Ngoc Chien Village

The road from Sơn La city to Ngọc Chiến runs nearly 80 kilometers along Provincial Road 106. It is counted among the finest journeys into a village in the Northwest. The road follows the mountainside, sometimes opening onto a view of the valley below, then narrowing again between stands of forest. Slowly the land opens out into a highland commune at a height of more than 1,600 meters. This is Ngọc Chiến.

It is a highland commune in Mường La, in Sơn La Province. The national tourism authority describes it as a community where the Thái and the Hmong live together. The La Ha and the Kinh live here too. The Thái are one of Vietnam's ethnic groups, and Sơn La is one of the provinces where they mainly live. The Kinh are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam. There are four communities here, with four languages and four cultures. Yet together they farm more than 650 hectares of rice, in valleys that stay deep green all year.

Nếp tan Ngọc Chiến is the most distinctive product of the area. Nếp tan is a special variety of sticky rice, and about 50 hectares of the commune's rice fields grow it. It is concentrated in four villages. Two of them are Lướt and Mường Chiến. The other two are Nà Tâu and Giạng Phổng. The rice has been recognized as an OCOP product. OCOP, short for One Commune One Product, is a national program that rates local products with stars. A meal of rice here is a meal of a grain that not every region can grow.

The most important stop in Ngọc Chiến is the village of Lướt. The provincial culture and tourism department records it as a community tourism center. Hot mineral baths, outdoor trips, cultural exchange and traditional food are all gathered there.

Bathing in the mineral water of Ngọc Chiến is a way to relax after a long day on mountain roads. A visitor sits in a warm pool and looks up at the green slopes all around. The ache of dozens of kilometers of pass road slowly fades as the light steam rises.

A longer road leads from Lướt up to Nậm Nghẹp, and it is well worth trying in the flowering season. The road runs more than 10 kilometers. It has been paved with concrete, but it is winding, with many steep slopes. The flowers of sơn tra and rhododendron give Nậm Nghẹp its season. Climbers know the mountain routes of Tà Tao and Tà Đông, and early mornings bring views of the clouds. The land here rises above 2,000 meters, so the climate is very different from the center of the commune below.

In the golden rice season, in September and October, terraced fields climb from the foot of the hills almost to the summit. They look like golden mirrors stacked on top of one another in the afternoon sun. In March and April, when the sơn tra blooms, the road up to Nậm Nghẹp turns pure white, like a ribbon of cloud lowered into the forest.

From the top, the Ngọc Chiến valley lies far below. Four communities live there on land they have farmed for generations.