#3: [20-Aug-06]

#2: [21-Aug-05]

#1: [07-Feb-04] (incomplete)

06-May-2025 --

Viet Hung, Quang Ninh

I looked up this confluence quite a while ago since I first knew about the Degree Confluence Project because this is the town where I came from, my father’s old office and the hospital where I was born are within 3 km radius of this point. However, two groups of Vietnamese DCP pioneers have already visited the point and it required a boat to get out there as land does not reach within 100m of the quest. The point lies on an estuary. That dissuaded me from giving it a go.

Then my father suddenly passed away and was buried in a cemetery up on a hill nearby. I looked at the satellite map one day and realised that a huge area near the confluence has been reclaimed. The news said that the local government just built an industrial park with a new factory manufacturing Skoda car is being constructed. The confluence is now lying within 100m from the supposedly new shore.

We decided to pay it a visit after visiting my father at Ha Khau Cemetery. It’s only now, after all those years that I realise why the suburb is called ‘’Hà Khẩu” (literally River Mouth) since it is very hilly here and the sea is nowhere to be seen from the road every time my father took me to work during childhood! The place is however located in the next-door suburb (or "ward" as they called here) named Viet Hung (well not exactly true because the point is in the water between Ha Khau and Viet Hung). To reach the point we had to go into the Viet Hung Industrial Park which the map on the Taxi app (Xanh SM) still does not have the relatively new area where I need to go. I had to select the destination on the water!

The taxi driver drove us into the park. We went pass several textile factories; the massive Skoda factory was just officially opened a month before. Fortunately, the driver did not question anything about why I would go to see the Sewage Treatment Plant at the very end of the industrial area. He probably thought I was an inspector who unexpectedly showed up to conduct an audit! Miley waited in the taxi while I walked the last few hundred steps toward the point. The closest I could get was 80m from the confluence. It was 12:30 PM, the tide was low, and all you could see was mud and thousands of timber racks where they hang the oysters. I can technically walk to the point as it was not underwater, but even if I had a pair of gumboots, I wouldn’t risk being stuck in the smelly mud. The Viet Hung Sewage Treatment Plant’s ponds are surprisingly not pungent or foul-smelling at all. I am still a tiny bit worried about all the oyster farms in this area. If these massive factories go in action, can they guarantee the quality of the treated sewer that will eventually ‘’feed’’ these succulent oysters!?

I went home with another successful confluence but quietly felt heavy and nostalgic for my hometown. The economic development was rapid on a very large scale, which lifted numerous local people out of poverty, but the cost on the environment is also significant. Let’s hope that one day my children can still come here to see the confluence between the muddy estuary and the last few mangrove bushes, not high-rise apartment buildings.

In an estuary, about 1 km from land.