Pha Lai Dam Con Cuong district is a beautiful area with not only national cultural tradition, but also with nature favoured landscapes. After hard working days and suffering summer’s hot and muggy heat, visit Con Cuong district, please. The district is known for rich and marvellous Phu Mat National Park-Rich in bio-diversity, beauty in natural landscapes
Upstream Giang river
You have certainly known Pu MatNational Park and visited some its spots; Today, according to visitors’ requirement, we’ll visit another spot. Coming there, you will be surprised by beauty of a poetic mountain and river picture. How romantic it is when you go sightseeing by smoothly yachting on limpid and peaceful water surface. Yes, it’s Pha Lai dam under Mon Son commune. Pha Lai dam is 20 km from T-junction Khe Diem bridge under national highway N0 7. Previously, the road leading to the dam was very rough, and local people find it difficult to go outside the commune. At present, thanks to the support of government and project, the road has constructed and been convenient for travelling. As you see, Thai ethnic people’s houses are located in 2 sides of the road. Previously, Thai people were accustomed of building wooden and bamboo houses on stilts-a nice architectural style. Coming here, you’ll be welcomed by local people with honest sentiments. They basically live on forest resources and milpa. But in the recent years, for forest’s green life, we-tourist guiders have continuously propagandised forest protection to every households, provided them with neccesary information to help them improve their awareness of environment and its important role for human’s lives. In line with our actions are forest keepers’ forest protection and management work. They has been contributing and donating their health, youth and even lives to protect every inch of forest from wrongdoers. So, today you no longer see areas of bare-land, bare hills, but a gradually recovered green trees. Coming to the Pha Lai dam, visitors’ll be welcomed by local people with their honest sentiments and enjoy Thai ethnic minority’s culture via their xoe, cham dances and sounds of pan-pipe and gongs and the pleasure of tasting rice liquor and dancing lam vong imbued long-standing ethnic culture…visitors, now we’re reaching Luc Da commune with traditional brocade weaving village-Yen Thanh village. Thai girls with their skilled hands have weaved beautiful skirts, scarves, bags…When you leave Luc Da commune, please travel the village and buy these products as your journey’s souvernirs. Bordering Luc Da is Mon Son commune, in which the Xo Viet Nghe Tinh movement in period of 1930-1931 related revolutionary and historical vestiges have been printed, and western Party cell was founded. Visitors! When you enter Frontier post N0 555, please go up to visit Pha Lai dam. I’m glad to present it to you. Pha Lai is the Mon Son biggest irrigational work and it may be said to be an artificial work, a century work. It was started to construct in February 3rd,2000 and finished in May 19th,2002 by the 11th Army Corps under the Ministry of Depence and assembly company N0 665 in Nhan Chinh block-Thanh Xuan urban district- Ha Noi. Do you find any interesting details in construction? Oh, the construction was begun in February 3rd-a day in line with the Vietnam Communist Party’s foundation and its inauguration is in May 19th-a day in line with Ho Chi Minh’s birthday. Visitors! Giang river rises from Khang canyon, flows to Thanh Chuong district. When it strongly rains, Giang river’s water highly rises up. That leads to flood and seriously affects local people’s economy. In order to limit the strong current of water, the dam was built. It’s also an enormous lake which irrigates Muong Qua paddy field yearly. Visitors! Since Pha Lai was finished, local people have exploited natural preferential conditions. Floating restaurants were built to serve tourists. Standing on this stone jetty, visitors look at Giang river and enjoy picturesque landscapes. Whenever it sunsets, Giang river becomes more romantic due to electric lights from restaurants twinklingly printing in the river. This scenery brings us a dream feeling, makes us think of it as a picture drawn by talented artist’s hands and brings us a great pleasure to enjoy landscapes without wishing to back home. Do you know why it’s named as Pha Lai dam? As I know, letter Pha means God and letter Lai means flower in Thai language. Flowers in the sky, the reason a comparation was given is because of its beauty. From this side, we can observe immense limestone mountains intermixe with leaves’ green colour, flowers’ red and yellow colour…All of them combine together and lead us think of flowers glittering in the sky. And in the other side, we can see houses appearing after ranges of forest tree. It is forest protection and management station, where forest keepers are hard working. They are ready to fight against wood stealers, even to sactisfy their lives to keep every forest trees and protect the Earth’s green house. Visitors! If we have never yachted upstream Giang river, we can’t experience thoroughly its beauty. Perhalps, nothing is more interresting than rowing a dug-out along Giang river and experiencing anxious minutes wading across dry water phrases of river to drag the boat out of sharp rocks, and then mildly drifting in sections of river with its tranquil surface. At these moments, we are able to relax our mind and see grandiose landscapes. There are many kind of forest trees in 2 riversides. Some big trees rising their bend branches up to reach the water surface. They look like enomous hands being entertaining places for herbs of monkeys to rock and dance. Reaching quiet sections of river, we’ll hear the howl of wild beast, the sough of the forest wind, the sound of branches knocking lightly against one another. At the moment, visitors will feel yourselves flying into nature and enjoying thoroughly its own beauty. Visitors! Whoever has already visited the dam or heard about it, he’s surprise and thrills his heart by natural beauty. The further you go and exploit, the more exactly you evaluate the dam’s beauty. It’s not a monotonous beauty. In fact, it has been moving itself to change in line with natural changes. Look at carpets of plant, carpets of grass competing one another in changing their colour, and carpets of creeper trying to live on high trees to enjoy sunlight. You must admire the dam's beauty. It's really to be an ideal eco-tourism site for visitors. If you want to travel deeper, you'll experience the beauty of platypus shaped stones. This is one of interesting tourist sites. Tough and sharp stones make travellers nervous, but then you feel more comfortable and interesting when you directedly see a nature arranged landscape, which attracts people's mind easily. Coming here, visitors can intergrate yourselves into green and limpid stream of Giang river, sightsee from the dug-out drifting quietly on water surface along the riverbank. Visitors! Visiting Pha Lai dam and Rowing boats in Giang river is a great number of visitors' sightseeing favourite. Giang river is not only fresh, cool, and peaceful, but sometimes fierce also. The river houses an extreme mavellous seafood resource-"Mat fish specialty". One in all of you have ever enjoyed "Qua village's sticky rice, Giang's fishes",haven't you? If you have opportunity to enjoy these specialties just once, I believe that you aren't able to forget the journey's memories. Visitors! Leaving Pha Lai dam, you will come home and finish today visiting route. Do you experience anything after the travel? Pu Mat national park with its tourism sites always widely opens its door to welcome you. Please come back when you have travelling opportunity like today's visit. Certainly, your coming visits will be more interesting than the one, because you 'll be surprised by day by day changes of ideal eco-tourism site attracting thousands of visitors yearly.
