Dozen years ago, Pho Bang was boisterous and noisy, but now it is known as the loved name – the “forgotten town” or “town of peace”….
This border town is not far away, especially as the roads have entered the villages … However, a once bustling Pho Bang, a once hot, stinging Pho Bang of a few decades ago, sometime because of opium, sometime because of drugs … “occupied” Pho Bang as the capital… was faded away. Pho Bang now is peaceful to haunting.
In Pho Bang, color of time was engrained into light brown walls, on the old wooden doors. Pho Bang reminds people with the tumbledown walls with tile roof and moss tubes of Chinese ethnicity rather as the home of the Mong, Lo Lo people in the district. The sedentary communities with soil walls and old wooden columns with shiny color of time, weathered gray tiled roofs, paper before each wooden door, faded and then just renewed in each spring.
In Pho Bang, there are a lot of roses. People here grow roses for sale in the city. Because the climate is suitable for the beautiful roses. Roses planted in Pho Bang are not big but ruddy. They are pink, fading pink, red roses, yellow roses or pink plum. Colors are always fresh absorbing the atmosphere of the rocky plateau. Thus, many people are surprised when walking on steep winding mountain roads leading into town, then suddenly rushed down the slope of picturesque rose valley with brilliant colors.
Not noisy boisterous as other places, in Pho Bang, time drifts slowly. An old man sits on a chair stroking the back of a lazy cat, some girls bring out cloths to do the embroidery in front the doors, kids play marbles. Drying corn and soybean are collected. Corn and soybean are hung on the roofs of the houses. Brown corn is prominent on the damp walls. The streets only have few grocery stores selling simple things right behind windows. Cloud comes in the town, it gets colder in the afternoon. Some doors closed silently. Space quickly engulfs in mist.