Day 4 - Dien BIen Phu to Sin Ho

12^th April 2011, Tuesday

520-693 km

The first leg of today’s journey took us to the town which at the present is called Muong Lay (former Lai Chau and once Muong Lay before that). We drove through the very beautiful Muc River valley heading north more or less parallel to the Laotian border. The road was perfect and there was almost no traffic. This could be due to the fact that we are now in one of the most secluded regions of Vietnam. Regardless of that fact a lot of the mountain slopes were deforested here too.

A Black Thai woman with the typical hair bun under the conical hat

A Black Thai stilt house

On National Road 12 en route from Dien Bien Phu to Muong Lay

A Black Thai village - somewhere north of here we leave the "territory" of the Black Thai and enter the "domain" of the White Thai

National Road 12 is called 'Friendship Road'. It was built between 1969 and 1970 with Chinese assistance

Deforestation; also prevalent in this region

The idyllic countryside changed abruptly the moment we reached the environs of Muong Lay, the reason being the construction of a large dam which has already flooded much of the former town – including some of its cultural attractions. The plan is to flood the Na River Valley to provide a large reservoir to serve the massive new Son La Hydroelectric Power Station downstream on the Black (Da) River. This large scale construction, together with the deforestation of the surrounding mountains, which in turn caused several landslides and floods over the last years with hundreds of lost lives and thousands of lost homes, makes this area one of the more devastated ones during our whole trip. Over several kilometres along the valley you can see the new town being constructed on both sides of the future reservoir. Needless to say, the road condition was terrible. Large construction vehicles are the lords of the street here and we had to cross a scary section where a only recently cleared landslide had blocked the road.

Welcome to Muong Lay

The "new" town of Muong Lay

The only bright spot in this construction hell was the confluence of the Da and Na Rivers as well as the bridge spanning the Da. It gave you an idea of how this valley probably looked like before the dam’s “ground-breaking ceremony”. We drove on searching for some interesting historical vestiges a few kilometres to the west of this town: the ruins of Deo Van Long’s House and the Le Loi stele. Deo Van Long was the head of the Deo family, a ruling family of the White Thai, who were co-opted by the French to rule the Northwest in their name – the old game of divide-and-rule. Mr. Long, the last of a long line of Deo patriarchs, stayed loyal to the French till the end. He fled the country in 1953 and spent the rest of his life in France. As for the Le Loi stele, it was erected by the retinue of one of Vietnam's most famous Kings Le Thai To (known as Le Loi before his coronation and during his war of resistance against yet another Chinese occupation of Vietnam in the 15^th century CE). The occasion was the suppression of a rebellion by a forefather of Deo Van Long – one Deo Cat Han – in 1432. The poem on the stele reasserts the rule of the Viet over this remote mountainous region – this turned out not be very successfully though. Regrettably we were unable to find those locations in all the construction chaos, so we aborted this plan and turned further north towards the mountain village of Sin Ho.

The future dam across the Na River

Somewhere around here the old town used to be

The old bridge across the Da River, after the confluence of with the Na

The Na upriver of the dam

A makeshift clearance of a recent landslide on Road 12. Landslides are a constant cause of destruction, obstruction and casualties in the Northwest; not least due to the heavy deforestation

After crossing over into Lai Chau Province the road condition gradually improved again. And after a few kilometres we took a small road out of the valley upwards toward Sin Ho. The road and the scenery would have been awesome if it weren’t for the rain and fog. So sadly no pictures of the ascent. After reaching the top we hoped we could at least get an idea of the beauty of this spot.

Welcome to Sin Ho - no idea how we took that picture without rain?? (see below)

Sin Ho: village centre

Sin Ho lies on a small high plain surrounded by karst mountains. Unfortunately, the weather got worse and with it the visibility. We went looking for the only hotel in town – and couldn’t find it. No use, we had to ask. I entered a barber shop near the towns central plaza asking for directions and gave them a hell of a fright – all of them started backing away from me and pointing at one guy, who seemed very uncomfortable for being chosen to communicate with the “big nosed guy”. But after I asked him about the hotel in my rudimentary Vietnamese they all warmed up and directed me to the place. The three girls of the reception were even more astounded when they saw us entering and found out that we were travelling without a Vietnamese guide. We didn’t have a permit – there are some areas in Vietnam were you still have to apply for a permit at the provincial capitals if you are a foreigner – but then they didn’t ask for it. We got a nice enough room with beds as hard as stone.

Thanh Binh Hotel - the only one in the village. They even had a swimming pool - which was used as a storage facility...

Possibly a stilt house of the Lu people - they are related to the Tay-Thai ethnicities and live in these environs

One view from our hotel after the sun came out in the late afternoon

Sin Ho as seen from the hotel

Looks like some road plan to bypass the village centre

Later that afternoon we got lucky and the sun came out; so we went for a late afternoon photo trip.

The mountains northwest of the village

For dinner they asked us what we would like and then brought the stuff fresh from the market and prepared it for us: Beef with onions, tender morning glory (water spinach), fried trout, and rice … and of course cold beer. Delicious!!

Absolutely not ... please, please, please, please, please...