan Tan is very sad, there is almost no entertainment, the cafe has been closed since afternoon and the pub is not available. There are few places to stay here, however, the homestay we stayed at was really great. Homestay has suites below for private guests, and above are two dormitory rooms, each room can accommodate about 20 people at a time. In La Pan Tan like that is very luxurious.

At the homestay, there is always cooking for guests. That day, we enjoyed a special meal with a mountain flavor with grilled fish, braised wild boar meat, sour bamboo shoots, braised chicken with lemongrass, soup and ram locusts. The dish with tiny locusts, crunchy in the mouth is a strange and delicious dish, different from the insect dishes in Cambodia.

In the afternoon, when going to the neighborhood, entering the market, the market was closed even though it was only 5 pm, with only a few grocery stores selling ethnic costumes and inviting household items. The street is sad, there are cows grazing slowly, the slopes leading to the terraced fields are empty of human footprints.

La Pan Tan has two ethnic groups, the Thai and the H’Mong, but the Thais make wet rice in the valley, and the H’Mong create terraced fields.

The terraced fields in Mu Cang Chai are not far from La Pan Tan. To come here, you can rent a cart by the young H’Mong people to carry visitors. They are relatively gentle, do not entice customers, just wait for customers to call for the specified price. La Pan Tan is at an altitude of 2000 meters and has 700 hectares of terraced fields. Just walking on the winding road here, the terraced fields whether in the ripe rice season or the pouring water season are beautiful landscapes that captivate visitors.

In the early morning, the truckers were waiting in front of the hotel, the H’Mong men who didn’t understand all of Vietnamese, talked to each other in the local language, kept nodding their heads when they heard us speak even though “the language is different.” .

The journey was truly a heart-pounding sensation. The road follows the mountain, sometimes descends into the valley, turning a 45-degree angle. The car went uphill into first gear, then jumped up, and downhill like it was rushing. The truck driver explained that now the cemented road is more than 1m wide so it’s easy to go, but in the past it was just a dirt road, even more scary. When we reached the Raspberry hill, we breathed a sigh of relief.

Raspberry Hill

On the road, when stopping at the fields in La Pan Tan, was busy wanting to stop, just to look. Then follow in the footsteps of those who have gone before, climb down the valley, pass through the buckwheat fields planted by local people, sell photo tickets for 10 thousand/person- rent a basket with wildflowers costing 10 thousand and If you wear an ethnic costume of 30,000, you can transform into a H’Mong ethnic group to admire the beauty of the Raspberry hill and the vast rice fields.

The legendary Raspberry Hill is shining because in the ripe rice season is ahead, and of course when I go to the end, I go up to that “raspberry” and save beautiful images. Beside the tourists, there are owners of the fields, telling them not to thresh the rice – because the joy of one is the livelihood of the other.

Admire the terraced fields, take pictures satisfying enough for a night’s sleep in La Pan Tan.