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Published: January 22nd 2013
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The aroma of spicy breakfast floats through our window. It is 7am and we are leaving Hanoi today. Down on the street we are served steaming Pho sitting on our little plastic chairs. Pho seems to be the national dish served out of every shop front and street corner. It is boiled noodles with meat, spices and a variety of salad vegetables. Very yummy!
We are travelling west today, up The Black River Valley, which winds its way up through the mountains to the Laos border. It sounds all very exotic and as matter of fact it is.
The bus takes 12 hours but being the flash packers we are we have hired a car and driver for 2 days. Thai is the driver’s name who is supposed to speak beautiful English which may be so but it is not comprehensible.
The countryside is shrouded in fog. I realise it is not just smoke haze covering Hanoi but fog rolling down from the mountains. The temperature is very pleasant jeans and shirts weather.
Fields of terraced country ready for rice to be sown surrounds us. The rice is growing in tiny glasshouses in the field and is
individually planted out by hand when big enough. A very labour intensive exercise indeed.
Banana trees cling to the sides of the red soiled mountains. With corn, chilli’s, pepper, ginger, oranges and many other fruits and vegetables farmed in the valleys.
Limestone karsts jut out of the lush countryside adding to the beauty of the landscape but just when you thought it couldn’t get any better the next valley is full of black stalked sugar cane with huge rain forested mountains covered in fog as a backdrop.
Stopping for Vietnamese coffee, which is like a sweet expresso, and then some corn on the cob at a small market on the side of the mountain adds to the local flavour of the trip.
The traffic has been stopped for road works, Thai mentions boom! So I guess this means explosives. Waiting for an hour overlooking the mountains is hard to bear. I write some blog and of course a lady shows up on a motorbike selling food. The bread rolls with coconut inside were delicious.
The further we travel the better it gets. Rice paddies full of ploughs drawn by water buffalo, woman clad in intricate
local garb, babbling streams rushing over rocks full of smiling children with bamboo bridges swinging overhead and the mountains just keep rising in front of us. Motor bikes did I mention motor bikes Vietnam must have more bikes than people. The travelling on the road has to be seen to believe unless you are a bus and drive straight up the middle flat out beeping your horn.
We arrive Son La 9hours, 301 kilometres after leaving Hanoi. Book into The Hanoi Hotel, I kid you not, with a view out the balcony to die for.
What a day, I am absolutely exhausted by this amazing display of man and nature. I will close my eyes and fall asleep with a contented smile on my face and spare Dong in my pocket.
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