LANG SON, AN AREA OF RENOWNED SCENERIES

If you are a Vietnamese, you should have heard this folk ballad:

"At Dong Dang, there are the Ki Lua Street,
The young woman To Thi and Tam Thanh Temple"

Departing from Hanoi and following the National highway No.1A, tourists will reach Lang Son area by car in two hours. After crossing the Kai Kinh chain of mountains, you will come to Chi Lang, the inaccessible and impressive frontier pass where former feats of arms have many times terrified the enemies of our nation. 1A national Highway crawls in wind moan on mountain slopes, through immense pine forests. Ranges of cars hurry in company with yours in direction of the town which is still sheltered in morning dew. Do you like shopping? Visit Lang Son in shopping tour provided by Vietnam travel. Beyond the gorge Sai Do, you will immediately arrive at Lang Son, main town of a borderland particularly rich in flagrant flowers and sweet-tasting fruits and also well-known with its characteristic popular melodies: Then, Sli, Luon... of the Tay, Nung, Dao ethnic minorities.

A visit to Mau Son Mountain

From Hanoi, tourists can get on a Hanoi - Lang Son coach at the Gia Lam coach station. At Lang Son City, they can hire motorbikes to go to Mau Son Mountain.

With the wind whistling up and the clouds floating down, the sky seems within arms reach. The panorama from the highest peak in Lang Son region is like a Chinese ink drawing. To the north is Ninh Minh, China, to the east is Na Duong and to the west is Dong Dang, all merging beautifully into one spectacular landscape. The winding narrow mountain path, like a snake, lies tucked between two steep mountains.

Mau Son Mountain, with fresh air and imposing scenery, is an ideal place for relaxing on a weekend after a tense working week. On the way to the mountaintop, visitors can meet and talk with Dao, Tay, Hmong or Nung ethnic people.

There are many inns on Mau Son’s top, which are quite comfortable, pricing from VND120,000 to VND200,000 (US$7.5-12.5)/double room/night.

Food is not available on Mau Son so visitors should reserve food at inns or bring food from Lang Son City with them. Local specialties that they should taste are roast suckling pork, roast duck, frog, grilled chicken, bamboo-tube rice, pork cooked with mac mat leaves, and wild vegetables like chayote, ngot or banana inflorescence.

On the top of Mau Son, visitors can buy pure bee’s honey and honeycomb from ethinic minority people.

When the night falls, visitors can relax by soaking their body in tubs with medicinal herbs of the Dao people, then tasting local food and drink such as San Tuyet tea, which only grows on the mountains in the two districts of Cao Loc and Loc Binh.

Surrounded by wild nature and cold mountain wind, visitors can also taste Mau Son wine, which is distilled from mountain spring water and special remedies. Tourists can buy this kind of wine at inns, pricing from VND10,000-20,000 ($0.6-1.25) per litre.

Lang Son Opens Trade-Tourism Fair

The fair, co-organised by the provincial Industry and Trade Department and the Fair and Trade Joint Stock Company VIASI, aims to introduce the provincial trade and tourism potentials to promote economic and commercial cooperation.

It also helps create opportunities for domestic and foreign businesses to enter the provincial market and the border economy.

The fair displayed various kinds of trade-tourism products, including counterfeits and low quality commodities to help customers distinguish goods on sale in the local market.

Delicious Dishes In Lang Son

Mang Chua (Picked bamboo shoot) is one of Lang Son’s most famous dishes. It is sold in almost every supermarket in the country.

Banh Cuon (steamed rolls rice pan-cake) is another of its famous products. A street in HCM City, Cao Thang, has a number of Banh Cuon restaurants, whose owners all came from Lang Son.

The restaurants originated from a very famous Lang Son banh cuon shop on Cach Mang Thang Tam road in the 1970s. Dung, from the Festival Tourist Company, brought the shop to Cao Thang and created banh cuon street.

Lon quay (roast pig) and Vit quay (roast duck) are cooked with the leaves of the mac mat, a tree used mostly by Tay ethnic people in Lang Son and the neighbouring province of Cao Bang. Banh Ngai, a kind of cake that looks like a biscuit, is made from absinth leaves. Xoi Cam (Violet-steamed glutinous rice), is made from sticky rice and ash of straw and banana leaf. Banh Phap Phong (Spongy cake) is made from sticky rice or taro.

Lang Son is also famous for its alcohol. Among the special liquors, the most well known is Mau Son wine, a specialty of the Dao people. Mau Son wine’s yeast is made from over 30 different leaves.