Liz and Jim Patton

The mountainous region of northeastern Vietnam, populated mostly by groups of Hmong, Tay and Zao who come here from China several hundred years ago, has been under dispute with China since the late ‘70’s. It has recently been opened for travel. Tourists today are mostly from China and other parts of Vietnam so it’s fairly untouched. Seeing this area is the main reason we came to Vietnam.

To get to here was a full day drive from Hanoi, a change in altitude, and a large change in wealth and amenities. Here there are guest houses, not hotels. The rooms are unheated, always chilly and damp. Bathrooms have western fixtures, but no tubs – just showers that pour onto the floor and although that works well, walking through them afterwards is pretty slippery. The beds are different from any I have ever used – like plywood, but surprisingly good to sleep on. Most interesting are the lobbies, which are a combination of garage (our van drives right up to the check-in desk and spends the night) banquet hall, bar and restaurant. All completely open and unheated.

We spend some time visiting villages and homes. In general, houses of the minority tribes are built on stilts, with animals kept underneath. This comes from a time when they needed protection from wild animals, but it also provides some safety and warmth for them today. Upstairs is the main part of the house. In very prosperous homes there is a kitchen, a television, glass in the windows, and an open sleeping area. Upstairs, under the thatched roof, is storage and more sleeping. In most of the homes there is a pit for a fire that is used for cooking, and stacks of vegetables on the main floor.

The priorities for a man of these tribes are three. First he needs to get some land and a water buffalo to farm it. Second, he takes a wife. Third, he builds a house. The house is a long process – one of the nicer ones we visited took fifteen years, during which the man found the lumber and cut it, fashioned the logs for tongue-in-groove, then assembled it with the help of other villagers.

The economy is subsistence farming with some sales at local markets. The land here is all mountainous, very steep, often very rocky. In the years that these people have been here the mountains have been stripped of their original forest, then terraced for planting. Everywhere the mountainside has been worked into flat areas, some only a foot or two wide – and soil carried up from the valley to fill it. There is not so much rice here– that is mostly at the bottom, – but many vegetables. In the worst places, between rocks and on very steep areas, are sugar cane and corn. We see people at every level working. This is winter, so most of it is in building new terraces using hand tools and bringing up soil in baskets.

Today is Tiger Day, Saturday, and we plant to go to a huge market in Minh Tan. It’s an hour drive from_our night Yen Minh, over a pass on the narrow, very windy mountain road that connects all of these villages. The drives are fascinating, scarily high with lots of passing on curves and little visibility in the fog. There’s not much point in being nervous, or in wearing a seatbelt – as Maynard points out, if we go off the edge a seatbelt will not matter.
We are hurrying to the market when suddenly Cao says “Oh no – bad luck” and then a couple of other things in Vietnamese. We can see across the valley that our road is blocked by a cement truck. Scooters are going around it but there isn’t enough room for anything larger. The driver and a couple of the scooter men stand around and scratch their heads.

We get close to the truck. Cao and our driver run up to it, Jim and Maynard follow with their cameras. There is about ten minutes of trying to get the truck to move, but it’s stuck across a hairpin, the drive wheels behind the cab skidding on mud on the inside and gravel on the outside. Finally the men start to pile gravel on the outside of the truck to give us more “road” to maneuver around. Ginny and I get out of the van and run ahead as the driver inches past on the out (downhill) side. And he makes it, with only one major scratching sound.

And we are off to market!

And what a market it is. Probably five hundred people in the mist and rain and mud, selling and buying everything from pregnant pigs to cell phones and flat screened TVs. I get Jim to take a picture of some of the pigs, and our driver translates for us the owner saying in wonder “Why are they taking a picture of filthy pigs?”
It’s not just a market, it’s the social event of the week. The women group and regroup into clutches talking and drinking tea. Teenagers walk around in groups, eyeing other groups of the opposite sex, then pairing up and slipping off. The men have their own way of being social, using corn liquor. By 11:30 AM when we leave many of them are blasted. They stagger and become friendly. Several walk up to Jim and ask to have their picture taken; one hugs him when he sees it on the display. The way back for most of these people to walk, purchases carried on their backs. I have no idea how the women get their husbands home.