trip to black dzao and lu villages

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While taking the train back to Hanoi I decided to go back to Sapa and visit some of the minority villages in the "area". After spending a few days in Hanoi getting caught up with my photos ... i took the night train back to Sapa. I ran into Sa who I met earlier and knowing that she acted as a guide I asked her if she would be my guide on a 3 day trip to some of the villages surrounding Sapa. Sa knew someone who rented motobikes and for $8 a day I rented a Russian 2 stroke bike with two helmets. This bike would get me to places that a Honda "scooter" couldn't. get to. Though after renting the bike I discovered that the breaks didn't work to well. We took off anyway and headed up over a "mountain pass" and then started a long winding decent (on a good paved road) towards our first destination -Tam Duong. My goal of the trip was to make it to Ban lu - a lu village and also to a Black Dzao village. While in Tam Duong I realized that Sa's English wasn't as good as i thought but nevertheless it was good enough, much better than my Vietnamese plus she spoke H'mong her native language.




click here for more photos from around Tam Duang

click here for more Black Dzao photos


click here for more photos from Ta Phin


click here for more Lu photos

In Tam Duong, Sa asked a few people how to get to Ban Lu and she told me it was too far away. I didn't want to accept it and so we took off down a dirt road, over a narrow bamboo bridge (i wasn't sure if I was going to make it over the bridge before falling through). 'We drove down a dirt road to a small village where we met some Lu women (they are the ones with "black teeth"). We drove on down a smaller dirt trail to another small lu village. We turned around and started to head back and on the way we found another small community to stop at. When we go back to Tam Duong we headed towards Lai Chau where we stayed the night. The next day we set off to visit a Black Dzao village. We found one, after which we started to head back to Tam Duong stopping to visit with a few black dzao along the way. As any of you who have driven in Vietnam know you have to be aware at all times, whether it is a bus or truck coming head on or someone on a motobike pulling out in front of you from a side street. I have seen many accidents, the worst being a truck that was going too fast to make a tight curve (see photos). Anyway Sa and I made it back to Tam Duong in one piece and spent the night.

The next day we visited the local market, crossed the river and took another drive down a dirt road/trail to find some more Lu villages which we did. Unfortunately because of the language barriers I don't know the names of the "villages" that I visited and I haven't been able to find a map that has them listed. This short Motorcycle trip will be the highlight of my visit to Vietnam. Having a means of transportation gives you freedom to really travel and explore. The scenery was stunning, the people kind and the weather great. In hind sight it would have been great if I could have spent a lot more time visiting the villages, but hey, hind sight is 20/20.

Just a quick update since I wrote this. I am currently in Hoi An, Vietnam where my technical problems continue. On the brighter side of things, with the help of my friends Kathy Fabregas, Christine Leung and Jon Wright my website should be up and running in a week or so (it will have only taken me something like 4 years to get it going!). Hope all is well - David

F O T O S B Y D AV I D C O M

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Photos

too fast
a truck driver was going too fast to handle a hairpin curve and he paid for it with his life

near sapa
me and some of sa's family

Comments

[holly]

great job
hi glad to hear odf all tour trips around. Sounds like you are doing and seeing alot. doing a great job on story and love the pictures. Sounds like you are doing alot of site seeing great job. loved the transportation you had great way of getting around hope you have some more senic ones