The Moc Chau plateau flowers in rotation rather than all at once, and each bloom lasts only two or three weeks. This is what comes out when, where to find it, and how to plan a trip around a date that moves every year.
The Moc Chau flower season is not one season. This plateau in Vietnam's northwest, about 180km (110 miles) from Hanoi, cycles through several distinct blooms across the year, and each one holds for perhaps two or three weeks before it goes. That means a trip planned for the wrong fortnight arrives to bare branches or fields that were cut last week. Knowing which flower opens when, and roughly where on the plateau to find it, is most of the work of planning this trip.
Why the plateau flowers at all
Moc Chau sits at roughly 1,050m (3,450ft), where average temperatures hover around 18-20C (64-68F) rather than the delta's heat. That cool, temperate climate suits stone fruit and cool-weather crops that would fail lower down, so the plateau is planted with plum and apricot orchards, canola, tea and seasonal flower plots. The blooms you come to photograph are almost all agriculture, not landscaping, which shapes how you should behave around them.
White plum and apricot blossom, the famous one
Late January to mid-February, and the reason most people have heard of this place. Whole valleys of plum and apricot trees go white at once, dense enough that from the road above it reads as snow on the hillsides. Na Ka plum valley is the best known, a bowl of orchards you walk down into, with the trees around Ba Phach village and the Mu Nau valley less crowded. The timing usually falls close to Tet, the Lunar New Year, which makes the plateau festive and packed in equal measure.
Canola and white mustard, November into December
From around November to early December the slopes near Ba Phach and Ban Ang fill with white canola and mustard flowers, planted in blocks that follow the shape of the hills. This is the gentler alternative to the blossom weeks: the scale is just as satisfying, the air in late autumn is drier and clearer, and you are not fighting the New Year holiday for a room. For a first visit, it is the window to aim at.
Wild sunflower along the roadsides
October and November, peaking in November. This is a tall yellow daisy that grows untended along Highway 6 and the lanes into the villages, so there is nothing to pay and nowhere to queue. You simply drive and it is there, banked up along the verges. It pairs neatly with the canola fields, which means a November trip can catch two blooms at once. It is also the most forgiving bloom to plan around, because it holds for several weeks rather than a fortnight.
Bauhinia and wild peach, late winter into spring
Between roughly January and March, wild peach and bauhinia flower in scattered patches rather than sweeping fields, pink and white against bare hillsides. Nobody plans a trip around them, but if you are here in early spring after the plum blossom has dropped, they keep the plateau from looking empty and the roads are close to deserted. Bauhinia, the white and pink orchid tree, is something of an emblem across northwest Vietnam, and you will see it named on menus and road signs throughout the region.
The tea hills, the constant
Not a flower, but the reason the plateau photographs well in months when nothing is blooming. The tea terraces are green all year and at their most intense through the rains, roughly April to September, when they are also at their emptiest. Entry to the tea areas is a token amount, an estimated 10,000-20,000d, and the sculpted heart-shaped hill is the one everybody photographs.
Planning around the Moc Chau flower season
- Bloom windows shift by one or two weeks each year with the winter, so check close to your departure date
- Give yourself two nights minimum, so a fogged-in morning does not cost you the whole trip
- Book accommodation several weeks ahead for the blossom weeks and for any autumn weekend
- Travel midweek if your dates allow it, which changes the crowds more than the month does
- Carry cash in small notes for orchard entry fees, parking and roadside stalls
- Arrange a motorbike or a car with a driver, because the valleys are far apart and there is no bus between them
Almost every orchard and flower plot here belongs to a family who farms it for a living, and the entry fee is a courtesy as much as a charge. Walk the paths between the rows rather than through them, do not bend a branch to get it into frame, and ask before you pick fruit. Grabbing a blossom-heavy branch is how trees get damaged and how fields end up closed to visitors.
Getting the light right
The plateau is at its best between about 6am and 8am, when mist is still lying in the folds of the hills and the light is low enough to give the rows some shape. That is also before the tour vans arrive. Late afternoon works too, particularly for wide views across the tea terraces. Midday is flat, harsh and busy, and it is the hour to spend eating lunch or visiting a cave instead.
What to plan around the flowers
- Dai Yem waterfall, about 100m tall and strongest between April and September, with a glass walkway alongside it
- Ban Ang pine forest and its lake, an easy walk and the local picnic ground
- A dairy farm, which is a genuine oddity in Vietnam and a hit with children
- Pa Phach, a Hmong village on the slope above town where households grow flowers among the houses
- A highland market if your dates land on one, which is the least staged hour on the plateau