Every September, the terraced rice fields of Mu Cang Chai Town don a yellow coat as the paddies shift colors and eager tourists descend on the region.

The road to Mu Chang Chai includes the Khau Pha Pass – one of the Vietnam’s four greatest mountain passes.

Khau Pha is a maze of winding roads that zig zag through local villages and overlook the area’s stunning rice fields.

Each year, as the rice in Mu Cang Chai’s paddies ripens, local and foreign tourists travel over the pass on their way to catch a glimpse of the yellow rice fields.

Mu Cang Chai sits 2,000 meters above sea level at the foot of the Hoang Lien Son mountain range in Yen Bai Province.

Da Nang residents Hoang Diep and his wife, Ngoc Tram, both born in 1992, recently took a four-day trip to Mu Cang Chai.

The couple is well-known in the Vietnam travel scene for documenting their journeys through 40 of the country’s cities and provinces.

To get to Mu Cang Chai, Diep and Tram flew from Da Nang to Hanoi where they rented a motorbike and headed into the mountains.

“We choose Mu Cang Chai because it’s a great place to admire northern Vietnam’s towering rice fields. It’s also easy to get to and only takes a short time to visit.  

“We’re both very busy, so Mu Cang Chai was the perfect destination for a short trip,” Diep said.

The first major landmark on the road from Hanoi to Mu Cang Chai, the Khau Pha Pass takes travelers into the clouds and through old growth forests near Lim Thai and Lim Mong villages, home to ethnic Thai and Mong people, respectively.

 It is also the home of the Flying on the Golden Season paragliding festival.

After descending the Khau Pha Pass and reaching Mu Cang Chai, tourists can visit the terraced rice fields in Che Cu Nha, La Pan Tan, De Xu Phinh, and Lao Chai communes.

Of these rice fields, those in De Xu Phinh Commune are perhaps the most famous, thanks to their horse-shoe shape.

Meanwhile, the terraced rice paddies in La Pan Tan Commune look like mam xoi lon and mam xoi nho (large and small round trays of sticky rice).

These rice fields are only accessible by a narrow, steep road.

Those with great driving skills can attempt to reach the paddies on their own, otherwise they can park at the bottom and use a motorbike taxi service run by local people.

The best time visit the rice fields is in the late afternoon in order to take in the beautiful sunset.  But it’s not only the sunset that is beautiful, so are the people.

“Conquering the roads around the rice fields was memorable. We passed a challenging steep road to reach the mam xoi lon-shaped terraced rice field.

"The local children were so lovely and nice. We met many people [in Mu Cang Chai] and they were all very helpful.

“As for food, I am a big fan of pickled bamboo shoots. I even bought some as a gift,” Diep shared.

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