Heart Island of Son La

Heart Island, or Đảo Trái Tim, rises from the reservoir at Quỳnh Nhai. Not all beauty is natural. Here the beauty comes from history that people made, though nobody meant to make it. The island is a case in point.

One date explains it. In May 2010, the Sơn La hydropower reservoir officially began to fill. It is one of the largest hydropower projects in Vietnam. Filling it meant moving tens of thousands of households to new homes, and they came from three provinces. Sơn La was one. The others were Điện Biên and Lai Châu. The ancient valley of the Đà River slowly sank. Mountain peaks became floating islands. Where people once grew rice, the lake now lies still.

Before 2010, the land now called Đảo Trái Tim was a ridge of rocky hills along the river. As the lake formed, the top of that ridge rose above the water like an island. Seen from above, the island curves along the shape of the old valley, and it looks like a heart. That is how it got its name.

Boats on the Quỳnh Nhai part of the reservoir cross a surface of about 10,000 hectares, according to the province's tourism planning documents. Many islands float on it, and tall mountains crowd both shores. The first feeling on the water is often surprise. The scenery is not like a river and not like the sea, but something in between. Rocky mountains, forest, cloud and lake water make a landscape typical of the reservoirs of the Northwest.

Since 2018, the Quỳnh Nhai Fisheries and Eco-tourism Cooperative has run tourism on the island. The province records places to rest, meals of reservoir fish and shrimp, fishing, and a chance to learn about local daily life.

It is worth remembering, from a boat looking out over the lake, that this water is more than scenery. It is also a living for thousands of people in the area, through cage fish farming, fishing and water transport. The Sơn La newspaper once recorded that since the reservoir filled, Quỳnh Nhai has built up fish farming and water transport as the pillars of a new livelihood. A meal of reservoir fish and shrimp on the island today is part of that living.

Heart Island is not the most famous place on the map of Vietnamese tourism. But it is where a rocky ridge became an island because of human history, and where local people turned that island into a place that welcomes visitors from far away. Stepping ashore, a visitor stands on what was once a mountaintop, with wide water on every side. Some of the best views were painted by no one: time and moving water left them behind.