Mu Cang Chai rice terraces in Yen Bai. Photo: Le Viet Khanh

Mu Cang Chai (Yen Bai) is famed for some of the finest rice terraces of Viet Nam. In gold harvest, the terraces are wholly draped in the glamorous clad of borderless patchwork of bright, glowing gold. Over undulating hills stretching to infinity, small thatched huts of ethnic peasants loom. From above, Mu Cang Chai poetically engenders a sense of grandiose scenery and utmost inner calm and tranquility. Its kaleidoscopic scenery of rice terraces aside, people are also drawn to the ordinary life of the Hmong in their hamlets.

Y Ty (Lao Cai) is meanwhile in this season the prime site to admire the stunning nature and do the check-in by overflowing rice terraces. These piling stairs to heaven form a grand picture of gleaming gold, while continuing in order like ripples up to the towering and stalling cordillera, or slowly trickling down to the glen, sporadically dotted by rustic roofs that have sheltered Ha Nhi natives over generations. From above, rice terraces of Y Ty are the unutterable tapestry that wraps and adorns the woods.

The gold harvest in Hoang Su Phi (Ha Giang). Photo: Tran Ba Viet Dung

One of the foremost sights in the gold harvest, and of course must-visit, is Hoang Su Phi (Ha Giang). What sets the ripe glamour of Hoang Su Phi apart is its piling rice terraces in unquestionably continual order, and the patchwork of ear growing green and gold paddies that siege little houses all over the hills, all draped in unspeakable calm. In particular as dusk wanes, the cozy fumes of kitchen swirl over the place, further fanning homesick nostalgia. The trail to Hoang Su Phi crisscrosses snaky passes and bends and is plied with vast rice terraces whose scents of ripe paddies perfume and enrich your toiling trek to the hinterland.

Van Bang