Location · Near Hanoi
Ba Vi
French ruins the forest took back, ninety minutes from the Old Quarter.
French ruins the forest took back, ninety minutes from the Old Quarter.
Ninety minutes west of Hanoi there is a mountain with a national park on it, and inside the park the stone bones of a hill station the French abandoned in the nineteen forties. The forest has had eighty years to grow over it, and that is the whole appeal.
Arches without roofs. A chapel with ferns growing out of the walls. Villa foundations under a metre of leaf litter. Above six hundred metres the cloud comes into the trees most mornings and stays, and the light goes soft, green and directionless in a way that looks like nothing else within two hours of Hanoi.
Now the honest part, because it decides whether this place is for you. Ba Vi is dark. It is closed-canopy forest on a damp mountain, and the photographs that come out of it are green, low-key and moody. Nobody has ever got a bright, sunny, blue-sky set from here, and we would not promise one. Couples who want light and air are better served by Tam Dao, which costs the same, or by the flower farms in Da Lat.
It is also a working national park, not a wedding venue. There are steps, there is mud, and in the wet months there are leeches. Bring shoes you can walk in and let us carry the dress.
Hair and make-up in Hanoi before dawn, on the road by half past five to be in the park while the mist is still in the trees, then the ruins and the forest paths through the morning. Most couples are finished by early afternoon and back in Hanoi for dinner. No overnight stay is needed, which is part of why this one costs less than the mountain sessions further out.
A Ba Vi session is USD 1,180 for six hours, the same price as Tam Dao and Dai Lai, and the drive from Hanoi is included. The park charges a small entry fee per person, which we arrange with the rest.
USD 1,180 for six hours, the same as Tam Dao and Dai Lai. That includes the drive from Hanoi, hair and make-up, two gowns and one suit, 300 to 400 original files and 40 fully retouched photographs. The national park charges a small entry fee per person, which we arrange.
About sixty kilometres and an hour and a half to two hours by road, depending on the traffic getting out of the city. It is a day trip: we leave before dawn and are back in Hanoi by evening, with no overnight stay needed.
A national park on a mountain, and the ruins the French left on it in the nineteen thirties: stone arches, a roofless chapel and villa walls that the forest has taken back. Above about six hundred metres there is cloud in the trees most mornings. It is green, wet and quiet.
It is dark, and we will not pretend otherwise. This is deep forest and the pictures from here are green, moody and low-key rather than bright and sunny. If you want light, airy photographs, Tam Dao or the flower farms in Da Lat will serve you better. If you want something that looks like a story, this is the place.
October to April. The mist sits in the trees in the cool months and that is when the ruins look best. May to September is the wet season, the paths are slippery and the leeches are real; we still shoot it, but with proper shoes and a short walk.