Khe Ran Village

From Highway 7, a suspension bridge crosses the Lam River. On the far side, another pace of life begins.

Khe Rạn.

This is a Thái village in the Con Cuông area of Nghệ An. The Thái are one of Vietnam's ethnic groups, and Nghệ An is one of the provinces where they mainly live. About 160 households live here, and every one of them is Thái. Stilt houses stand on small hills. The valley below is a deep green, and the sound of the Lam River can still be heard from inside the village.

In 2016, Khe Rạn became one of four villages in Con Cuông chosen to build a community tourism model. On April 24, 2017, the Khe Rạn Village Agriculture and Community Tourism Services Cooperative was officially founded.

In practice, that means the people of Khe Rạn organize and manage everything themselves, and they share their own culture with visitors. No travel company from outside decides what is shown. Two local performing groups, a cooking team of twelve members, and the village management board arrange it all directly.

It begins with the meal. Thái food carries meaning beyond the eating. It shows in the way a meal is laid out on the tray, in how ingredients are chosen from the stream, the forest and the terraced fields, and in how a guest is invited to sit down together. The cooking team keeps the traditional Thái dishes, and each tray changes with the season and with whatever the streams and forest gave that day.

Then comes the music and dance. The village's two performing groups present folk songs, folk dances and gongs, including the múa xòe and the múa sạp. They gather around a jar of rượu cần. This is the community's own performance, put together by people of the village for guests from far away. The gongs sound out among the stilt houses, and before long the feet of a stranger are drawn into the rhythm of the sạp.

Beyond eating and watching, Khe Rạn is a place to walk through the village, to look at the stilt houses on the hill, and to listen to the sounds of the village in the early morning. Taken slowly like this, a visit gives a little understanding of how the Thái of Nghệ An organize their lives.

Khe Rạn is also a gateway to a longer stay in Con Cuông.

One pledge made by the Khe Rạn cooperative stands out. The cooperative promises not to do business in, sell, keep, transport, process or advertise illegal wild animals or any products made from them.

Beyond the Pù Mát range lie old forests and wild animals, and the people of Khe Rạn have chosen to stand on the side of the forest. A village that guards its forest of its own free will is what makes this place valuable.

Khe Rạn is not a stage set up ready-made for visitors. It is the real everyday home of a Thái community, where smoke still rises from the kitchens of the stilt houses every afternoon. Voices, the stream and the gongs blend together, as they have blended for many generations.

And standing on the suspension bridge over the Lam River, looking at the stilt-house roofs tucked against the green hillside, a visitor understands why people cross the bridge to come here. On the other side of the river is a slow, warm and very real rhythm of life, waiting for someone to sit down with it.