Giang River and Pha Lai

A river can be dammed to water the fields, or it can be the one thread that ties a community to the world beyond.

The Giăng River is the second kind.

The Giăng runs for more than 100 kilometers through Pù Mát National Park. Far upstream, deep in the core of the park, lies the village of Cò Phạt, home of the Đan Lai people. For many centuries this river was the only road between the Đan Lai and the outside world. There was no road on land. There was no telephone. There was only the river.

The trip begins around Phà Lài. It lies in Môn Sơn commune, in Con Cuông.

The dam at Phà Lài was built in 2000. It is one of the largest irrigation works in western Nghệ An. In the Thái language, Phà Lài means "flower crag", or flowers on a rock. The Thái are one of Vietnam's ethnic groups, and Nghệ An is one of the provinces where they mainly live. The name calls up cliffs hung with vines and wild color. On the spot it makes sense: limestone peaks teeter overhead, vines grip the rock, and light filters down through the cracks in the stone.

On August 18, 2021, the People's Committee of Nghệ An recognized the whole area as a tourist site at the provincial level. The area takes in the village of Bản Xiềng, the dam, and the river.

From the dam, a motorboat can carry travelers upriver to Cò Phạt, the village of the Đan Lai. The trip takes about two hours each way.

Those two hours on the river are not time spent waiting. They are time for looking.

Primary forest stands on both banks. The branches weave together and cover part of the water. Birds fly along the bank. And at the right spot, the "cù điện" come into view. These are tiny hydropower works that villagers build from wood and stone, to channel water and make electricity for light and daily life. It is among the most practical of traditional techniques, set in the middle of deep forest.

Arriving at Cò Phạt calls for care and respect.

The Đan Lai are not a curiosity. They are a community with a way of life, a culture and a history of their own. The tour from the national park introduces some of that culture: the food, the rượu men lá, a liquor fermented with leaf yeast, and the customs. Respect here means asking permission before taking a photograph, never walking into a house uninvited, and never asking questions that compare the Đan Lai with other people. A gift is offered through the village head or the guide.

Alongside the river route, Bản Xiềng offers a look at Thái community life. It is a community tourism village in Con Cuông. There is brocade weaving, life in stilt houses, folk music and dance, and the local work of the village.

All of this lies inside one of the largest biosphere reserves in Vietnam. A biosphere reserve is a UNESCO-recognized area where nature is protected and the people living there keep working the land. This one covers more than 1,300,000 hectares, and UNESCO recognized it in 2007. The figure is not one to memorize. What matters is the feeling on the boat, with the sound of water all around, and the sense that the forest here is no backdrop but something alive and breathing.

The Giăng is a story about the bond between people and forest, between a community and the current that has fed it through many generations.