Eleven stories of Mế, Pác Bó and the highland people — condensed for travellers.
In highland speech, “Mế” means Mother. Four sons built this farmstay on 10,000m² of stone terraces and trees as a gift for the mother who raised them alone — and it grew into a home for every traveller. The family has twice welcomed General Secretary Tô Lâm, an honour that anchors Mế’s mission: keep Tày and Nùng culture alive through hospitality.
Cao Bằng’s borderlands cradle the culture of the Tày and Nùng: indigo-dyed dress, stilt houses under yin-yang tiles, and the UNESCO-listed Then ritual sung to the đàn tính gourd lute. Evenings at Mế bring that heritage to the fireside — no stage, just voices, strings and the stream.
Mế keeps no glass cases. Looms, stone mills, rattan baskets and clay jars all remain in daily use, exactly where highland life placed them. Four crafts — indigo dyeing, bản paper, incense and rattan weaving — are being revived on site as hands-on corners of this living museum.
On 28 January 1941 — after 30 years abroad — Nguyễn Ái Quốc crossed border marker 108 and made Cốc Bó cave his base, naming the stream Lenin and the peak Karl Marx. He translated Party history at a stone table, lived on “corn porridge and bamboo shoots”, and wrote: “Sáng ra bờ suối, tối vào hang…” — the revolutionary life, he said, was truly grand.
From the Nhà Rồng wharf in 1911, through France, England, America, the Soviet Union and China, to the founding of the Party in 1930 — a thirty-year search ended on the second day of Tết 1941, when a quiet man stepped across marker 108 into Cao Bằng, chosen for its strong movement, sheltering mountains and faithful people.
In a bamboo hut by the Khuổi Nặm stream, from 10–19 May 1941, the Party’s Eighth Plenum placed national liberation first and founded the Việt Minh front on 19 May. From that tiny hut in the forest came the road to the August Revolution of 1945.
On 1 August 1941, the first issue of Việt Nam Độc Lập appeared from the Khuổi Nặm hut — printed with stone slabs, a hand roller and carved plates: two pages, three issues a month, 300–400 copies each, written and edited by Nguyễn Ái Quốc himself. A small paper that carried a large fire.
To Pác Bó’s villagers he was simply Ông Ké — the kind old man in indigo who spoke their language, ate corn porridge with bamboo shoots, waded the stream for snails, taught letters and remembered every promise — including a silver bracelet for a small child, delivered two years late but never forgotten. In spring 1961 he returned, and the whole village lined the road.
Nông Văn Dền — Kim Đồng — of Nà Mạ village led the first Young Pioneers, carrying messages and guarding meetings for the revolution. He fell in 1943, aged fourteen, warning cadres of an ambush. His memorial, beside Mế, is a place every Vietnamese school child knows.
Cao Bằng is a UNESCO Global Geopark: Bản Giốc — one of the world’s great border waterfalls, Ngườm Ngao’s 2,144m of caverns, Thang Hen lake and the Mã Phục pass. Mế designs day routes to all of them — see our tour design service.
Phúc Sen village has forged blades since the 11th century — a National Intangible Heritage craft with 160 forges still burning. Phia Thắp rolls incense from forest-leaf glue; Dìa Trên screens bản paper from mạy sla bark; and in every Nùng home, the indigo vat is tended like a living thing. Four of these crafts are being revived at Mế.
Stay a night where these stories happened — the full Vietnamese library holds even more.
