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At 6:30 a.m. the next morning, we woke up and got our backpacks ready for a day hike. Our cheerful hostesses (who sleep on-site) had already prepared an elaborate hearty breakfast: fried eggs, baguettes, crepes, bananas, and coffee. Cuong and Mr. Giang each had a bowl of ramen noodles with a fried egg in it. A young man named Chuong came over from next door to be our hiking guide.
As we set off from the guest house at 8 o'clock, the resident dog (a very friendly and low key fellow) decided to accompany us, which was nice. We walked on raised mud paths between rice paddies. It was a gray, drizzly day, but that just made the rice plants seem a more vibrant green. We could see the nearby mountains and hills reflected in the standing water in the rice paddies. This is a landscape that we are not used to, and it was utterly fascinating. We passed a woman who was shouldering a pole with baskets dangling off each end. She was wearing traditional Vietnamese conical hat. She spoke with Cuong and was very friendly. I peered into one of the baskets to see about a dozen ducklings she was transporting. We stopped in at a primary school to deliver some school supplies that Cuong had brought. We learned that you can always tell a school building because they all have the same picture of Ho Chi Minh embracing a child hung on the front of the building. We were invited into the teachers' room for a cup of tea. A painting of Ho Chi Minh on the battlefield with his troops glared down at us as we sipped our tea. Cuong asked the teachers some questions and translated their answers for us. Even in schools with predominantly ethnic minority students (in this case Tay), the teachers are usually ethnic Vietnamese, which was the case here. This particular school went through 5th grade. Students learn English starting in 3rd and 4th grades. We were led across the schoolyard and entered class 2B. The kids' desks were in small clusters of 4 or 5, which the teachers said is a new method here. I peeked over one small girl's shoulder into her notebook. Her handwriting was small, neat, and very precise, incredibly refined when compared to the handwriting of American second graders. The kids were very interested in us, and giggled often. They were adorable. I love this age group, as I had done student teaching with second graders back in my college days. We passed out the school suuplies that Cuong had brought, and the kids were quite happy. We always feel disappointed that we can't really communicate with the kids, but smiles go a long way. We then continued on our hike. It started to rain and Chuong found a fan palm to act as an umbrella. We put on our rain jackets. We passed some rice paddies that had ducklings swimming in them. We also passed a small plot of land being used for a cemetery. Several coffins decorated similarly to the one we had seen yesterday sat next to stone graves and small ancestor altars. The weather was humid, especially when the rain stopped temporarily. We passed a traditional Tay house under construction. People in the community come together to help one another with building projects like this. The owner of the house is required to feed the people who help (similar to the Ecuadorian concept of a minga). Cuong talked to the men building this house out of timber hewn from trees that they themselves cut down. The house's stilts are set onto concrete footings. While we were there, the workers were taking a break from the rain, huddled around a water pipe through which they smoked tobacco. Cuong told us a bit about Chuong's family history. His mother (the lady with the black dyed teeth that we had met yesterday) had only known Chuong's father for 15 days. After that, he was sent off to war and killed. She had had to raise Chuong alone, and was known in Vietnamese society as one of the "hero mothers" because of her sacrifice. It was the belief of the VC that having sex during the time of one's military service would ultimately lead to their deaths. Whether this was superstition or a way for the commanders to keep control of their troops is unsure, but Cuong told us that it held true 94% of the time. The hike started to gain some elevation. Our itinerary had said that we would be hiking at a certain elevation, but actually it was way higher than that according to Cuong's altimeter. It was still raining on and off. You would put your rain jacket on to stay dry, but then the heat and humidity would make you sweat until you took it off again. You were going to be damp one way or another. There was so much greenery around us. We passed bamboo groves and ferns and fan palms. Rock slides had recently covered the path, but the largest rocks had been moved aside so that motorbikes could pass. The trail went further and further up. I was getting very tired and overheated. As a young man passed by on his motorbike, Cuong flagged him down and hired him to drive me the rest of the way up to the village. This was my first ever motorcycle ride (even Craig had a hard time believing that), and though I was a little nervous at first, I held on to my driver and soon was quite comfortable. I only wish that Craig or Cuong had been able to take a photo of me on the back of the bike, but the whole thing had happened very suddenly and before they knew it we were speeding away up the hill. As we drove higher and higher up the mountain, I was very glad that I was getting a ride. After negotiating some slick areas and riding over some puddles on a narrow ramp, my driver came to a stop and I hopped off the bike. "Cam on (Thank you)!" I called, and I took a photo of him before he drove away. I looked around and found myself in the middle of a dirt road. On one side of the road was a house where two men were working on their motorcycles. They didn't take notice of me. On the other side of the road was a small school with a thatched-roof wooden house and a Vietnamese flag in front of it. I sat down on a rock, wondering how long I would be here before the boys showed up. If they followed the route we had taken, it would be a while. I took out my journal and began to write. A group of young children (probably around 4 and 5 years old) came out of the school. They all stood across the street, peering down the hill at me. I smiled and waved. They giggled but hung back. Almost all of them were wearing the same white plastic flip-flops that they had at the guest house. Most were way too big for the kids, and I was amazed that they didn't trip. Other kids were wearing rubber boots. One brave girl came down to meet me and smiled while I took her picture. I showed her the image and that gave all of the other kids the courage to approach me. One of the men working on his motorcycle approached me and looked over my shoulder at what I was writing in my journal. He smiled and encouraged the kids to pose for a picture. The kids were all giggling and mobbed me trying to see the pictures. They were no longer afraid, and rubbed up against me, looking at my notebook and camera. I also took some video and showed them. It was a lot of fun and helped the time to go by quickly while waiting for the guys. After 40 minutes, I heard someone call hello, and I turned around to see Chuong, followed by Craig and Cuong, emerge from behind the house. I was surprised that they had come from a different direction. "Short cut," said Craig and Cuong, rolling their eyes. Apparently, Chuong had led them straight up the terraces of the paddies rather than via the road. Even Cuong had found it difficult. They assured me that I had done the smart thing by taking the motorbike. Cuong informed us that this was a Yao village. The small school was one of the satellite schools which was affiliated with the primary school we had visited this morning. We were invited into the house where the men had been fixing their motorcycles. This house was not on stilts like a Tay house. But it was constructed out of wood and had a thatched roof. We sat on benches around a rustic table and were served tea while the local men smoked tobacco from a water pipe the size and shape of a didgeridoo. Then we walked across the street to a Tay-style house where we would eat lunch. Under the house was an area where they kept their animals. We saw chickens and baby chicks, piglets, and water buffalo. We took off our shoes and climbed the stairs up to the main level. A woman in an orange and green headscarf welcomed us to her home. The house had the same kind of slate floor inset for the fire that the carpenter's house had had; a traditional kitchen. Above the fire hung flanks of smoked pork, and seven frogs which had been pierced through the skulls, their legs dangling down over the fire. The house was very dim, with no electric lights in use. The house was lit by the ambient light coming in through the windows and the fire. Because of the dark weather outside, not much light was coming in. Pieces of furniture were arranged along the perimeter of the house. There was a sitting area with wooden chairs in front of a television and a refrigerator. Along other walls were shelves on which were stored dishes. There was an ancestor altar where incense was burning. We enjoyed sitting by the fire, drying our clothes after a rainy and sweaty hike. We could hear the rain on the thatched roof above us. We stared into the flames, letting them mesmerize us as we reflected on our day's activities, and how lucky we were to be welcomed into these local people's homes for a glimpse into their lives. A mother cat and kitten skulked around the house, climbing up huge bags of rice and scampering near the fire. Chuong prepared our lunch. He took provisions out of Cuong's backpack and also took down one of the smoked pork flanks hanging above the fire. He hacked some meat off with a machete and then cooked it in a wok over the fire. The woman's 14-year old son came home from school, and went immediately over to the little seating area and turned on the TV. He was fiddling with his cell phone and Cuong told us that his son Phong was the same age. Even in remote traditional villages such as this, you can see modern technology capturing the imagination of the young people. We all sat together on a mat in the middle of the floor for a lunch of sticky rice, smoked pork, hard boiled eggs, and greens. The smoked pork tasted like thick bacon and it was quite flavorful. I was particularly klutzy with my chopsticks for some reason today, and it gave the family a good laugh and worked to break the ice a bit. I was a little bit embarrassed, though. The cats were never far away, in the hopes that some food might be shared with them. For dessert, we had white dragon fruit (the fruit whose pink variant we know as pitaya in Guatemala) and oranges. The mother and son enjoyed some candies that Cuong had brought for them. After lunch we sat around the fire once again and enjoyed a cup of tea. We could have sat there for hours; it was so relaxing. But we needed to get back to the guest house. We used the family's outhouse and said goodbye to the animals under the house. Our doggie friend had hung out with them while we were inside, and he was ready to accompany us when we left shortly before 1:30. Cuong declared himself "the Dictator" and made the decision that we would be walking back down to the guest house via the road. It was raining out again, and the road was now much too slippery to try to catch motorbikes back to the guest house. It was also too slippery to attempt to descend via their shortcut. So the Dictator decreed that safety came first, and that we would walk down via the dirt road. Cuong complained about the roads being in such poor shape. He said that the government creates roads to these remote villages as good public relations opportunities. But in actuality, they don't maintain the roads and it winds up causing potential for erosion and mud slides during the rainy season. On the way down the slick roads, we encountered a white water buffalo on the side of the road. The dog decided to chase it in good fun, and the buffalo freaked out and started running up the hill as fast as it possibly could. Who knew that a water buffalo could move that fast? The buffalo was so much larger than the dog, that he could probably have easily stomped him. But the dog had startled and spooked it, which gained the dog the upper hand. We continued on, and after the dog tired of chasing the buffalo, he returned to join us. At around 3 o'clock, we reached the main road. Cuong got out his phone and made a call. We didn't know who he could be calling; we were almost back at the guest house. But he had called Mr. Giang to pick us up and drive us the remaining way back. Our feet were tired from the walking. Cuong said, "wouldn't it be nice to just soak your feet in hot water?" Why yes, it would. We daydreamed about that for a minute, but we hadn't thought he was serious. Yet when we got back to the guest house, the hostesses filled up three small cedar tubs with boiling water and herbs in which we were to soak our tired feet. Some of the neighborhood kids came by, and Cuong presented them with some school supplies. He is such a generous man, and everyone he knows absolutely loves him, ourselves included. After our foot baths cooled down, we went upstairs and enjoyed some coffee and a tin of Danish butter cookies. Craig and I each shuffled over to the bathrooms in the white flip-flops and took nice, warm showers. A young French couple arrived for dinner. They were actually sleeping in the neighboring guest house, but we all ate together in ours. For dinner we had pork, egg, and onion patties, chicken with lime leaves (a very popular Vietnamese way of serving chicken), pumpkin fritters, tiny shrimp, chicken curry broth, and tofu. It was absolutely delicious. We loved eating together with both Cuong and Mr. Giang. It was all about the camaraderie for us, getting to know one another better and enjoying one another's company. Mr. Giang produced some now-familiar water bottles filled with local rice wine and poured it into shot glasses for us. "Chuc suc khoe!" we all toasted. We even got our happy hostesses to partake. After they took the shots, they shook our hands, as is apparently the Vietnamese tradition. "We've just started," proclaimed Cuong, as he, Craig, Mr. Giang, and I had another round. And not for the last time! We had a lot of fun tonight, and there were lots of laughs. Mr. Giang performed some martial arts moves with his shot glass as I recorded some video. "Chuc suc khoe!"we all shouted in unison. Cuong retreated to his cubby, which we dubbed the "Dictator Suite" to call his wife and prepare for tomorrow. He warned us not to party too hard. We stayed up a bit longer with Mr. Giang, one of the hostesses (now in her pajamas), and the guide that was with the French couple. We went to bed at around 9:30 and slept well after our day of hiking. |
 Rice paddies  Woman with basket of ducklings  Ducklings  Bicycle and rice paddies  Craig and Steph hike through the rice paddies (Photo courtesy of Cuong)  Visiting a local school (Photo courtesy of Cuong)  Yao schoolkids  Craig and Steph dry out by the fire (photo courtesy of Cunog)  Yao mother and son, Cuong, Chuong, and Craig enjoying lunch  Craig, Cuong, and Steph enjoy dinner at the guest house  Cuong and Steph toast  Mr. Giang, guest house hostess, and a guide toast 
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