Mau Son Mountain Retreat

Plenty of drivers pass one turning on National Highway 4B again and again before they finally take it. It is the turning for Mẫu Sơn, at kilometer 15 of the highway.

Once past it, 15 kilometers of winding pass road climb into a different world. The Mẫu Sơn tourist area lies about 30 kilometers northeast of Lạng Sơn city, in Mẫu Sơn commune of Lộc Bình. It is not a resort built whole to a modern pattern. It is a high mountain region that people have come to many times, built on many times, left many times and returned to many times.

The land stands between about 1,200 and 1,541 meters above sea level. The climate is subtropical and temperate. Summers run 7 to 10 degrees cooler than the lowlands, and winters are truly cold, and frost and snow can appear. On January 22, 2026, a thin frost lay on the summit. At six o'clock the Mẫu Sơn weather station measured about 0.2 degrees Celsius. Thick mist hung over the slopes, and a northeast wind blew through the forest, from one stand of trees to the next.

That is winter. The reason people began coming up here for rest goes back more than a hundred years, to the early 20th century.

The French took notice of Mẫu Sơn and saw that its climate was ideal for a mountain retreat. They cut a road up the slope and built holiday villas of cut stone. Remains of more than 30 old villas, dating from the 1920s and 1930s, still stand on the summit. Most stand empty now, with moss on the walls, yet they have not fallen. They bear witness to the time when Mẫu Sơn was an important place of rest in Indochina.

Near the top, the blue stone walls carry something very old and very real. These are not restored monuments polished for visitors, and not buildings kept with care. They are the ruins of one particular layer of history: the French in Indochina, taking their rest in Lạng Sơn, and then leaving. What remains is stone walls and the memory of the mountains.

Within the Mẫu Sơn area, the provincial authorities of Lạng Sơn have recognized three tourist sites under a decision of 2015. They are the Mẫu Sơn Tourist Area Center, the Mẫu Sơn Ancient Temple Sacred Site and Phặt Chỉ mountain.

The sacred site lies in Lặp Pịa village, at 1,190 meters. It covers more than 24,000 square meters and holds stone tombs and an old temple to the spirit of Mẫu Sơn mountain. The buildings are laid from stone without mortar. There are three-tiered steps of mountain rock, old graves and a gateway of stone stelae. The place is quiet and old, as if it had never left the age when the local people raised it.

Phặt Chỉ mountain, in Khuổi Cấp village, is a natural rock mountain tied to a legend of the Dao people. The legend has been handed down from one generation to the next, as the mountain itself has stood there through so many generations.

People come back to Mẫu Sơn, and something keeps pulling them. One morning the cloud fills the valley below, and the summit rises like an island in a white sea. In the pine forest the wind is enough to fill every silence. Generation after generation of Vietnamese have gone on climbing that winding pass road, looking for a place among the clouds.