Ban Den Village

The early mountain wind is so cold that people rub their hands together to warm them. And yet, in one corner of the valley, the surface of the water is steaming.

A thin white vapor rises slowly, melts into the cold air, and another layer rises to take its place. Nobody has lit a fire nearby. There is no chimney anywhere. There is only water flowing out of the ground, and that water is warm.

Dip a hand in, and the first feeling is surprise. The water does not bite the way a mountain stream usually bites. It is warm, truly warm, as if someone had just heated it and then let it cool down a little. Pull the hand out, and the warmth lingers on the skin for a long while in the cold wind.

Why the water is warm can wait a moment. First, the place itself.

This place is called Bản Dền.

It is a hamlet of Bản Hồ commune, in Lào Cai province. It sits beside a valley, right next to the Mường Hoa stream.

To reach Bản Hồ from the center of Sa Pa, the road runs about 30 kilometers. But in the mountains, 30 kilometers is not the same as 30 kilometers in the lowlands. It is much longer. The farther the road goes, the farther the town falls behind, and what slowly opens up ahead is the valley.

The Mường Hoa stream flows there. The sound of water is the background of this whole area. It is always there, louder or softer depending on where one stands. In the morning, each stretch of it can be heard clearly. At midday it blends into the wind. In the evening, when every other sound has settled, the stream rises again, steady, unhurried, never stopping.

Bản Dền lies beside that stream.

This is a place where people live, not a place set up for anyone to come and look at. Around Bản Hồ are villages of the Tày and Dao peoples, along with the traditional wooden stilt houses of the Tày.

A wooden stilt house has its floor raised off the ground, held up on posts. Wood that has been used for many years darkens, and it wears smooth exactly where hands touch it most often. Footsteps on a wooden floor have their own echo, quite unlike steps on earth or on cement. Anyone who has slept a night in a stilt house remembers that sound for a long time.

A day in the village begins like any ordinary day. The grown-ups leave the house to see to their own work. Kitchen smoke rises, thin, and then melts into the mist. With visitors or without them, the village is still the village, with the same rhythm and the same work as before.

Now comes the answer to the white vapor of early morning.

In Bản Dền there is a natural hot mineral spring.

Nobody heats this water. It flows out of the ground already warm from deep inside the earth. The temperature of this spring is about 30 to 40 degrees Celsius.

The figure sounds dry, but a hand in the water makes sense of it at once. Water at 30 degrees feels pleasant the moment it touches the skin, with no need to brace for it. At 40 degrees, it is a basin of warm bathwater, the kind that makes the whole body feel lighter after the feet soak in it for a while. In a windswept valley, a spring like that is a real gift.

And the people of the village did not let that gift simply flow away.

The people here put their own money into a system of pipes to bring the water from the source. Then they built bathing pools to serve visitors.

Said like that, it fits into a single sentence. But in the middle of the mountains, that work is far from simple. The source had to be found. The pipes had to be planned so the water would arrive still holding its warmth. There was digging, joining and building to do, and repairs every time something broke. The money spent was the villagers' own.

The water used to flow out by itself and drift away by itself. Now there are pools, with edges, and a place where a traveler from far away can step down into the water.

That journey was far longer than those 30 kilometers.

Soaking in a pool of warm water in the mountain air is a very strange feeling. Above the surface, the face is still cold, the hair is still damp with mist, and the wind still blows past as usual. Below the surface, the body warms little by little, starting from the feet. However far the road, however tired the legs, sitting still for a while in that water makes much of it fade away.

Once the reason for the warm water is clear, the valley looks different.

The white vapor of early morning is no longer a mystery. It becomes a sign. It says that a warm spring is flowing beneath this valley, and that on the ground above it, people have put in the work to bring that water home.

The valley stops being a picture to stand and admire. It becomes a place where people live, where people work, where people welcome guests.

For many who come to Bản Dền, the thing that stays longest in memory is often not a photograph. It is the feeling of a hand touching warm water for the first time in the mountain wind.

Evening falls over the valley. Steam still rises quietly from the surface of the pool and melts into the mist. Not far away, the Mường Hoa stream keeps flowing, its sound never ending, passing Bản Dền as it has passed for a very long time, and as it will go on passing for a very long time to come.