Pu Mat National Park

At dawn, the call of gibbons rings out from the tall trees along the Giăng River.

This is morning in Pù Mát National Park, a place where people come to learn that nature is far larger than they ever thought.

It lies in the west of Nghệ An Province, with a 61-kilometer border shared with Laos. Pù Mát is one of the largest primary tropical forests in Vietnam that are still fairly intact. It covers nearly 95,000 hectares. In 2001, the Prime Minister signed a decision that raised the nature reserve to a national park. In 2007, UNESCO recognized the whole western region of Nghệ An as a World Biosphere Reserve. Then, in September 2025, Pù Mát was named an ASEAN Heritage Park at a meeting of the environment ministers of Southeast Asia.

Those three titles are not certificates to hang on a wall. They say that this is one of the most important ecological areas in the whole region.

The story begins with an animal that very few people know.

The saola. Its scientific name is Pseudoryx nghetinhensis. Science only learned that the species existed in 1992, when researchers found specimens at Vũ Quang, in Hà Tĩnh Province. People call the saola the Asian unicorn because the animal is so rare. That is a popular nickname, not a scientific name. Many scientists spend their whole lives without ever seeing one in the wild.

In 1998, for the first time in history, a camera trap set at a mineral spring inside Pù Mát National Park took a photograph of a living saola in the wild. An international organization devoted to saving the saola has confirmed that this was an event of special scientific importance. Pù Mát is the place that gave that photograph to the world.

There has been no recent photographic confirmation of the saola in the Pù Mát area. Under the standards of the IUCN, the species is now listed as critically endangered. But that is exactly why every forest that stays green here carries a special meaning.

Now to another species that Pù Mát is keeping safe.

This is the northern white-cheeked gibbon. Its scientific name is Nomascus leucogenys. Pù Mát now protects a population of about 455 of these gibbons. That is about two thirds of all the individuals known in Vietnam. Researchers describe this group as the only confirmed viable surviving population of the species anywhere in the world.

The whole world. Not just Vietnam.

That means Pù Mát does not belong only to Nghệ An, or only to Vietnam. It is one of the last homes of a primate species on this earth.

And the gibbons' song at dawn, high in the trees along the Giăng River, is one of the most beautiful sounds that Southeast Asia still keeps.

The Giăng River holds a story of its own.

The Giăng runs for more than 100 kilometers around the park. Upstream live the Đan Lai people. The Đan Lai are the only community in Vietnam living on the upper reaches of the Giăng. Their villages, Cò Phạt and Búng, sit in the core zone of the national park. For many centuries, this river was their only link with the outside world.

The Đan Lai have a special custom. They sleep sitting up beside the fire, resting their heads on a stick. The Đan Lai say the custom began long ago, when their ancestors had to flee deep into the forest to escape their pursuers. In the forest there were no beds and no sturdy roofs. People slept in a position that let them run at any moment. And that custom has been kept through many generations.

Beyond the Giăng River and the Đan Lai, two sights in Pù Mát are the best known of all.

The first is the Khe Kèm waterfall. The Thái are one of Vietnam's ethnic groups, and Nghệ An is one of the provinces where they mainly live. In the local Thái language, the falls are called Bổ Bố, which means a white silk ribbon. The waterfall is about 150 meters high, and it pours down a cliff of primary forest. On sunny mornings, the spray rises and makes rainbows. It is one of the wildest waterfalls left in Vietnam.

The second is the săng lẻ forest. It covers about 100 hectares and holds only one kind of tree, the săng lẻ, whose scientific name is Lagerstroemia calyculata. The trunks grow straight and rise as high as 50 meters. A natural forest of a single species like this is very rare in the world. When the trees flower, from about May to July, the canopy turns a bright purple and pink.

The Pù Mát area holds one more treasure. It is not made of gold, and not of porcelain. It is carved straight into a limestone cliff.

This is the Ma Nhai stele. Its text was carved in Chinese characters in 1335, by order of the Retired Emperor Trần Minh Tông. It records a victory of the Trần army over Ai Lao forces that had pushed across the border. The Trần dynasty ruled Vietnam from 1225 to 1400. The inscription measures about 2.1 by 1.6 meters. It has 14 lines and 155 characters. There is no decoration at all. There is only writing cut into stone, solemn and enduring for nearly 700 years. The state has recognized it as a National Treasure.

Keeping all of this safe is the work of the people who guard the forest.

In 2024, the forest rangers of Pù Mát carried out 563 patrols. They removed 308 animal traps. Each trap left behind in the forest could kill a rare animal without anyone ever knowing. The rangers also drove out 49 intruders who had entered illegally. They rescued 35 animals, and 20 of those were released back into the wild.

308 traps in a single year. In a single forest.

Pù Mát is not only a place to look at. Here the gibbons call at dawn from the trees along the Giăng River. A stone stele nearly 700 years old still stands in silence among the mountains and the forest. And one of the last homes of a primate species on this earth is still green.