Ban Hieu Village in Pu Luong

The car leaves the provincial center of Thanh Hóa early, while mist still lies over the rice fields along the road. Ahead lie about 130 kilometers, heading northwest. That stretch of road is not something to sit through before arriving. It is the trip itself.

The first kilometers pass in a familiar way. The road is wide, roadside stalls are just setting out their goods, the smell of broth rises in the early light, and horns answer one another. Then, little by little, everything thins out. The houses fall behind. The names of the communes on the signs begin to sound unfamiliar. The people in the car stop talking and turn to look out the windows.

At some point, without anyone noticing, the road changes its temper. It no longer runs straight. It follows the foot of the hills, climbs a little, then drops away again. Ears pop slightly. The wind through the window is much cooler than at the start. Each bend hides one piece of the view and gives back another, and no two pieces are alike.

In some stretches there is forest on both sides, the trees closing their canopy overhead, and sunlight falls on the road in broken patches. In others the forest opens, and a valley appears far below, so far that no sound from down there reaches the car. The car slows down. No one urges it on.

Then the road carries us into what was once Bá Thước district. This is the gateway to the Pù Luông Nature Reserve, an area of more than 17,600 hectares. It spreads across land that once belonged to two districts, Bá Thước and Quan Hóa. Said aloud, the number sounds dry. But from a car window, with forest following forest and one hill after another, it becomes clear just how large it is.

Pù Luông is not an empty stretch of forest either. Around its core lies a buffer zone, and in that buffer zone there are 44 villages of the Thái and Mường peoples. The Thái are one of Vietnam's ethnic groups, and Thanh Hóa is one of the provinces where they mainly live. The Mường are an ethnic group of northern Vietnam whose language is closely related to Vietnamese. In 2023, Thanh Hóa province approved an ecotourism plan for the reserve, and that plan also counts those 44 villages within its buffer zone. So the road we are on does not cut across some deserted wilderness. It passes through places where people truly live, day after day.

The destination lies in Cổ Lũng commune. The last stretch is the slowest. The road narrows, cars take turns letting each other pass, and in the middle of all this the ear catches a new sound.

Water.

Nothing is in sight yet, but the sound of water arrives first. It does not roar like a downpour, and it is not steady like a river. It has a rhythm, heavy in places and light in others, as if many sounds of water were layered on top of one another. And that is exactly what it is.

The place we have just reached is Bản Hiêu. In government papers, the village is called thôn Ấm Hiêu. From one end of the village to the other there are five waterfalls, one after another, stretching for nearly a kilometer. Walking through the village means walking beside water stepping down, ledge after ledge. The voice of the water changes with every step, and we keep turning around to see where that last sound came from.

The Hiêu waterfall here is about 800 meters long. The strangest thing happens partway down. There the water splits into two branches, runs apart for a while, and in the end finds its way back together. Standing where the two branches meet again, it feels as if water also knows the way home, like someone who travels far and one day returns to the old place.

After a while beside the falls, time moves differently. Mist rises and cools the face. Feet on the rock feel the cold. The sound of water fills every gap, so fully that no one feels the need to say anything more. Children are usually the quickest to settle in here. Within minutes they sit with their legs dangling, eyes fixed on the whitest part of the water.

At mealtime, the dish to ask the villagers about is vịt Cổ Lũng, the Cổ Lũng duck. It is a native specialty of the Thái people in Bản Hiêu, and its name alone tells anyone which part of the country is meant. Eating a meal in a place that took 130 kilometers to reach, with the water never once falling silent, fills a person in a different way from a meal at home.

An afternoon walk through the village goes slowly. The people here are living their ordinary days, not putting on a show for visitors. We pass by, nod hello, and keep our voices low. Visitors come and visitors go, but the village stays.

As the sunlight slips off the hillsides, we turn and look back the way we came. The morning's road is now only a faint line threading between the hills, vanishing and reappearing, smaller the farther it goes. All 130 kilometers fit inside that thin line. Every bend, every time our ears popped, every time someone in the car cried out because a valley suddenly opened below.

Then night falls. Mist comes down and covers the road we traveled, wiping it from sight as if no one had ever passed. Only the five waterfalls keep pouring through the night, a stream that splits in two and joins again in the heart of the village. It has flowed like this for generations, and it will go on flowing like this long after we have gone home.