Trang An - 'season of stillness'

I returned to Trang An on a late autumn day to enjoy the peaceful, pure moments of this beautiful land of mountains and rivers when the seemingly endless stream of tourists had now become much less frequent.

The North has four distinct seasons: spring - summer - autumn - winter, but Trang An has only two seasons: bustling and quiet. I have been here twice during the "bustling season", witnessing the scene on land of "people and vehicles like water, clothes like a wedge", on water, boats like fallen bamboo leaves on the river after a storm. At that time, Trang An was a metropolis, Bai Dinh became a holy land, and each visitor seemed to be an aimless pilgrim following one another into the realm of the mind.

And now, Trang An is in the middle of the "calm season", when solo travelers like me can peacefully admire the majestic mountains, leisurely sail on the river to explore the amazing caves, visit the quiet fairy tales perched on the cliffs, and freely let our souls wander in the green mountains with birds singing and flowers racing.

The journey to Trang An's world heritage began in the early 1990s. At that time, the Dinh - Le King Relic Site, a component part of the Trang An scenic complex today, along with four other cultural heritages of Vietnam, was submitted to UNESCO for consideration and recognition as a world cultural heritage.

But only the Complex of Hue Monuments was honored by UNESCO in 1993. Perhaps at that time, the heritage dossier of the thousand-year-old Hoa Lu ancient capital was too favorable to the historical relics of the early feudal dynasties of Vietnam, forgetting the majestic, poetic landscape that nature had "drawn" in Trang An, along with the special landscape and ecological values ​​that nature had bestowed on this "Bong mountain, Nhuoc water" place on earth.

More than 20 years later, the dossier on this beautiful land of mountains and rivers reappeared in the sessions of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee with 3 outstanding criteria: having extraordinary natural beauty and aesthetic importance with universal value for the landscape; recording important stages of development in the history of the earth through the process of geological and geomorphological changes; and being a typical example of the traditional settlement process of humans representing many cultures in the historical process spanning thousands of years.

With these three criteria, Trang An Scenic Landscape Complex was recognized by UNESCO as a mixed world heritage on June 23, 2014 in Doha (Qatar), the first heritage in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia to be honored in both aspects: nature and culture.

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