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Published: March 13th 2007
Dusk is falling in the mountains. It's 5pm. The sky turns a dusty rose while the sun looms as a bright orange ball just above the peaks. Sows trot along in the ditch with piglets running closely behind. Children are riding water buffalo or towing horses home from pasture. Women trudge up the hills with woven bamboo baskets full of sticks for firewood. They are all wearing traditional clothes: leg warmers around their calves, embroidered pleated skirts, cuffed shirts and varying brightly coloured head scarves. They keep their time-honored ways of dress, farming, and husbandry seemingly unaffected by satellite TV and Coca-Cola campaigns.
Uphill patches of old crops are set alight and a yellow rim of fire consumes the dry rice stocks leaving behind squares of black soot on the mountain. And then we realize, we are no where close to home and this is
better than awesome. We've been on the road for a week now. Climbing up mountain sides, cruising through valleys of lush green rice fields, and passing villages of wooden stilt homes of hilltribe people, truly a motor bikers dream voyage.
Dinner with the Family
We left Hanoi with gray skies and climbed our
Short Side Trip Around Dien Bien
Scenery on a ride through some village's outside of Dien Bienfirst mountain up into the fog in the last hour. Down the hillside we could see the town of Mai Chau where we would be staying for the night. The town doesn't have much in the way of restaurants but luckily we were invited for dinner with family that owned the hotel. Before we were seated Father headed to the cabinet bringing out shot glasses and rice wine. Four shots later I felt like I was about to hurl (I'm not much of a drinker to begin with and this is nasty, potent stuff) so I slyly moved my glass to the other side of the table out of Fathers reach for a refill. However their daughter caught on, laughed at me and proceed to pour me another shot (but only half full) to share with her. Jarrod endured a shot or two more feeling the burn in his stomach and then moved his glass aside as well much to the dismay of Father. Dinner was mostly tasty but dishes that I would never know to order at a restaurant. It consisted of flavored rice, sesame beef, mint pork and unrecognizable brown stuff textured like dry cookie dough (but tasted
NOTHING like cookie dough, it wasn't good at all really.)
Time to Abort Adventure?
Heading out of Mai Chau the road climbed into the clouds. We only made it about 15 minutes before we stopped to put on our plastic rain pants. In Hanoi we bought the longest rain pants we could find, yet they only reached mid-shin. The exposed skin stung in the wind and changed from white to pink to red. Out in front driving the motor bike, Jarrod's hands froze stiff and had icicles of frozen fog attached to his knuckle hair. About 30km away from Mai Chau we stopped for pho (hot noodle soup) at a lonely wooden shop on the side of the road. Jarrod was at his pain threshold and I couldn't tell if the water dripping down his face was from the rain or tears. We couldn't continue ill prepared for the wet and cold. We had a tough decision to make and it was only our second day on the road. Do we abort the motorbike adventure? Or continue on and risk frost bitten fingers and hypothermia?
Communicating to our pho lady in exaggerated travellers sign language we asked if
Rice Fields
Amazing terracing all done by hand and farmed the same way she had any gloves for sale. She understood showing us a childs mitten and us nodding in agreement. She jumped on her motorbike and minutes later returned with two pairs of black pleather gloves lined with fuzz.
Ideal! We're back in business! Back on the road we crested the mountain just two minutes later and started heading downhill where the clouds parted and the air became noticeably warmer. Thank God. The remainder of the day the road stayed at lower elevations, below the clouds, and we drove through stunning scenery of terraced rice fields, mountains of red soil cleared for farming and our first authentic hilltribe people. Walking along the road a group of ladies and children were carrying woven shoulder bags. They wore long black wrap-around skirts with green sashes and purple velour shirts, looking
very elegant indeed.
Happy Birthday!
Again the day started off misty but cleared to blue sky by early afternoon revealing the homes perched in obscure places on the mountainsides. We passed countless villages and hilltribe people plowing the land with water buffalo or oxen. The women were collecting firewood, making bundles which hung over bamboo poles resting on their shoulders.
Midmorning
Mai Chau
The sunny dry valley on the other side of the cold wet mountain. we stopped for a break and ran into our first foreigner, Rob from Holland, who was slowly sipping a strong cup of joe. We teamed up with Rob, who was doing the same journey as us, and have been riding with him ever since.
In the late afternoon we stopped again for a drink in a small dusty village. We were immediately approached by a middle aged man tugging at our arm to follow him. Going with the flow, we were lead to his friends birthday party. In a little hall we took a seat on mini plastic stools, placed in front of us were espresso sized cups of Vietnamese tea, biscuits and nuts. Seven year old kids took on a microphone (introductions to karaoke) and sang songs of birthday wishes. It was time for us to leave as we still had a ways to go, but a lady forcefully pushed us back into our seats. There was no way we were leaving without having dinner and rice wine shots with the birthday boy! How could we even imagine leaving yet?!? We agreed to the rice wine, but not dinner (who knows when it would be ready) and gave
Local Huts and Rice Fields
This is typical of the entire country side. Dotted with villages and rice fields. customary birthday money - then made our exit.
Need Gas... How 'Bout Some Hooka?
Each day the scenery slightly changes, but consistently stays breathtaking. I suggested filling up with gas before leaving town but was denied. By mid-afternoon we were only passing through small villages of no more than ten stilt homes and our fuel light started flashing. We pulled over to what appeared to be a motor bike repair shop. They didn't have gas but since country folk are so helpful a young man left and returned moments later with a 2L plastic bottle filled to the brim with fuel.
The shop men invited Jarrod and Rob over for a smoke on their bamboo hooka pipe, a common
male bonding event in rural Vietnam. I wasn't even offered to partake. Loose tobacco is stuffed into the pipe but I'm skeptical it's not laced with something to give you an extra little hit. The pipes are available in every restaurant as an after meal smoke and cost nothing for the customers. It seems a hooka puff is equivalent to a breath freshening mint or a toothpick at home!
Detour to Chee-na
Day Six on the bike and
Carol's New Friend's
Cat's keeping warm in the kitchen as we ate breakfast just outside of Son La the map showed two paths we could take to the next town, Tam Duong. Of course, we choose to take the longer loop passing through a China boarder town. We found the turn off from the highway, only we had to cross over a rickety bridge we first thought unsafe. While we walked over inspecting broken boards, patchwork of mismatched planks and missing guard rails some Vietnamese passed by on scooters looking at us rather oddly. Apparently the bridge
is passable! Rob drove (he's experienced, been riding motorbikes for 20 years), Jarrod followed and I walked.
Safety First! A group of rambunctious boys met us on the other side of the bridge. They were like monkey's with no fear; climbing on the support wires and hanging precariously off of the edge. They were keen to be in photos and giggled uncontrollably when they looked back at each photo. This was definitely not their first experience with digital cameras.
The gravel road wound around the mountain side crawling steadily upwards. Just one mountain range away from the highway and the scenery changed again to treed mountains and steep gorges - the view is impossible to fully capture on camera.
15km in Jarrod is nervous about the gas level
(again!) so we stop in a village to refuel and confirm directions. There are three options: 1) the road we've just come from 2) "Chee-na" 3km away or 3) Pa Nam Cum, the village we intended to pass through. However, option 3 seemed to be a big no-no with the locals. After picture drawing in the dirt and pulling out local maps the best we could figure was that the road was washed out to Pa Nam Cum and thus, we had no choice but to return the way we came. It was back through a stream and over the rickety bridge once more.
Sapa
We arrived in the main tourist hub of the north, Sapa, in the early afternoon. In our first hour in Sapa we saw more tourists than we had seen over the entire six previous days. The town is quaint with plenty of hilltribe men and women running errands. The local market is filled with fresh produce, dried roots and spices, garden seeds and hoes.
Sapa is nice, but the magnificent mountains are calling us to explore further. So further we'll go...
*Check out
Road Under Construction
The road between Son La and Dien Bien Phu was not a pretty site. all 43 of the photos!
Next Stop: Somewhere in Northern Vietnam
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Tahna
non-member comment
What a great trip you guys are on - I'm thoroughly enjoying the narration. Lots of fun experiences!