This happened on the 3rd of March 2013.
After breakfast of what seemed like an instant pho with fresh vegetables and a fried egg, we took a walk around the village for an hour and a half.
My guide, Zu, and I walked through padi fields that were muddy and wet and I didn’t want to be the first person to fall into a padi field. There were tiny irrigation streams we had to jump over. It was quite fun.
The birds were singing, it felt good, except for that blasting communism music. I do not know what speakers they use, the sound just travels and very quickly sits at the back of your head.
Then I was pointed up high up in the hill, where there were a lot of people building a road. I could hardly make them out. From those padi fields, we walked up and saw the Young Communist volunteers and a whole lot of other people putting up a sign for the road construction. Now that music made sense.
There were a lot of representatives around – traffic police, Communist army, young Communist volunteers – too many to remember. A lot of them were standing around. Then you see these young volunteers with their hoes and their heeled shoes. It was very odd. As soon as the video cameras were turned off, a lot of them started leaving. So this was Communist propaganda.
Soon we were off toward Dong Van. Although only 140km away from Hagiang, it will take us about the same time to get there (with a couple of stops) because of the roads. They’re not in the best condition, and they’re winding.
At Tam Son, in the Quan Ba district, where we stop for lunch and have the smoked beef and smoked pork with a couple of greens.
As lunch is being prepared, I go around to see if there’s anything to see.
Just as lunch is about the start, I hear the sounds of a funeral procession. So I inconsiderately snap away.
It’s after Tam Son that the geopark actually begins.
Here we lose the trees and it’s just a lot of rock and dust. It’s a hard life here. The Chinese ostracised by the Vietnamese were forced to these highlands to eke out a living. Here, little rice is grown. Corn is planted amongst rocks. Any grass is cut, cooked and fed to livestock, if they have any. They can’t afford more cows, because the land isn’t fertile enough to produce enough food for the cows. Without the cows, they will never be able to work the lands like they need to. They still use slash and burn methods to fertilize and prepare the land for farming, so there’s a lot of smoke in these mountains.
On the way here, we stop at a village to see their hemp making and products.
And then at another outside Tam Son, to see how they live. In short, a lot of it is in the dark.
Even the grass is so crappy that they have to chop it up and boil it before the pigs and the cows will eat it. If they have these at all.
At around 1700, we get to Dong Van. This town is run by the Vietnamese – only they seem to know how to do business. In the villages are the ethnic minorities.
The hotel is called Hoang Ngoc and on the business card it says “your second home”. It’s a very distant second home. But it will have to be for the next two nights.
I have failed to mention that it is very cold here. I checked online and it says it is 18 degrees C here. I have one jacket, but it was my fingers that were frozen just now.
Dinner at Dong Van is at Au Viet across the street. It is run by the hotel. I saw a table ready for black chicken hot pot, but that wasn’t the fancy stuff were were getting.
Nope. Again, fried chicken, again, some pieces were raw inside. A vegetable. And fish, that is deep fried and then covered with tomato and dill. I’ve been having quite a bit of dill in Vietnam. The fish was also not quite fully cooked and I had to send it back.
If I seem particular about my food, you should have heard this fellow from the UK who commented that “this isn’t tenderloin. Tenderloin doesn’t have bone and this has.” Of course he said that. His first sentence to his guide when they stepped in was: “You said this was a Western restaurant. This doesn’t look very Western at all to me. It looks very Vietnamese.” Good grief. You’re on the border of China and Vietnam. The signs say “Frontier Area”.
And this is the karst landscape for which this area is so popular for.
