After this first taste of Vietnam’s highlands, our feet got to rest for the next two days, spent mainly travelling in a bus towards our next challenge of hiking…
We woke up the day after our last hiking to the sounds of the town’s megaphone at 6 AM pronouncing the day to begin with the latest local news. In Vietnamese. For one hour for god’s sake! Didn’t know there was so much to tell in a sleepy provincial town as Bac Ha. We went for a change in breakfast routine and mainly opted for the bread with egg or jam instead of pancakes. After loading our bags in the back of the waiting van, we were ready to set out to our next destination: Ba Be Lake. Since it’s a national park, we had to pay an entrance fee of 49,000 VND to be able to even enter the premises of the park, without even having seen the lake yet. We arrived at the homestay at the edges of Ba Be lake, where we booked a dorm room, just as evening set in. Pleasant was our surprise when we got double and triple rooms instead. Dinner was served, typically homestay-style with lots of plates ánd requisite happy water shared with the host…
This was almost only a passing-through, but the next morning we did find time to book a 3-hour boat tour on the famous lake. It even included two stops. At the first stop we walked 15 minutes up to a cascading waterfall. The second stop was in an enormous cave through which the lake cut. After that, we got picked up again by our van to continue our winding journey to the city of Cao Bang. Véro had once more chosen a very very decent and pretty accommodation: Sa’s Home. Although self-declared homestay, it doesn’t offer breakfast nor did we see family. But the rooms were just wauw! It also reinforced the feeling in the group that this wasn’t really a basic expedition anymore, but instead more of a “comfort” journey…Dinner was enjoyed at Hùng Tring BBQ, where we shared plates of meat and seafood seared to satisfaction over a grill…
The next morning, we went out in search of breakfast (and for some in search of hard local cash), before being picked up by a local guide of Ethnic Travel at Sa’s home. Unfortunately, the guide didn’t speak English. Bit of a bummer since none of us speaks Vietnamese except for the Mot Hai Ba Zo, used for toasting. Anyhow, a minivan brought us 20 minutes outside Cao Bang, where quite quickly a challenging uphill path began. This would be a while lot tougher than the first trekking. We thought. After about 3 km steeply uphill, we reached a viewpoint, overlooking the shrouded mountainous valley we left behind. However, from there it was mostly flat, flat, flat… We reached a small village dedicated to the production of artisanal incense, where we ate a delicious lunch at a local homestay. The waiting for the second part of the day seemed to be a bit long, so when Véro went to inquire, it was a bit of surprise, to say the least, to discover that this was our final destination for the day… we were all like, “this is it, of wa?”. So OK, we went upstairs in the homestay, to once more find mattresses, blankets and towels, to install ourselves for the night. Since we weren’t really tired yet, our guide proposed to take us on a small tour around the village. Luckily, there was an information board explaining the history and on goings in English. After beholding how the incense was made by the men and women, we decided to explore the fields around the village some more over the concrete walkway. It added another 4 km to our day, and the vistas over the houses and karst mountains in the background were a sight to behold. Around dinnertime Ethnic Travel had apparently managed to get hold of an English-speaking guide named Maggie, so communications went a bit smoother.
The second day hiking is easy to describe: downhill over flat terrain. The terrain being concrete roads. Luckily, we were followed by one of the homestay’s dogs, which added some entertainment and distraction to the otherwise monotone walk. We arrived around 10 AM in the town where we were supposed to have lunch, so instead we just visited the ongoing market to buy some fresh fruits (grapes were favoured) and snacks (the pink Japanese koala cookies were Véro’s favourite). After a small bathroom pitstop we continued walking. For another 3 hours! The dog was still following us, so we asked Maggie about it. She’d said earlier he’d go back once we reached the forest (we never crossed through any forest). After arriving at the homestay, she said the dog would go back on the back of a motorcycle… Until the local guide of today declared that it was hís dog… Aaaaah! We apparently also got a different guide on each of the first three days. Maggie was seemingly just tagging along to translate. We arrived quite frustrated and bored by the walking on concrete and tar roads at our next homestay, which was, admittedly, another beauty. We had a late lunch and most of the group settled on the outdoor bamboo terrace for some chillaxing in the sun. A few tried to conquer an off-the-beaten track with a local guide and Maggie. Except for some leeches, they didn’t return with a lot of Indiana Jones stories.
On day 3, from Doc Lac to Than Giap, we got another guide – to Véro’s dismay without a dog – and walked from the backside of the village immediately steeply uphill. Our translator was decidedly underdressed without appropriate footwear and we had to slow down and stop frequently to allow her to catch up. The first part was however indeed quite narrow and sometimes tricky to walk and ascend or descend. We were lucky it was dry, otherwise this might have been impossible. The view from the hilltop was however worth the sweat and curses, with a 360° view over the spectacular karst formations around us. After that came of course a downhill section, which was equally as tricky as the uphill one, and with an insane number of leeches waiting on the pathway in search of a yummy white leg. After the hill, the route once more flatted out. We had lunch on the floor of the last building of a small village. The previous homestay’s owner brought the lunch packages in banana leafs, and there was even coca cola to quench our thirst. The flat (gravel) road in the afternoon led us to a nice cascading waterfall, where some of us took the opportunity to either swim or cool of their sweaty feet. Our overnight stay was once more a beautiful and very welcoming homestay at the edge of a village where we had a very nice view over the rice paddies and karst rock formations.
During the night, it started raining pretty heavily, so the original plan to do another steep uphill/downhill hike as on day three was discarded. Instead, our route from Than Giap to Na Bai was mostly flat, or it seemed that way because we were walking on gravel roads and pathways which did not offer a lot of adventure. We had lunch in a dilated roadside restaurant, relaxed (a bit too long), set out walking again under cover of threateningly wet skies and arrived at the last homestay. If the previous ones were pretty, this topped it all. Tastefully decorated and with a seating area outside, we enjoyed the last sun rays before our last homestay dinner.
On the last day, there was no more walking. Instead we went to the market in the morning and then on a minibus towards Lang Son, where we checked into a fairly new hotel in a recently redeveloped part of the town. We got a taste of culture with a (photographer) visit to a small temple and afterwards spoiled ourselves to a fancy cocktail on the terrace of the 5-star Vinpearl Hotel. Our next adventure would be on water instead of on land: Ha Long Bay!
