"Today the road only for us!"

Or so said our guide, Mr. Minh, yesterday as we floated through the mountains along the Ho Chi Minh Trail on the back of two motorbikes. Vietnam is a long, lo-ong country, and mid-vietnam was supposed to be a stop-over for us- a few days in charming, historic Hoi An and a day in the ancient capitol of Hue, before catching the train up to Hanoi. Instead, we found ourselves completely blowing our Vietnam budget and getting off the beaten track... by quite a bit!

Read the rest...

We met Mr. Minh right after getting off the night train in Da Nang from Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon. We began by catching a ride with him to Hoi An, and ended by sitting over coffee to discuss the possibility of a two-day motorbike tour. We had three days in Hoi An and Hue, but rather than taking the 4-hour bus ride from one to the other, he suggested we ride with him into the mountains to see some local people, minority villages, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the trail used to bring supplies between the North and the South during the "American War" (yes, that's what we Americans call the Vietnam War)). Minh had this little book with hand-written recommendations from clients from all over the world, and this book alone convinced us to splurge.

Let's just say it was worth it. Josh and his backpack rode with Minh's colleague, Mee, while me and my backpack were with Minh. We started the day around Hoi An, a beautiful city on the water and a justifiable tourist trap, visiting the World Heritage Site My Son (Angkor-contemporary temples built of brick) and seeing how the locals made rice paper, pottery, cotton weavings,and silk weavings (from cacoon to loom). We would stop at these random houses where Minh was obviously a welcome site and get to see what the people were up to. I tried making a bowl on the potters wheel while an old woman kicked it around for me, and Josh made some rice paper (used in spring rolls, fried into a crisp for a snack...). As we left, Mee would stuff some money into their hands as a thanks. It was refreshing not to be asked to buy something after seeing it made, as is typical of places tourist buses stop.

Me and my "pot"

Josh and the rice paper

The rice is planted/harvested three times a year in this part of the country, and we happened upon the harvest. The farmers use the roads to dry things, so we kept having to dodge around swaths of rice, corn, cinnamon, rice paper (dried on large screens), peppercorns, you name it... The smells would change as we road through different villages with their different specialties. The pottery village would have huge piles of wood waiting to heat up the room-size kilns. The weaving villages would be quiet and then suddenly loud and then quiet again as we went past a home with a loom. I think the smell of cinnamon along the mountain roads was my favorite!

Harvesting rice ("Back to the sun, face the ground," as Minh said about farmers)

Here neighbor women work together "making" silk. As they boil silk worm cocoons, the single strands unravel and can be threaded unto a spool. The spools are dried and then sold to another group of neighboring women who dye and weave them into cloth. The pupa are cleaned, dried and sold to be eaten. They look like fat grub. Yum.

We then headed into the mountains, stopping for a nice swim in a waterfall. We were within a few kilometers of Laos and the views were spectacular. We'd lived in the mountains for a few months early this year, but these were different- instead of pine trees and snow there was lush, green tropical plants and rice planted in the valleys. This is the land of many minority people, as Minh called them. Nomadic until after the American war, the people are now the recipients of a compaign to bring them a bit more prosperity. The government propaganda'ed them (to use Minh's term) how to cultivate fruit, rice, and corn, how to build safe homes in one place, and, most recently, to sleep under mosquito nets to prevent the spread of malaria (we saw some old road signs to this order). We met so many children that Minh told us they were just beginning to propaganda them about family planning. Apparently in the rest of the country, you cannot get a government job if you have over two children.

This family lived 4km from the Laos border, but will probably soon have to move to a government sponsored village where they are closer to a school and hospital. This was stated quite matter-of-fact.

Each village had a large common house and, often, a suspension bridge over some body of water to get there. Some of the older women had on clothes that reminded me of the photos I'd seen of minority groups in the far north of Vietnam.

Children running to say goodbye as we leave their village. (I wish it weren't so blurry!!) Josh just turned around to yell at them and make them laugh. The common house is in the background and is used for everything- elections, weddings, festivals...

View of valley/rice paddies/village from the road. You can see the common house in the village.

We spent the night in Hien, a town with no phones for international calls or internet for "tourists" like us. We were a complete novelty, judging by reactions of the kids out on the streets during our evening walk- "hello!" "what you name!" "Way you from?" "I luv you!" "Muny?"

The next day was more of the same, with some nice stops for iced sugar cane drink and white coffee (dark, individually-brewed cups of coffee with sweetened condensed milk... fantastic!). We were indeed alone on the road, as Minh promised.

Minh, Mee, and Josh with sugar cane drink

Minh was informative, considerate, and certainly loved his country. He said most of his clients were European, very few American, and we enjoyed conversations about the war (young people today aren't interested), language, tourism here and elsewhere (Vietnamese don't travel outside the country a whole lot, according to Minh), food (how can you eat hamburgers? So fatty!) and other things. We eventually made it back to Hue for our evening train to Ha Noi, and here we are!