Hoa Binh Lake, a place mentioned as Ha Long Bay in the mountains, the lake consists of 47 large and small islands, including 11 limestone islands with an area of 116 hectares and 36 mountainous islands with an area of 157.5 hectares. With many attractive tourist attractions such as Bo Temple, Thac Bo cave, Ngoi Hoa bay, Hoa Tien cave, Coconut Island, Coi Xay Gio island, etc. Not only that, Hoa Binh Lake (former Da river) is also remembered by tourists from all over the world because it has a specialty branded Song Da Fish.

Local people's fish rafts on Hoa Binh Lake

Standing from above, looking down, Hoa Binh hydroelectric lake bed has small dots spreading more and more. Those are the fishing rafts of the residents here. After each year, the number of fish rafts keeps expanding. People have also boldly switched to raising specialty fish such as Chien, Lang, etc. which are more valuable.

Common types of fish on the Da River are easy to find, easy to catch, just need to be dried and stored for the whole year. When cooking, it is also very attractive to fry fish with pig’s fat, or marinated fishes with spices as gifts for relatives are also precious. If you have a chance, you can go to  restaurants in the city or the area on the lake where you can enjoy attractive processed fish dishes, which are grilled, steamed, and fish dishes, cooked with sour bamboo shoots, steamed fish with beer, etc. Steamed fishes’s heart and livers with native forest vegetables, grilled fish with Doi seeds (a local seed to cook with chicken or fish), lemon leaves, wormwood leaves, fig leaves are both sweet and fleshy.

Da river has many kinds of precious fish with high nutritional value, which are specialties enjoyed by many tourists which have been making the appeal of the Da River fish brand. Taking advantage of the potential of Hoa Binh Lake area, the Hoa Binh Province is implementing a number of solutions to develop and protect sustainable aquatic resources, to support people, organizations and individuals to develop fisheries, in which: building branded products of some typical Da river fish species associated with tourism development, creating conditions to improve the lives of people in Hoa Binh lake area in particular and socio-economic development of the province in general.

                           Grilled fishes of Da river