Sometimes when I sit and think, it feels like a dream. I have lived in the Northwest since my childhood, each time I go back, it is a continuation of long, winding roads, rugged mountains, remoteness and isolation... The scenery is initially majestic and exciting, but then quickly becomes boring and monotonous... Now, the road has connected the Northwest closer, and the most interesting thing is to travel by plane. Looking from the road or looking down from the sky, the Northwest appears as a new fruit-growing region, a cultural and historical tourist area associated with ecology and nature, full of surprises and strangeness. Is it true, but isn't it like a dream?

Ta Xua - one of the highest mountains in Vietnam, belongs to Bac Yen district (Son La) bordering Tram Tau district (Yen Bai).
Image:Japan Light

Son Labecome a new fruit path

About ten years ago, the road leading to the Northwest appeared with a lot of fruits. From Cao Phong town of Hoa Binh, there were thousands of sweet oranges. Then to Moc Chau, through Yen Chau, Mai Son, Na San, to Son La city, everywhere you could see lush fruit gardens with many kinds of gentle fruits. And so on, leading further up, to Tuan Giao, Dien Bien, Lai Chau... Son La now has about 100 hectares of hills and mountains growing fruit trees, ranking 2nd among the provinces and cities in the country. A modern fruit processing factory for export built by TH Group in Van Ho district on National Highway 6 was inaugurated...

People in small villages, Thai and Mong ethnic groups, have become members of new-style cooperatives. They cultivate and grow fruit trees using advanced technology of new, modern agriculture. Large gardens growing Tam Hoa plums, sugar mangoes, avocados, sweet bananas, passion fruit, sugar oranges, thick-fleshed longans, all meeting VietGAP quality, are spread from Van Ho, Moc Chau grasslands, to Yen Chau, Mai Son, Na San plateau, all the way to the border, remote districts in the past such as Quynh Nhai, Song Ma...

Fruits grown in the Northwest region have gone global. Son La mangoes are exported to the US, UK, and Australia, and now Yen Chau bananas and Quynh Nhai longans have also been added. Recently, Son La has exported several dozen tons of various fruits to the EU market and to the UK, Australia, US, Cambodia, China, etc.

Son La has promoted the restructuring of the agricultural sector, developed high-tech agriculture, built and developed production, processing, product consumption and export chains. Along with many investment attraction policies, Son La has formed a fundamental foundation for the fruit and vegetable industry from production, processing, consumption and export...

Son La now has about 100 hectares of hills growing fruit trees, ranking second among provinces and cities in the country. Photo:Tung Dinh.

Nowadays, the road connecting Hanoi with Son La city only takes about 5 hours by car. But every time I travel on that route, memories of the difficult years of my childhood still pop up in my mind. My parents often gathered their leave, every two or three years, and took their small children with them to visit their hometown in the lowlands. Going back and forth, the journey from the small mountainous town of Son La to Hanoi took two to three days. I used to sleep overnight at Km 22, Suoi Rut, then Moc Chau, Yen Chau in damp boarding houses along that steep mountain road... When I grew up and went to university, this time was shortened to a day and a half and I still had to sleep overnight along the way...

A time of poverty but dreaminess and excitement. I dozed off on the bumpy bus, eager to get to the stop quickly, knowing that there would be things waiting. In Yen Chau town, there were bunches of sweet bananas, small mangoes with red flesh, fragrant. In Moc Chau, the weather was chilly, there was grilled corn, peaches and plums carried down from the high mountains by the Mong people. At Km 22, Suoi Rut, there was sticky rice on hot coals, the afternoon mist covered the surface of the Da River…

During my university years, I went back to Son La twice a year during the summer and Tet. When I returned to school, passing through Yen Chau, I often bought a few bunches of bananas and a dozen kilos of green mangoes, and told the driver to tie them to the roof of the car. At that time, Yen Chau and Thuan Chau mangoes were still sold in Hanoi. They were small but sweet and fragrant. Bananas from there were not criticized when brought back. Dried bamboo shoots, wood ear mushrooms, and other mountain products bought in Moc Chau were attractive because they were strange and cheap. But over time, the subsidy was abolished and goods were traded. Sand mangoes and many other attractive fruits were shipped from the South. Wood ear mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and bamboo shoots were brought down from the Viet Bac mountains. The corn and horse-tooth corn grown spontaneously in the Northwest mountains are only worth feeding livestock, and have little value when rice from the Southern Delta is transferred... Moving into the period of market economic development, suddenly Son La and the Northwest are no longer beautiful mountainous regions, because there are no products that contribute to the common life of the whole country, except for... hydropower.

There were a few times I returned, driving on roads that were much wider. Looking out the car window, the hills and mountains still overlapped, silently wondering, when willNorthwest, Son La has just become a rich and beautiful land? Asking that, I thought, surely the Northwest in general, Son La in particular, must find some kind of tree to create its strengths. Those trees will grow lushly on the rolling hills, bringing new economic values ​​to this place. And along with that, cultural tourism... I used to tremble, anxiously following the results when I heard people were carrying out plans to plant industrial trees in Son La, such as coffee trees, rubber trees, grass for dairy cows, sugarcane for sugar production... But then I was sad when I knew that those trees could not grow, could not become trees of the Northwest, of Son La.

"Coming to Son La today, one can easily feel the green color of fruits and vegetables, along with the green color of the forest gradually regenerating on the high hills," former Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Quoc Doanh felt. Photo:Tung Dinh.

How happy it is that after searching and many efforts, Son La and the Northwest have found new potential, and the fruit season has come. Son La has clearly become a new capital of fruit trees. It is even happier to see that high-quality fresh flowers with commercial value have been planted and grown very well in Moc Chau plateau. And roses have also bloomed in their many bright colors in Ngoc Chien valley in Muong La...

New wings to Dien Bien

National Highway No. 6 was renovated, expanded, and upgraded in preparation for the 30th Anniversary of Dien Bien Phu Victory (1984). It was then upgraded when the Ta Bu and Muong La Hydropower Plants were built. The road to Son La, Dien Bien, and Lai Chau ofNorthwestincreasingly spacious... The Hoa Binh - Son La route has been added to the Vietnam Expressway Development Plan. The Hoa Binh - Moc Chau expressway has started construction, and when completed, it will connect with the Lang - Hoa Lac and Hoa Lac - Hoa Binh expressways, shortening the Son La - Hanoi travel time to just over 2 hours.

At the end of 2023, to celebrate and prepare for new developments after the 70th Anniversary of Dien Bien Phu Victory, the Dien Bien Phu Airport Upgrade Project was inaugurated and has been operating smoothly until now. The flight route to Dien Bien Phu has reached a new level compared to its history, connecting a border area in the Northwest of the country with many cultural and historical sediments and many potentials that need to be further exploited...

It was not until four years after the Dien Bien Phu Victory, in 1958, that civil aviation transport by the military was opened at Dien Bien Phu airport, but its operations were very limited in the conditions of the country still at war and divided. It was not until 1984 that civil flights carrying passengers began to arrive by aircraft such as AN24, AK40... Then it took another ten years, in 1995, after a fairly basic upgrade and renovation, that the frequency of flights to this airport gradually increased, and modern small passenger aircraft such as the ATR72 were used regularly. By early 2024, after modern upgrades, investing more than 1,500 billion to expand and extend the runway to 2,400m, along with a parking system, auxiliary and service areas, Dien Bien Phu airport has emerged as an airport for popular passenger aircraft such as Airbus A320, A321 and equivalent. Not only does it have a Hanoi - Dien Bien Phu route, but it also opens additional routes connecting to Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Can Tho... In the future, it is possible to open additional routes connecting to many countries to become an international airport.

Endless rubber plantations in Dien Bien. Photo:Hoang Anh

The development of Dien Bien Phu airport reminds us of and visualizes the history of this remote borderland. Dien Bien Phu airport is located in the middle of Muong Thanh field, which is a large, flat valley surrounded by mountain ranges. Muong Thanh is one of the four large Muongs in the Northwest, transcribed from Muong Then, meaning Muong Troi or Xu Troi in Thai. This land belonged to Lam Tay district from the post-Ly period, to the beginning of the Tran period belonged to Da Giang road, and at the end of the Tran period changed to Thien Hung town. This place was originally a land ruled by Thai and Lu leaders, as if self-governed. It was not until King Le Thanh Tong marched troops to quell rebellions in the Northwest that it was truly under the control of the Le Dynasty of Dai Viet. King Le Thanh Tong divided the country into 12 provinces and this area was located in Hung Hoa province.

The Nguyen Dynasty, in its first half century of prosperity, after unifying and expanding its territory to Ha Tien sea, Phu Quoc island, and reaching out to Hoang Sa and Truong Sa, strengthened its control over the northern border regions of the country. During that process, this land was changed to Hung Hoa province by King Minh Mang in 1831, and then the third king of the Nguyen Dynasty, Thieu Tri, a Confucian scholar who loved poetry, renamed it Dien Bien in 1841. Dien means firmly established, bien means frontier. Dien Bien accordingly carried the country's expectations and was chosen as the capital, called Phu Dien Bien, governing three regions: Ninh Bien, Tuan Giao and Lai Chau...

The name Dien Bien Phu, later called Dien Bien Phu, was coined in the first half of the 19th century, and not many people knew about it. Yet more than 100 years later, in 1954, Dien Bien Phu became famous all over the world, associated with a victory that "resounded throughout the five continents and shook the earth" of our people. The historic Dien Bien Phu victory was not only the end of the French occupation, restored peace in Northern Vietnam, and made the name Dien Bien Phu famous to the world, but also the starting point for a journey to build Dien Bien up to today.

After 1954, from the battlefield, Dien Bien Phu gradually changed into a farm, many soldiers who participated in the Dien Bien liberation campaign stayed to work as farm workers. Many residents in the Northern Delta were mobilized to build a new homeland. Initially, Dien Bien Phu had the appearance of a farm town, four years later, in 1958, Dien Bien Phu became the district town of Dien Bien district, Lai Chau province. By 1992, Dien Bien Phu was converted into a town. In September 2003, Dien Bien Phu town was expanded and upgraded to a city. In November 2003, the National Assembly passed a resolution to divide Lai Chau province into two provinces, Lai Chau and Dien Bien. On January 1, 2004, Dien Bien province was officially established on the basis of separating the western and southwestern parts from the previous Lai Chau province. Dien Bien Phu city became the capital of Dien Bien province.

Golden ripe rice fields in Muong Thanh create a special landscape in the Northwest mountains and forests. Photo:Thanh Chuong

Dien Bien province is home to the westernmost point of A Pa Chai of the country, with a border of more than 450 km, adjacent to Laos and China. Dien Bien is affectionately known as the Ban Flower Region, and is home to a community of 10 ethnic groups: Kinh, Thai, Mong, Dao, Giay, Tay, Ha Nhi, Si La, Lao, Cong with nearly 640,000 people on an area of ​​more than 9,500 km2. Dien Bien province currently has one city, one town and eight districts.

Dien Bien Phu city today is larger than the area covered by the old Muong Thanh valley. Muong Thanh, Hong Cum, Him Lam, the apricot flowers are white, the orange gardens are yellow, to make this land become rich, green, romantic, blending into the great changes of the whole country. Now, from the wings flying up to Dien Bien Phu, under our eyes, there still appear the roads from Thanh Hoa, Ninh Binh going over, from Phu Yen, Bac Yen crossing the Da River to go there, from Hoa Binh, Moc Chau, Yen Chau going up, then all converging at Pha Din pass, one of the "four great passes" of the Northwest mountainous region, to concentrate human strength, strength, even blood and bones for "Fifty-six days and nights of digging mountains, sleeping in tunnels, pouring rain, eating rice balls" to prepare for the historic siege. Landing at the airport, we can gradually walk through the vestiges of the old battlefields at Doc Lap Hill, A1 Hill, Muong Thanh Bridge... then go to the Dien Bien Phu Victory Museum to recall the hardships but the heroism and perseverance that made the victory...

Dien Bien is currently a land of tourism with unique destinations such as: A Pa Chai Westernmost Point, Muong Nhe Nature Reserve, Tua Chua Stone Plateau, Pa Khoang Lake, Huoi Pe Lake, U Va Hot Springs, Hua Pe, Pa Thom Caves, Kho Chua La, Pe Rang Ky, Ban Phu Citadel, Tam Van... As a province located at the border junction, there is already a modern airport, in the near future the Trans-Asian Highway will pass through this province, then the highway from Son La to Dien Bien and extending to Tay Trang border gate...

From the current flight path to Dien Bien Phu, from the highways that will open in the future, have opened up new visions for us to see that the beloved Northwest seems to be preparing to enter a very strong and new development phase, the land of the border region will no longer be far away but will fly higher...

According to: nongnghiep.vn