Khuoi Lai Lake

A little more than 10 kilometers southwest of Cao Bằng city, there is a lake that many drivers pass without learning its name.

This is Khuổi Lái Lake. It lies in Bạch Đằng commune in Hòa An. People made the lake, and the work dates from 1987. It covers more than 20 hectares. The Cao Bằng newspaper describes its shape as winding, like a Chinese character. The lake does not run in one long strip. It follows the folds between the hills, turning in and opening out at unexpected corners. From any single spot, a visitor sees only part of it. To see the whole lake, a person has to walk around it.

The newspaper calls the water green and calm all year. Forest that has grown back surrounds it. Many small hills rise out of the lake, so the scene is not one flat color but has depth.

The lake was not built for tourism. Like Bản Viết Lake in Trùng Khánh, it was made first for irrigation. Its capacity is 2,935,000 cubic meters, and it waters more than 440 hectares of fields in the nearby communes. Families around the lake also raise fish, build fish cages and rafts, and let ducks graze on the water. Their livelihoods are tied directly to it.

Among the trees around the lake is the sau sau, which gives the scenery a mark of each season. The newspaper says its leaves turn red in autumn, its trunk goes pale and weathered in winter, and in summer it is a young green. In autumn, the red leaves are reflected on the green water. It is a scene that needs no color correction.

The Cao Bằng tourism portal presents Khuổi Lái Lake as one of the places suited to stand-up paddleboarding, which means paddling while standing on a board on the water. The winding shape of the lake, the quiet forest on both sides and the soft sound of a paddle on calm water give a feeling that few lakes near a city have kept.

Families still raise fish and let their ducks out onto the water, living by it as they have for many decades. That is why the lake is still so quiet. In that quiet, the wind through the sau sau forest, the water tapping at the side of a boat, and the green of the Cao Bằng mountains reflected in the lake are easier to notice.