Pu Luong Tours

Why visit Pu Luong

Pu Luong Nature Reserve is made up of forested limestone ridges with long valleys of rice terraces between them. Most of the people who live here are Thai and Muong, and village life still follows the farming calendar: buffalo in the paddies, bamboo water wheels lifting water into the fields, and wooden stilt houses with space underneath for tools and animals. Tourism has grown in recent years, but it remains small-scale, and walking trails link one village to the next, so you can spend whole days on foot with very little traffic.

Top things to do in Pu Luong

• Trek between villages such as Kho Muong, Don and Hieu, following paddy dikes, forest paths and quiet lanes past terraced fields.
• Swim at Hieu Waterfall, a series of shallow limestone pools near Hieu village that are good for cooling off in the warmer months.
• See the bamboo water wheels turning along the streams around Ban Don, a traditional irrigation system that is still in use.
• Float on a bamboo raft along a calm stretch of river, a slow and easy way to watch riverside farms and villages go by.
• Stay in a stilt-house homestay and share a home-cooked dinner with local dishes such as sticky rice cooked in bamboo tubes and mountain greens.

Best time to visit

Pu Luong's terraces turn gold twice a year, around late May to early June and again from late September into early October, which are the most photogenic times to come. October and November bring drier, clearer days for trekking. March and April are mild, with young rice planted in the flooded terraces. June to August is hot and humid, with heavy showers that make trails muddy, and December to February can be cold and misty, especially at night.

Getting there

Pu Luong is about four hours from Hanoi by road. The usual route follows Highway 6 towards Mai Chau before turning south on narrower mountain roads, so it is easy to combine the two places in one trip. Some itineraries continue on to Ninh Binh afterwards, around three to four hours from the reserve.