Cold weather in Bach Ma National Park these days gives the visitors a feeling of vacationing in a temperate haven where blankets of fog envelop the whole landscape and the sun rarely shines.

The national reserve is now so quiet that it is an ideal retreat for those who want tranquility. Leaves of some of the trees in the forest turn yellow, dotting colors to the clouds of very small drops of water in the park.

Mist also makes Bach Ma something like a fairy world, where waterfalls look like the white hair of old fairies spreading over rock tiers and running water of streams are like the sweet singing of young fairies from a distance.

In the forest and on the mountains, trees stand in the shape of different figurers depending on the imagination of viewers. In the national gem, there are electric lamps shining and warming old and new villas, reminding the visitors of the snug home of White Snow and The Seven Dwarfs.

Cold weather does not freeze species in the 22,030-hectare park, about 40 kilometers from the former imperial capital of Hue in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue. Birds sing in the morning and other species celebrate the glow of dawn by their own ways.

Called “Dalat of central Vietnam,” Bach Ma has been recognized as one of the biodiversity marvels of Indochina and a biological corridor home to species from both the north and south of the country.

Documents say scientists set foot in Bach Ma in the 1920s before a French engineer came to develop the world of great beauty into a resort for the colonial administrators in Hue in the 1930s. Nearly 140 villas, a market, post office and a hospital were built, and then came a road to link the resort to the current National Highway 1A.

The retreat soon became popular among French people seeking to escape the sweltering heat in the central region. The name Bach Ma was born from the white clouds constantly capping the reserve’s summit at 1,450 meters above sea level and forming a horse-like shape according to imagination.

On the peak, visitors can get a panoramic view of the mountains and the sea on clear days but have no chance of this on foggy days. But nothing prevents them from strolling to Tri Sao, Ngu Ho (five lakes) and Do Quyen waterfalls, and other attractions around Bach Ma.

Bach Ma National Park was created in 1991 to preserve the middle of the only remaining corridor of forest connecting the Eastern Sea and the Lao border. People can travel there by car either from Danang or Hue, and a two-kilometer-long road from the National Highway section in Phu Loc District leads visitors to the park’s ecotourism center, where they should stop to buy tickets and ask for information.