Travel Stories - Vietnam

It's a quarter to one when I depart the bus at "Tong Dau" and the (bus)boy gets my big bag out of the trunk. There are a few houses, a cafe and a gasoline-station but that's it. Two boys come directly from the terrace and ask me where I want to go. I point to the sign indicating "Mai Chau". It is too far to walk, says the young boy, especially with your bag and the heat, and there he has a point. Because he might get commission, I agree with the price and take me to a "homestay" in the village "Pom Coong" by first driving through the boring "Mai Chau". It is indeed quite a distance and this is really a "White Thai" community with houses on stilts. The man shows me the toilet and shower that look reasonable in the yard behind and he takes me to the first floor on a bamboo floor (at first I thought I would go straight through) where he points to the corner near the open window. He points to a mattress and a blanket and apparently that will become my place to sleep. We fix a price including dinner and breakfast and I leave my big bag here. Before I set off, the man proudly points to one of the poles under the house where a piece of paper hangs. It turns out to be the WIFI code for the internet. The power has failed, the internet does not work, but the password is good.

Many new buildings are erected here, including hotels and guest houses. As I walk further I turn right and follow the slope down where I see a whole group of people together. Women with large baskets full of rice and reed come running, baskets on wooden sticks, carts - everything that the rice can be transported with, I see coming together here. There is also a machine for separating the wheat from the chaff, and pieces of agricultural land are set on fire - the so-called "chopping and burning". It looks like war - smoke with kinda “dancing” men (because of the way they walk fast) with heavy baskets, and women with machetes in the field. Rice fields, small ditches, green areas, wooden houses on the water and high mountains around the valley. It looks like a dream valley and it is. If the machine falters for a moment, I quickly pass by so that I do not get full of reed residues and come from a concrete path of about 3 meters wide which leads to different communities.

Great heirs with cows, piglets and chickens. Dogs run loose and you see people walking with carts. Sometimes a scooter passes. Everywhere houses on stilts and women sit outside to weave. Suddenly I see a woman with a red mouth (from the plums) and traditional clothing (at least I think so) - black skirt, blue scarf around her head, a purple shirt and a flower sash around her waist. Women offer to buy something and children are still waving here to tourists like me. I walk out of this community where again there are a few lakes and a mud path where I’m sent by a man along a rice field with various water buffalo. On the edge are some women to rest from the hard labor they did in the paddyfields. I arrive at the expensive "eco-lodge" which is nicely built but of course brings the “wrong” people here; I also see a whole group of white tourists walking around here. I fear that this will become the new "Sapa" and in a few years this no longer recognized. Now it's really nice though the principles are already there. I'm just lost and ask a girl on a scooter where to go to get back at my hostel. She brings me back to the bridge of the community "Pom Coong" on an even smaller mud trail. I am happy to step down and wave her goodbye.

The home-stay is not the "home" that I expected and hoped for. The food is brought (potatoes with pieces of carrot, onions with chicken, green beans and rice) to my table while the family sits in a different room on the floor. I was hoping that I was part of this family and we would at least eat together. I am offered another cola (which I can pay extra for tomorrow) when the rest of the family (the children) return home. No idea where they all go to sleep and I hope that when I come upstairs there will be a number of mattresses next to mine. If I have my food I go up anyway because it is dark and so to see or everyone goes to bed early. When one of the daughters comes back from a "performance" for tourists further up the road, I brush my teeth and go to my bedroom. A mattress and a deep silence - I take a seat in my mosquito net, read some more and then take off my light - I think I was the last in the village.