After breakfast – yes, it was pho again, but this time, they had smoked pork, so I tried that. The broth was very mediocre but the smoked pork was… not really memorable either – we walked from the hotel to the Meo Vac lookout point.
From here, you see the valley is created by interlocking mountains, so the town is laid out more squarishly as opposed to Dong Van which is stretched out long.
Then I took a walk to another village in the hills (they have all been in the hills) before we headed off to Bao Lac at 11am.
Meo Vac to Bao Lac is only 70km away but it wasn’t till 1300 that we got there as the roads were winding.
On the way, we were wondering why all the Hmong were walking along the road, but without their baskets of fertilizer, grass and so on. Turns out they were all turning out for a wedding.
Bao Lac is just one dusty town. Actually it’s been dusty for a while, but this town more so. It sticks everywhere.
It was time for lunch and I wolfed down smoked pork, fried pork rib, preserved vegetable with pig intestines, boiled cabbage, and a vegetable in soup in under half an hour. The smoke pork was better tasting than the last one in Tam Son.
Any walking I’m doing is negated by the vast amount of pork fat in my food.I’ve not eaten this much pork fat in a long time. Civilisation has fast taught me that fat is evil, although in some quantity, it is very enjoyable. And the tables of lard available at the local markets has made me wonder if it is all that evil considering I’ve not seen a single fat person in these parts.
After lunch, the guide was trying to look for this Lo Lo tribe and found it finally by heading to the end of the track. Supposedly it was 9km out of town. But with roads this bad, it seems like forever to get anywhere. And I believe these aren’t the worst roads.
The women folk were all still dressed very traditionally. But I didn’t find my visit terribly fruitful visit the villagers were very shy. I ended up taking photos of wild dogs instead.
But I did try.
Speaking of wild dogs, the dogs here are very territorial. They’re always fighting and guarding their turf. I found myself in the crossfire of one just before dinner. Even as I type this now, the dogs outside the hotel are at each others’ throats again.
At 1540, I checked into the Song Gam Hotel and that was the end of my day. But after getting over the intial “god help me” reaction, I went out to walk back into town (1km away) to see if I could get more photos.
I returned to meet the guide and we went back into town, back into the same restaurant for dinner: pork that looks like sio bak, smoked sausage and duck, along with two types of vegetables. Surprisingly, the duck was the best. Smoked sausage came second. The sio bak was just too fatty to be enjoyable.
My heart protested loudly. And every time my heart pounds loudly as I ascend yet another hill or series of steps, I think I have to say no to fatty pork more. But do I listen?