Quan Lan Island

On an island in Bái Tử Long Bay, a mountain called Vân gave its name to the best-known island waters in the north. The portal of the Vân Đồn special zone explains that the name Vân Đồn comes from Mount Vân, in the area of Quan Lạn Island. It was here, in 1149, that Emperor Lý Anh Tông founded the settlement of Vân Đồn. It became the first international trading port of Đại Việt, an old name for Vietnam.

Quan Lạn is more than a pleasant beach. The island holds three layers of story. The first is the scenery of the sea, the second is a fishing village, and the third is the deep history of the northeast islands.

The first layer is the scenery. The Quảng Ninh portal describes three outstanding beaches. Quan Lạn Beach lies near the pier. Sơn Hào Beach is about four kilometers farther into the island, and Minh Châu Beach is another ten kilometers beyond that. Each has its own look, with blue water, white sand and the sea air of the bay. A point called Eo Gió looks out over the water, though reaching it means climbing several stretches of mountain path.

The second layer is the sea village. The people of Quan Lạn have lived by the sea for generations. Traditional work such as squid angling and digging sá sùng, a kind of marine worm, still sets the rhythm of island life. Few places still keep this way of earning a living, in a stretch of sea that draws more and more visitors.

The third layer is history, and it is the one that deserves the longest pause.

The Quan Lạn complex of communal house, pagoda, shrine and nghè was recognized by the State in 1990 as a national historical, architectural and artistic monument. Here, belief and culture have been kept alive by the sea people of Vân Đồn over many centuries.

The communal house honors Emperor Lý Anh Tông, who opened the Vân Đồn trading port in 1149. It also honors the village guardian spirits and the early ancestors. The Quảng Ninh Department of Culture describes the building as imposing. It has 32 main pillars and 26 supporting pillars, made of mần lái wood and lim ironwood. The roof is covered in scale tiles, and on the ridge two dragons face the moon, in the old style of building.

The nghè, a place of worship, honors Trần Khánh Dư. He is linked to the Vân Đồn-Cửa Lục victory of 1288, one of the important battles that contributed to the great victory at Bạch Đằng against the Yuan and Mongol armies. Standing before the nghè, one is in a place where generations of Vân Đồn fishermen have come to remember the commander who guarded this sea.

The complex also holds Quan Lạn Pagoda and a shrine to three brothers of the Phạm family. It is a building of the Nguyễn period that still keeps a quiet, ancient air. The Department of Culture calls this the character of a sea village. From trading port to defense, from belief to ancestors, everything is kept in one small complex on a faraway island.

The traditional Vân Đồn festival, with its rowing races, has also been handed down through the generations. It shows the martial spirit of the people of the sea. There is the sound of oars striking the water, the shouting from the shore, and boats gliding across Bái Tử Long Bay. That is the picture the sea people of Quan Lạn have kept for hundreds of years.

Quan Lạn lies in the area of Bái Tử Long Bay and in the buffer zone of Bái Tử Long National Park. ASEAN named the park an ASEAN Heritage Park in 2016, and it records 2,415 species of living things. On the white sand or looking out at the blue water, one is within one of the richest island and sea ecosystems in the northeast.

A national monument complex in the middle of the sea, a white beach facing a bay of islands, and the sound of oars that still carries, as it did in the days of Trần Khánh Dư. Quan Lạn keeps all three in one place.