To get into the town, visitors have to travel nearly 5km more from the Dong Van Karst Plateau to the Vietnam-China border, where there are only rugger rock mountains rising up to the deep blue sky.
As a remote and isolated place, Pho Bang town is less well-known than other sites in the land of Ha Giang. The town is located deep in a valley in the rock plateau, where it is surrounded by rock mountains.
The road runs from mountains to mountains, the sun keeps dancing on the sky halfway and the deep valley is deserted until Pho Bang suddenly appears in a valley of roses.
Amid the barren plateau, gardens of roses in Pho Bang will surprise you. Roses hear are small but the color and the scent are special. Traders come here to buy roses to sell in other towns in Ha Giang.
The small town of Pho Bang has only a dozen houses, which are scattered on the main road and a few small branches. Going along the main road, you will see the trinh tuong houses of H’Mong and Chinese people, which are dyed by the color of time. These clay-made houses are over 100 years old, with old wooden doors and old parallel sentences in Chinese scripts, brown moss wall, yin-yang roof tiles. The simply life goes smoothly each day.
In Pho Bang, you will feel like the time drifting very slowly. An old man sits on the couch stroking the back of a lazy cat, some girls do embroidery at the threshold, kids play marbles on the front yard, corns and beans are dried on the road and hung in front of houses. The dark yellow color of corn stands on the brown walls.
There are only a few groceries in the town, selling essential things right behind the window frame. Clouds are always in the town. It gets colder in the afternoon. Some doors close quietly. The space is quickly engulfed in mist.
In Pho Bang, time passes slowly just like that. The quiet and silent life keeps continuing in this mountainous town. The whole town just awakes on the market day, when people bring all kinds of goods to the market.
The Pho Bang market is very close to the main road. It opens each six day and is one of the four unique fairs of Ha Giang. On market day, people from the neighboring areas bring everything they have to the market. The market is very crowded and busy in the morning and gradually becomes quiet at noon, leaving a quiet Pho Bang town as usual.
Today Pho Bang has an inn named “Hoa Hong” (Rose) for tourists who want to enjoy the quiet atmosphere of Pho Bang. There are only several restaurants in the town so if you arrive at Pho Bang in the afternoon, you should visit a restaurant immediately. You are advised to get up early for a walk in town in the early morning to feel better about the small, quiet town, a beautiful rose amid the rock plateau of Ha Giang.
