Xuan Thuy National Park

Every year, thousands of birds leave Siberia, China and Japan and fly south across thousands of kilometers. On the way they need a place to stop, to eat, to rest and to build up energy before flying on. One of the most important of these stops in northern Vietnam is a mudflat at the mouth of a river.

It is Xuân Thủy National Park.

Xuân Thủy lies in Ninh Binh Province, in Giao Minh commune. It sits at the Ba Lạt mouth of the Red River, and it is a typical coastal river-mouth wetland of the southern Red River Delta. The whole area covers about 7,100 hectares. Of these, 6,166 hectares form the strictly protected zone, which wraps around the forests of Cồn Lu and Cồn Xanh.

The park's own website calls Xuân Thủy the first Ramsar site in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia. Ramsar is an international convention for protecting wetlands. A place on the Ramsar list is one that the world recognizes for its special value to nature. In 2004, UNESCO named Xuân Thủy a core area of special importance in the Red River Delta Biosphere Reserve. A biosphere reserve is a UNESCO-recognized area where nature is protected and the people living there keep working the land. In September 2025, Xuân Thủy was named an ASEAN Heritage Park at a meeting in Langkawi, Malaysia.

It is a long road from a plain wetland to one of the most widely recognized protected areas in Southeast Asia.

The park has designed a route, the most popular one for a first visit, that takes a visitor through the Ramsar site in one day. It begins at the visitor center. At Cồn Ngạn, farming ponds are tended by people who live by the rhythm of the tides, and an observation hut gives a wide view over the spreading mudflats. Farther in lies the mangrove forest of Cồn Lu. There, mắm and sú trees sink their roots into the mud, and the world of còng and cáy lives beneath the leaves. At the Ba Lạt mouth there is a sandbar to walk on, and a chance to try catching clams by hand. Out on the flats lie the clam fields.

What makes Xuân Thủy special is not a single building or a single view, but the way the whole ecosystem works together like one perfect natural machine.

The mangrove forest holds back silt and builds new mudflats. It is a nursery for larvae and a source of food for countless water creatures. The tidal flat is a giant dining table for tens of thousands of migrating birds. The river mouth is where fresh water and salt water meet, and that creates special ecological conditions. The people of the area raise clams, harvest seafood and take part in community tourism. They live in step with this ecosystem instead of against it.

Bird season runs from October to March of the following year, and the bird-watching route leads to Cồn Ngạn and Bãi Trong. The park's website calls Xuân Thủy an "international bird station" for the north. That is the park's own phrase, not a scientific term, but it says something true about the place. Thousands of birds from many countries stop here on their long flights to feed and rest. UNESCO notes that the area holds species threatened worldwide, such as the spoon-billed sandpiper, the black-headed ibis and the Japanese paradise flycatcher.

On the tidal flat in bird season, every quiet moment counts. Each time a bird is startled into flight, it burns energy it needs for the thousand-kilometer journey ahead.

Watching the dawn at the Ba Lạt mouth, a visitor can easily see why people call this place an international bird station. Thousands of birds stand in rows on the mud. Then, all together, they lift off into the sky.