Tam Dao Hill Station

In the early 20th century, the French ruled Indochina, and they wanted cool places to rest. Alongside Da Lat and Sa Pa, they turned to a mountain range less than 90 kilometers from Hanoi. It was the Tam Đảo range.

They built villas, hotels, restaurants and other places for rest at about 900 meters above sea level. There the average temperature is many degrees cooler than in Hanoi. The Tam Đảo resort grew from there.

The clearest trace of those years is the Stone Church of Tam Đảo. According to a Phú Thọ tourism portal, it was first raised in 1906 as a stilt house roofed with leaves. In 1937 it was rebuilt entirely in stone in the Gothic style, with a square bell tower 18 meters tall. In 2008 it was restored and given its official name, Nữ Vương Hòa Bình, which means Queen of Peace.

The Stone Church is one of the few buildings built under French rule that still stand whole in the mountains of northern Vietnam. It is not the biggest church, and not the most beautiful. It is a witness to a time when foreigners built a place of rest on a mountaintop in the tropics.

From the church, a short walk or ride leads up to Cổng Trời, which means Sky Gate. It is a high spot with a view over the whole town. The view is good for photos, but the real draw is the weather. At this height, cloud and mist often spill over the slopes in the morning and the afternoon. Sometimes, within a single hour, the scene goes from sharp to completely lost in fog.

That is why Tam Đảo is called a "town in the clouds." The name was not dreamed up for tourists. It describes the real weather.

From Sky Gate, the way leads down to the Thác Bạc waterfall. Its water comes from three streams. Two of them are the Mơ and the Bạc. The third is the Tiên. The water drops from about 30 meters. In the season when water is plentiful, the fall is a white band among green forest trees, and the water can be heard striking the rock.

Behind the resort town lies Tam Đảo National Park. It covers nearly 35,000 hectares, and more than 26,000 hectares of that is natural evergreen rain forest. The ecosystem differs between the eastern and western slopes, which makes many small habitats and a high level of biodiversity.

Tam Đảo is a familiar weekend place for people from Hanoi. All kinds of visitors come: families with small children strolling the square, friends climbing to the falls, older people sitting over coffee and watching the clouds. The town is small enough to explore on foot in one afternoon, and big enough to stay a night, with something left for the next morning.

It looks best at the end of the day, when low gold light slants across the slopes and the clouds begin to rise, or in the early morning before the crowds arrive.