Once upon a time in Bac Kan province…
Every year, the people held the Buddhist festival (called Prizeless). Citizens from all over gathered. One day, an old leper attended the festival, her clothes were ragged, her body smelly, which annoyed everyone. The miserable woman knocked on every door in the village to beg. However, they refused to help her for fear of catching leprosy. Fortunately, there was a good widow living with her son. The widow invited the old woman to have dinner and stay the night.
At midnight, all of a sudden, the widow and her son were awakened by a noise. They opened the kitchen door, the leper was gone, they only saw a dragon. They could not go back to sleep.
The next morning, the old woman said, “I am not a man. I am a dragon. I am a beggar dressed up to observe the charity of the people. Everyone turned me away, except your son and you. They had brought the wolf into the fold so Buddha punished them by creating a flood. She said to them, “When the water source begins to flow here, you must quickly climb the mountain. The beggar woman gave the widow a grain of paddy and a handful of ashes and asked her to scatter them around her house in case of a flood. These were two precautions to save their lives. After the old woman disappeared.
During the next day, while people were jostling for the Buddhist festival in the middle of the village, suddenly, water started to flow from everywhere. They climbed onto the roofs and trees. But the water level rose. The valley was flooded in a few minutes. Many people died. The widow and her son ran to the mountain and threw the two bales of paddy into the water. Magically, the two bales became a big boat. Despite the heavy rain, the widow’s family boarded the boat. Only the widow and her child remained, and they survived thanks to the dugout canoe born from the paddy ball and their house surrounded by ashes, which today is the island of Ba Goa (Widow’s Island).
On the mountain, they had built a small tent. Later, this place became a populated village, called Five Zones. The valley turned into three large lakes, so it is called Ba Be. The water flows three lakes.
>>> Ba Be lake
