Đá Dựng mountain

Hà Tiên, the Southernmost province is rich in historic and cultural relics. How could visitors to Hà Tiên forget such beauties and landscapes Thạch Động, Phụ Tử or father -and-son mount, Mạc Cửu tomb, Mũi Nai beach, especially the Đ á Dựng tourism complex.

Photo: Phạm Lự

Đá Dựng is locally named Châu Nham, is part of Hà Tiên limestone range, only blue stone in Mỹ Đức commune, about 4km from Hà Tiên town. The mountain is not high but rocky and perilous. There are grottoes on mountain slopes, outstanding in a boundless water-field neighboring Cambodia.

Its legendarily believed that since time mountains met the sea, there were plenty of caves and grottoes and mangroves, an ideal habitat for bird-sanctuaries. Governor of Hà Tiên Mạc Thiên Tích and his learned fellowmen in Chiêu Anh Các (a club of poets) described the scene of white stocks on the mountains to be one of Hà Tiêns ten most beautiful landscapes.

There are 11 caves and grottoes, differently named: Biệt Động, Quân Y, Thạch Sanh, Nam Vang and Hoàng Gia Each name is sourced from a historical event or a man noted for his merits.

Below is cave N04 or Quân Y (or military health service unit) that still retains religious traces of our ancestors. The nature is sparkling in dew-curtain that looks more soleumn and scared at one end of the cave is an ancient pagoda, called Kỳ Sơn Tự.

Thạch Sanh grottoes is on mountain -top, the most beautiful one, stalactites and stalagmites look very much like characters in legendary story Thạch Sanh. There is a fairy -well or Giếng Tiên where fairies normally took a bath. On grotto Trống Ngực, it will make sound like drumbeat when you just lightly flap on your own chest or grotto Rồng where small rocks look like flakes of a dragon.

Visitors to Đá Dựng are happy to discover new thing, apart from mountain climbing, especially to enjoy more legends and folktales told by the local people or written in story-books. 

                                                                               CÔNG THÀNH