In the middle of the election day for National Assembly deputies of the 16th term and People's Council deputies at all levels for the 2026 - 2031 term, when many residential areas in Lang Son were bustling with flags and flowers and streams of people going to vote early, in Lan Dat hamlet, Lan Chau village, Huu Lien commune, the ballot had to go a very different journey.
Only about 5km from the commune center, but behind that rocky mountain range is a poor village almost completely isolated from the outside.
No roads, no grid electricity, no school points, no phone signal. And also in that remote place, poor voters still do not stand outside the great festival of the country.
Talking to reporters, Mr. Nguyen Quang Hoa, Chairman of Huu Lien Commune People's Committee, said that this year's election takes place right on Sunday, which is also the occasion when Lan Chau people often go to the market.
The commune has taken advantage of this time to combine mobilizing people to vote, and at the same time arranged additional ballot boxes to support voters in Lan Dat hamlet to exercise their rights and obligations as citizens.
According to Mr. Hoa, Huu Lien commune has 16 polling stations with 6,121 voters, and Lan Dat hamlet alone has 44 voters.
To ensure citizens' rights, the election team has assigned people to bring auxiliary ballot boxes to climb rocky mountains into Lan Dat. By 3 pm this afternoon, the whole commune had reached 100% of voters going to vote," Mr. Hoa said.
To enter the village, you must first cross the Dong Lam prairie. In the dry season, the path appears faint in the middle of the grass and streaks of water.
But in the rainy season, the water rises to whiten the fields, the road almost disappears, people have to build bamboo rafts to cross nearly 2km to reach the other bank.
After that section, they continued to climb Dat Pass, about 2km long, full of sharp, jagged cat ear rocks. That is the only trail leading to the small hamlet nestled behind the mountain.
According to Mr. Trieu Sinh Hien, Secretary of the Party Cell, Head of Lan Chau village, Lan Dat hamlet currently has 17 households with nearly 70 people, 100% of which are poor households.
Lack of traffic is the biggest bottleneck, causing people's lives to improve slowly and the opportunity to escape poverty to be narrowed.
The biggest shortage of Lan Dat is still roads. Without roads, goods produced are difficult to bring out, living costs increase, and people find it very difficult to develop the economy. The people's biggest hope at this time is to have a road to travel and trade more conveniently, gradually escaping poverty sustainably," Mr. Hien said.
The village has no proper roads, no national grid electricity, no school points, no phone signal. Behind the cat ear mountain ranges, Lan Dat is almost a private, quiet and isolated world.
This spring, the small hamlet welcomed the first Tet with solar power and clean water after a field trip and the drastic involvement of the leaders of Lang Son Provincial People's Committee.
That is a rare happy sign amidst countless deprivations surrounding the poor village behind the mountains.
The election day has passed, Lan Dat still has heavy hardships.
But in the journey of bringing the ballot to the small village behind the rocky mountains, what people see is not only hardship, but also the persistence of poor voters who have never allowed themselves to stand outside the festival of the country.
According to data from the Department of Home Affairs (Standing Agency of the Provincial Election Commission), as of 3 pm on March 15, the percentage of voters in the whole province participating in voting compared to voters in the list reached 97.68%.
