Northern Vietnam

Allgemein, Northern Vietnam, Wanderlust

Backpacking Northern Vietnam IV – Three day motorbike tour to Meo Vac

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29.01.2017 – 30.01.2017

So here is the fourth part of our travel documentary from Northern Vietnam at the beginning of this year (2017). In the last blog entry we were still discovering Bac Ha and the trekking routes around that small village with our local guide. We stayed one more night in “downtown” Bac Ha in the Ngan Nga hotel to discover the village a little more.

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The roadtrip, 31.01.2017 – 02.02.2017

A map of the route from Bac Ha to Ha Giang.

Since we were still travelling during the Vietnamese New Year, we had to be a little inventive to get all the way from Bac Ha further up north to Ha Giang. Again, Mr. Dong proved to be a very helpful contact who organized a private shuttle bus with driver in less than 24 hours before the trip. Drawing a linear line from one city to the other, the distance might be less than 80km. In this part of the world these units mean little though. First of all, there is no straight route connecting the one place with the other. There are very few streets passing through the mountains of Northern Vietnam, and even fewer that are accessible with anything else than a heavy-duty motorbike. Most of the streets are mere dirt paths with potholes the size of small swimming pools and our vehicle had to drive at under 30km/h average in order not to break down or get stuck in the muddy mess the spring rains caused. Needless to say there are no highways here, so it took us the better half of a day to make it up to Ha Giang. Once there, we took a room in the Cao Nguyen hotel and asked the receptionist to help us apply for a travel permit into the frontier regions of the north.

The travel permit officially allowing us to enter the frontier regions bordering Southern China.

Since it was only allowed fairly recently for foreigners to access the mountains bordering the People’s Republic of China we were thrilled to have the opportunity to visit. When it was time to rent a scooter for the roadtrip, the girl at the reception of our hotel was very helpful again, renting us her uncle’s motorbike for around 8€ per day. She made sure it had a comfortable seat that was large enough to fit two people plus backpack. Next, we went to a mobile phone store and tried to buy a SIM card with mobile data so we could access online maps during the trip. Unfortunately, they were sold out (or that is what we thought we understood the sales person said) and in the end the receptionist provided us with a mobile phone card. Right in front of our hotel a street market wound its way a kilometer up the road and we spent the evening before our trip buying fruit for the tour and discovering Ha Giang a little more. Very early the next morning we left most of our luggage with the hotel and only took one backpack with clothes for three days with us. Since we did not pay a deposit for the scooter, I guess this also served as a form of security for our return.

Photo documentary of our roadtrip from Ha Giang to Tam Son, over Yen Minh and Dong Van all the way up to Meo Vac and back.

 

As a general travel destination during our road trip through northern Vietnam Dong Van became our main road marker and check-point if we were still on the right (high) way.
It’s almost impossible to take the wrong turn on your way to Dong Van and/or Meo Vac. There is only one dirt road winding through the vast mountains, with very few crossroads and occasional forks.
There are two mountain passes along the way, here we are standing on the viewing point on the first one called “Heaven’s Gate”, or Quan Ba in Vietnamese.
The small town of Tam Son, the first village after the Quan Ba Pass on the way from Ha Giang to Meo Vac.
A local market on a mountain road.
The people of Northern Vietnam.
The people of Northern Vietnam.
The people of Northern Vietnam.
The people of Northern Vietnam.
The people of Northern Vietnam.
No matter where we were in Northern Vietnam, virtually every restaurant served Pho with heaps of homegrown salad and juicy lime slices.
For breakfast the one of the traditional local dishes is Pho, a form of noodle soup with fresh salad, meat slices and lime juice.
The people of Northern Vietnam.
A game of throwing cans played by the men rather than the kids while placing bets with money and/or packs of cigarettes.
The people of Northern Vietnam.
The people of Northern Vietnam.
The people of Northern Vietnam.

The Vuong Palace and the past glory of the H’mong people

On the way to Dong Van we stopped by the Vuong Palace, a two-storey mansion built for the local H’mong king. In the 20th century, this old mansion was once home to an influential family headed by a powerful don. Up there in the mountains, where buildings tend to be small and practical, this structure takes a very special place in the landscape. The road winds down into the valley, so we expected to see the palace from a distance. But since it was built in a turbulent era and had to be protected from enemies, a small forest of trees was planted all around to hide it from view. Relatively speaking the place isn’t large and you would probably have overlooked it in any other context. In the mountain ranges of Ha Giang province though its quite a unique sight. Built in a Chinese courtyard style with a communal open-air space in the middle, the four “wings” on each side house more than 60 small rooms, some of which have secret passages that connect the whole structure. Some of the doorways were tiny, and even though the people who used to live here were probably smaller, I still have to wonder if they had to tuck in their heads to pass through like us.

Vua Meo looks very similar to royal residences in China during the Qing Dynasty three to four centuries ago with its stone, valuable wood, terracotta tiles and two-story structure.
Built in 1914, the palace survived 2 major wars: the French War and the American War.
Vuong Palace is also notoriously dubbed the “Opium Palace” because the whole place is filled with stone or wood engraved with poppy flowers and fruit patterns.
The Vuong family was led by Vuong Chinh Duc. He ruled from 1865-1947 in an empire stretching as far as from the province’s Dong Van Plateau to Meo Vac Town. The massive production and cross-border trade of opium back then made him the richest and most powerful man in the area. And to protect his reign, that’s when he built the Vuong Palace. Covering an area of 1,120 square meters in Sa Phin Commune, Dong Van District, the mansion was designed with Chinese architecture and interior and surrounded by 700 century-old trees to keep it hidden and protected from enemies.
For around 6€ we bought a big bag of tasty walnuts.
Since the Vuong palace was built in the middle of nowhere, we figured we needed to stack up on snacks for the road. This woman grilled flat buckwheat bread, which had a gentle nutty flavour.

With fresh snacks in our backpack we continued our roadtrip up north. The landscape became steeper still and the mountain road twisted and turned around the conical hills. Except for the occasional car we only encountered people on motor bikes or walking on foot alongside the street. I often asked myself what the people on the other bikes where doing today and what purpose they had driving or walking along this road that day. This being the only way through this region some of them might have traveled between the few larger villages, maybe from Tam Son to Yenh Min, or even farther up all the way to Dong Van to visit family. Some people obviously went grocery shopping, one couple even carrying a live chicken bound with a rope around its feet to the backseat of their motorbike. Every few hours the public mini bus would pass us by, speeding along the dirt round and announcing its arrival before every corner with a honk from its horn. That is what every one did to make sure they were not run over by oncoming traffic, so every time we made a turn – which was more often than not – we also sounded our horn. The best thing about doing this trip on a scooter rather than by public transportation was that we were free to stop whenever we felt like it. Since it was early in the year, it was still quite cold and my knees would freeze stiff when I sat too long on the bike. Even without that excuse to take a break every once in a while, it gave us the possibility to take in the landscape whenever we saw something interesting. Sometimes that would be a small stonepark long the street, or like in the pictures above a street market popped up on an intersection of the road. But most often it was simply the breathtaking views over the misty mountain ranges that made us hit the breaks and simply enjoy the nature.

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Northern Vietnam, Wanderlust

Backpacking Northern Vietnam Part II – Bac Ha and the surrounding minority villages

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January 29th, 2017

You might say we chose a less than optimal time of year to travel from China to Vietnam, because not only was the whole of China on the move, Vietnam also was amidst the New Year celebrations, which is more commonly known as TET. Since we have never been to Vietnam before and did not have any particular expectations, I have to admit we did not notice the effects of the holidays all that much. We might have been able to make more frequent use of public transportation instead of having to rely on private cars to go somewhere. But since neither of us speaks or reads Vietnamese, and the results of our online research suggested that especially the far North does not have a formally organized bus schedule yet, it might have been our vehicle of choice no matter what. That is also why we were greeted by a private driver the moment we made it over the border and entered Vietnam, which was fairly straight forward to organize: During the travel preparations we contacted one of the suggested (and tested) hotels in Bac Ha and the owner, Mr. Dong, turned out to be a very valuable contact in the Vietnamese hinterland. He confirmed that no buses would be serviced during the TET and offered to help us organize a car from the Chinese-Vietnamese border into Bac Ha. Admittedly not the cheapest way to take on the 90 minutes drive over narrow and winding country roads, but an earned luxury after the 5 hours train ride to get here. And indeed, we did not see a public bus until three days later when the holidays came to a slow end.

Water buffalos are the main investment for families in Northern Vietnam’s mountainous areas. If need be the animal is sold so that upcoming expenses can be covered more easily (i.e. for marriages, funerals…)
Note the thick jungle behind the hut? At times it was impenetrable and we were very thankful for the crude but regularly maintained dirt path.
It was the dry season during our visit in Northern Vietnam, but every morning we were greeted by deep fog and clouds nontheless.

The first night we slept a few kilometer outside of Bac Ha in a rural homestay. Virtually all hotels in the main part of town were closed for the holidays anyway, and the cute Vietnamese family of four that took us in welcomed us into one of their newly renovated rooms. Although this wasn’t a standard hotel (or even hostel) room, it strikingly demonstrated how scarce the living conditions up in Northern Vietnam are. And yet, our room was clean and furnished with a matress on the floor and a thick blanket with two cushions. That was it – no other furniture. A tour around the house reveiled that the homestay owners had a similar bedroom, which they shared with their two children. The building’s roof was covered with palm leaves, the windows had no glass and the door to our room could only be closed with a small padlock. We shared a wet cell with the owners, which to our surprise had a western style toilet but no shower, just a tube that could be fitted onto the faucet.

Dinner with our local hosts in Bac Ha.

The cooking fire was built in an adjecent building, and was fueled with bamboo, which as we learned is not only the main building material but is used in almost every aspect of life as well. In the evening, our host family invited us to a generous dinner with them and we had the chance to meet other relatives that lived a few houses away and came over for the joint meal. Unlike many other Asian countries that we visited so far, where people tend to stay awake way after nightfall, bed time in Bac Ha came at around 11pm, and everyone retreated into their own homes/rooms. I didn’t expect to sleep well, because I was not aware that the temperatures would drop so steeply after dark, but have to admit that I had a chilly, but pleasant night.

Our hosts and the owners of the Highland Homestay.

The next day we planned to hire a trekking guide to explore the mountain ranges and small minority villages of this part of the country. Since the family with whom we stayed the first night drew their main income from tourism, we hoped that someone we already met would also be able to show us the hinterland. So when our young host (and father of the two curious kids) offered us his tour guide services, we gladly accepted. We set out early and took the steep mud trail up and into the hills. Thick clouds of early morning mist obscured our view and added an eery flair to the landscape. Sometimes the clouds would allow a few glimpses of the fields and valleys far below, while at other times we lost each other out of sight only meters apart.

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After an hour and a half of ascending and descending misty mountains, we arrived in the first small minority village. The harsh landscape and farming conditions have made water buffalos an indispensible help not only for farming, but as a general lifestock and family investment as well. They were the dominant sights in all the small villages we walked through. The people we met mostly kept to themselves and stayed in small group among themselves, with a clear distinction of gender roles. While the women tended after the children or stood together and chatted, the men played games or drank high volume corn liquor. As for the drinking, the way this worked was that one person would invite another one to raise their glass with them, drowning the liquor all in one shot and then shake hands. As guests we were asked to drink shots of the homemade booze together with the men, while the women stayed in the kitchen and mostly remained out of sight. I felt a little bit out of place among all the men, and I still wonder if they made an exception and allowed me to drink with them. Unfortunately, the men would not agree to shake hands with us unless we drank the whole glass in one draw. We tried our best to dodge the majority of the glasses going around, but ended up pretty tipsy when we continued our hike some time later.

A little girl of the Black Flower Hmong in the first village we reached after crossing the misty mountains.
The living room of one of our hostsduring the trek.

Northern Vietnam, Wanderlust

Backpacking Northern Vietnam Part I – Crossing the border from Hekou to Lao Cai

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January the 28th, 2017

Not too long ago we had this idea of traveling from China to Vietnam, crossing the border from Hekou (Yunan, South China) to Lao Cai (North Vietnam) on foot. The easiest and most straight forward preperation we did was to buy a Lonely Planet of the destination country and do some googleing to research the feasibility of this endeavour. Turns out it is much easier than anticipated. Since we live in Beijing we booked a flight to Kunming, which took around 3 hours to bring us from the eastern capital to the southern edge of China. Since our flight touched down late that night, we took a cab from the Kunming airport to the Jinjiang hotel close to the train station. That way we gained some extra hours of sleep the next morning and only had a 10 minute walk up the road to reach the train station.

In order to save time and to avoid the masses queueing up at the ticket counter at the train station, find one of these ticket offices and collect yours well before starting the trip. It's 5 RMB service fee per ticket.

In order to save time and to avoid the masses queueing up at the ticket counter at the train station, find one of these ticket offices and collect yours well before starting the trip. It’s 5 RMB service fee per ticket.

Tipp: Claim your train ticket before heading to the station. We bought the train ticket on CTrip some days before the journey and only needed to present our original passports at the small local ticket booth to be able to receive it ahead of time.

Boarding the train at Kunming’s main station the route all the way down to Hekou Bei (North) took around five hours. The landscape was unexpectedly unremarkable: 70 percent of the time we passed through tunnels, while the remaining 30 percent were equally divided between highly unsustainable coal factories and small valleys. Since one of the main objectives of the journey was to cross the Chinese-Vietnamese border on foot, we were bound to take the train, but just for the joy of riding a train through “rural” China I would not recommend this particular route. There is no direct flight from China’s capital to Hekou – the bordering city to Vietnam – and as far as we know Hekou does not have an airport anyways. Arriving in Hekou North in the early afternoon, we walked out of the train station and expected to be pointed into the right direction by a billboard or an information counter. There is none, only a long line of small buses headed for the city center of Hekou. Board any of these buses for 2 RMB and get driven to the river that divides the two countries.

Once you cleared customs and decended the escalator, you are allowed to pass through to the other side.

Once you cleared customs and decended the escalator, you are allowed to pass through to the other side.

It’s another 30 minutes walk from where the bus drops you off to the actual border control. Keep on walking down the same road along the river until you see the massive triangular gate to the border bridge. The access to it is blocked by a high fence, so you will have to continue down the road to the left, then take the first street right. On the day that we crossed over to Vietnam there were not particularly many tourists there, but enough people were entering the inspection center to guide us into the right direction. Don’t expect helpful signs to guide your way, just follow the other travelers and take the elevator on the far left side of the government bureau up to Chinese customs. Much like the country exit on the airport, you are asked to fill out the small yellow departure card when leaving China and queue up to have your passport reviewed by a border control officer.

Tipp: On the small yellow departure card, simply put in “Walking” in the field “Flight No./Ship’s Name/Train No.” as a means of exit.

The front of the builing housing the Hekou Entry and Exit Inspection Center P.R.C.
To the left of the building’s front take the elevator up to the inspection center.

Once you handed your passport and departure card to the border officer, smiled into the digital camera to take the picture for the data base and passed the usual checkings at the border, you will receive the Chinese exit stamp into your passport. Now you are free to decend the escalator on the other side of the building and cross the bridge over to Vietnam.

Lao Cai International Border Gate Administration Center

The next building to come into view is the Lao Cai International Border Gate Administration Center, where you must first pass the usual “quarantine control”, which mainly consists of a woman checking your passport and a heat camera measuring your temperature, before going through the Vietnamese border controll and receiving your entrance stamp into your passport. Interesting side note: As a German citizen you don’t need a VISA for Vietnam unless you plan to spend more than 15 days in the country. Congratulation – you made it over the South China border and into Vietnam!