Khai Long Beach

The sea at Khai Long is the brown-gold of silt, not the clear blue of central Vietnam. That color is the mark of a coast where land is being added. Khai Long lies at Đất Mũi, in Cà Mau Province, in the far south of Vietnam.

Two different tidal systems meet here. On one side lies the Gulf of Thailand, and on the other, the sea. According to UNESCO, the way these two tides interact keeps building up new land. It forms wide mudflats and new habitats around Mũi Cà Mau. The land here grows a little more every day.

A mangrove forest grows on that new ground. Four kinds of mangrove are the most familiar. They are đước and mắm, then sú and vẹt.

Khai Long lies inside the mangrove ecosystem of the Mũi Cà Mau Biosphere Reserve. A biosphere reserve is a UNESCO-recognized area where nature is protected and the people living there keep working the land. UNESCO confirms that this reserve spreads over more than 371,000 hectares, on land and at sea together. It holds mangroves, tràm forest, and coastal marine habitats of high ecological value.

Khai Long is one of the zones of the Mũi Cà Mau National Tourism Area. That area covers about 20,100 hectares.

Khai Long is a coastal resort, not a reserve kept in its original state. Beside the beach and the mangroves, the grounds hold a landscape lake with a model wind turbine. A mermaid statue stands in the middle of the lake. There is also a spiritual area that faces the sea. Nature and built works share one space.

The beach is the heart of the place. Different sources put its length from a little over three kilometers to three and a half kilometers. That is long enough for a walk with no end in sight.

That silt-brown sea is the beauty of ground that grows instead of shrinking.

Far out, on a clear day, the Hòn Khoai islands can be seen. They are tied to the Hòn Khoai uprising of 1940, led by Phan Ngọc Hiển and his comrades. Every look along that horizon brings history to mind.

On the beach in the late afternoon, the sun leans toward the west. Its light pours gold over the crowns of the đước trees and runs long across the silty sea. It is easy to see why people call this the very end of the land, and yet so wide. Forest lies behind. Sea lies ahead. And underfoot, the earth is still growing.