Day 1 - Hanoi to Son La

9th April 2011, Saturday

0-300 km

Contrary to our good intentions – and totally expected – we didn’t start our journey at 6 a.m. but instead started moving four hours later at 10 a.m. Had to turn back after 500 meters because we forgot the raincoats. Driving through central Hanoi in a south-westerly direction – or in any other direction for that matter – is never fun, and certainly not at noon on a Saturday. That’s when everybody is trying to get to their lunch locations not later than 12:00; preferably 11:30.

The guy on the left is actually walking in the middle of the road ...

Motorised beasts of burden

One of the many construction sites in and around Hanoi

No tan please!

Traffic became unbearably annoying when we reached Ha Dong junction – a south-western “suburb” of Hanoi. Trying to squeeze in between an excruciatingly slow taxi, driving between lanes, three trucks with a “devil-may care” attitude, a bus with an even worse disposition and seemingly a hundred motorbikes on a road in full “construction mode” without getting a scratch and a heart attack demands the precision of a micro surgeon. Oh, did I mention that school ends at 11 a.m. on a Saturday? With hordes of school kids on their bicycles riding six abreast, happily chatting and horsing around in between the motorized vehicles, oblivious to anything or anybody around them.

Get your Plasma TV here !!!!

Goldfish anyone?

2011 meets 1969

Oh that's gonna be fun....

 

One of the bazillion taxi companies in Hanoi

After just one and a half hours we finally made it: We are outside the urban conurbation called Hanoi. I won't be missing that place much for the next week.

Finally out of Hanoi

Entering Hoa Binh Province to the southwest of Hanoi:

Beautiful countryside?

... on closer inspection ...

A tricycle motorbike: provided to disabled war veterans

A cement mixer bike with an assistant

The Province is famous for its large hydroelectric power plant and the inevitable lake created by the damming up of the Black River (the Song Da in Vietnamese). It’s further known in the scientific community for several Stone Age artefacts found in several caves around the province, thus lending its name (Hoabinhian) to a whole Mesolithic culture. Artefacts from that period of human development have been found all over Southeast Asia. As for the traveller, it’s one of the closest mountainous regions to Hanoi, which itself lies in the flat Red River Plain. During our whole journey we will be travelling through these mountains which form the farthest outreaches of the south-eastern foothills of the Himalayas. Many of the major rivers of this region also have their sources in the Himalayan Plateau.

The first karst hills

Bamboo shoots

Fruit

Palm fronds

... and golf balls

The rest ...

Hoa Binh is populated by a mixture of Vietnamese and other Ethnic groups. There are officially 54 different ethnic groups in Vietnam, with the Viet or Kinh being the leading ethnicity (“Staatsvolk” in German, I think it’s about time English adopted this term as a new loanword). The whole Northwest (Tay Bac in Vietnamese) is home to many of those culturally different people, and some of them form the majority in several of the border provinces. The major ethnic group in Hoa Binh are the Muong, a people closely related to the Viet in language and history. They are basically the descendants of those Viets who stayed in the mountains while those who settled in the river plains and coastlands became the ancestors of the present day Viet – more or less, not forgetting the later migrations and intermarriages in the last two and a half thousand years.

Who needs motorbikes?

Brick kiln - you find these all around Hanoi

We pretty much sped through this province since we’ve been here before a few times and had to make up for our late start. In the southern parts of the province the first real mountain roads begin. The scenery would’ve been great but for the overhung weather – hopes are still high that we’ll get sunshine on at least one of the days of our more than a week long tour. Compared to driving in Hanoi this is a car driver’s paradise; wide meandering streets, little traffic; and the occasional water buffalo, dog, pig, chicken or cow lazily crossing the road. Little children playing on the roadside don’t seem to mind the speeding cars and bikes. Only the berserk truck and bus drivers make them scramble to the roadside. After crossing our first mountain pass we come down into Mai Chau valley. Mai Chau is the closest place from Hanoi (about 3 hours driving) to see a typical “mountain-rice-field-minority-stilt-house-valley”, and hence a frequent destination for tourist. Since we’d been there once we drive on.

Behold the Valley of Mai Chau... ok, it was a bit hazy

Some pictures from our previous visit in spring 2010:

Shortly after, we enter Son La Province. New territory at last!

The road into Son La

Traffic in the province...

Some of the hazards of the road

This province is mainly populated by a people called the Black Thai (very distant cousins of the Thai of Thailand). They arrived in the region in successive waves of migration from southern China (mainly Yunnan province) starting in the 7^th century CE and continuing for the subsequent four centuries. During the 13^th and 14^th century large parts of the southern Northwest were under the rule of a Black Thai confederation known as Bon Man. In later centuries they joined together with the White Thai, who live to the north and northwest, and formed a loose political federation known as the Sipsong Chutai (12 villages). This confederation came into being mainly as a counter balance to the pressure from the resurgent and expanding Vietnamese Kingdom (Dai Viet, meaning Great Viet) from the east and later the Siamese Kingdom from the west. When the French arrived in northern Vietnam in the second half of the 19^th centuries they didn’t have to look long for protagonists to apply the age old method of “divide and conquer/rule” in Vietnam. Nonetheless Son La province turned out to be an important staging point for the eventual expulsion of the French from Indochina.

Elections for the National Assembly

Back to our trip: driving through Son La past the major towns of Moc Chau (famous for tea and milk) and Yen Chau (famous for fruits of all kinds – unfortunately none of them in season at the moment) and Hat Lot (famous for nothing) one thing stands out like a sore thumb. While the valley we are driving through is intensively cultivated, with rice paddies, stilt house villages and lots of fruit trees, almost all the hills around are bare. Almost all hills and mountains in Vietnam are naturally covered in vegetation. From a distant it looks as if they are covered in green velvet. But for large parts of our journey and especially in Son La province one could see what the consequences of swidden agriculture (slash-and burn) and intensive logging look like in reality. Having read about this agriculture practice and its whys and wherefores in several regions of the world again and again, nothing prepares you for the sight of miles upon miles of cleared hills with occasional fires burning on their slopes.

Slash and burn?

Logging?

The first rice terraces ... may more to come ...

 

Since we made better time than expected we decide to push on to Son La City. We arrive at the provincial capital at 6 p.m. and after driving exactly 300 km. We spend our first night at the Trades Union Tourist Company Son La Hotel. It’s a state run establishment, hence the long name. We are astonished by the staffs relatively good English, much better than our Vietnamese. Dinner at the hotel’s restaurant is basic but decent Vietnamese fare: stewed beef, pan-fried vegetables, rice, and cold beer. An older French couple arrive after us; they are making the tour with a Vietnamese driver. We’ll probably meet them again in one of the western provinces. As this Weekend precedes a Vietnamese national holiday the following Tuesday (Hung King Day: honouring the mythical founders of Vietnam), lots of Vietnamese took Monday of to enjoy a four day vacation. So we weren’t surprised to find a large Vietnamese travel group putting up in the same hotel. While we were going to bed they were watching a typical and very cheesy ethnic-dance group in the hotel’s hall. Hope they don’t stay up to long belting out Karaoke songs.

So that's what they think of the Romans in Vietnam!