Qualla: Phước Bình National Park

Phước Bình National Park: Introduction

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sv00, Public domain. Somewhere inside this park, under a canopy of montane evergreen forest, is a place called Pi Nang Tac's stone trap. In 1965, more than 100 soldiers died there in a single ambush. The Raglay guerrilla leader Pi Nang Tac built the trap himself — boulders and terrain weaponized against an advancing force. The forest grew back over the killing ground, as forests do. Today you can hike past it, or camp near streams that feed the largest river in one of Vietnam's most arid provinces. The war's wounds and the land's extraordinary vitality occupy the same ground, as they do across much of this country.

Image: Sv00 | Public domain

Phước Bình National Park: The Hinge of Three Regions

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sv00, Public domain. Phước Bình National Park sits at a geographic crossroads that makes it ecologically unusual. It lies on the eastern slopes of the Đà Lạt plateau, in the transition zone where the Central Highlands, the south-central coast, and the southeast converge. To the west, peaks climb to 2...

Image: Sv00 | Public domain

Phước Bình National Park: A Catalog of the Rare

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sv00, Public domain. The park holds over 1,225 plant species and 327 animal species, many of them on the IUCN Red List. Some of its flagship animals are almost impossible to find anywhere else. The giant muntjac — a large barking deer known only from the Annamite mountain range — moves through here. ...

Image: Sv00 | Public domain

Phước Bình National Park: The People at the Edge

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sv00, Public domain. Six villages with about 4,438 people live in the park's buffer zone. The Raglay minority group makes up approximately 74 percent of that population; the Churu and Kinh account for the rest. For generations, the Raglay and Churu have practiced shifting cultivation, harvested fores...

Image: Sv00 | Public domain

Phước Bình National Park: Into the Forest

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sv00, Public domain. Ecotourism is slowly developing in Phước Bình. Visitors can hike through the park's varied terrain, raft the streams, swim in waterholes, and camp under a sky that, far from any city, shows stars in numbers that coastal Vietnam rarely sees. The park lies 62 kilometers northwest o...

Image: Sv00 | Public domain