Hiking in north Vietnam’s limestone mountains

The hiking trip is all set: three days and two nights in Vietnam’s nature reserve, an experience with ethnic tribes on rice terraces amidst a limestone landscape. Our guide knows this place by heart, every turn of the ridges and hidden waterfalls and shorter trails, every native house where tourists like us will have to stay. We set off in pairs, in puny 100cc motorbikes riding through 130 kilometers of the country’s ephemeral rural setting – the rice paddies that may one day give way to modern development, small towns bustling with artisans and vegetable markets, vast plantations of sugar cane, and the vision of what was once the heart of Indochina. The Pu Luong conservation area is Vietnam’s answer to ecotourism. It was declared a reserve only in the past two years, effectively putting a stop to logging and keeping the enclave as alluring and authentic as possible in the eyes of foreign tourists who see Vietnam with a weight for history in this corner of Asia. Our starting point was in a province called Ninh Binh, about 100 kilometers south of Hanoi, the capital, straight down Highway Number One. A travel agent in Hanoi was trying to discourage us from going to Ninh Binh – nothing to see there, he said – but that already gave us a hint that it would not be saturated with tourists as Sapa to the north and Hulong Bay to the east.

The ‘guesthouse’ in the town center is like a factory mill of backpackers coming and going from any length of the country. The town is engulfed with dust, a result of a construction boom and a busy, crazy highway looking so apocalyptic against fields lying fallow, quiet Buddhist temples, and labyrinthine villages where folks greet strangers with ‘Bonjour’ and children call out, ‘What is your name?’ Our guide has done this often, about eight times a month he calculates, like a man hungry for the air of the mountains. He knows how to pack our things on the bike and is equipped with extra jackets, plastic bags, and raincoats. He’s got a talent for vulcanizing tires, as he did towards the end of our trip when one of the motorbikes went flat. It is easy to remember his name: Truong. It means ‘school’ in Vietnamese, buildings that stood prominent and bigger than other structures built from communist years whose red flags of a yellow star are tattered and un-glorified, as though a hard-core ideology of the past century had never set foot on this land. There were hardly any propaganda billboards. I saw a statue of Ho Chi Minh once, a man still revered, in a nation that drove out the colonial French and crushed the Americans. Rice terraces, and a lunar eclipse It rains as we leave Ninh Binh, adding to the chill of the winter season in December, the cold coming from the northern frontier in China. We stop on the roadside to bundle up, watching a wedding parade go past, trailed by a swarm of motorbikes that are the mode of transport, a lifestyle upgrade from the ubiquitous bicycles. It seems there are weddings everywhere we go, from a bride among passengers on my flight, to couples posing for souvenir photos by Hanoi’s swank hotels and on the steps of the Opera fashioned after the original in Paris, to villages pulling oxcarts laden with tables and chairs for the nuptial parties. Could this be a sign of Vietnam’s thrill of plunging into capitalism, that they are ready to rise and move towards economic prosperity? On our first day, we arrive in the small village of Hieu, the southern edge of the sprawling 17,200-hectare nature park in Thanh Hoa province. Mid-afternoon, we chance upon high school students pedaling home in their bicycles, wearing their blue-and-white jacket uniform. All the girls have ponytails down the length of their backs. They smile at us; we are rare. They know this park is gaining reputation among foreigners. But it feels as though it is just us, the first to tread this piece of land, all for us as we want it. Not once did we come across other tourists. Taking a leisurely walk, we snap pictures of the bamboo water mills that feed into the irrigation, dozens of ducks on ponds, water buffaloes that are so familiar from home. We remove our sweater and windbreakers, perspiring from the hike. As it gets steeper, I start to whine. What Truong says would take only six kilometers was beginning to take a toll on an uphill slope. We reach the home-stay shelter by nightfall. There is an eclipse tonight, giving a bare silhouette of the rice terraces. We have only reached as high as 500 meters. The homes of these ethnic tribes are similar renditions of the kalangbanwa of the Pala’wan or the longhouses of Borneo – erected on solid tree trunks, with floors of split bamboo, and thatched roofs. The owners of the house are a young, mixed couple of the White Thai and the Muong, who offer us tea as their greeting. We sit huddled for dinner. Truong is the master chef, serving us the best of homemade cuisine of pho noodle soup, tofu with dill sauce, and papaya salad. He is in demand; even here his cell phone keeps ringing and his voice shatters the silence. We celebrate the evening with cheers over rice wine. As if rehearsing their part that may otherwise not be habitual, our hosts sets up a cloth partition for our sleeping quarters in the spacious house, unfurling cushions, providing us with warm pillows and thick blankets for the chilly night. There is a television by my corner and a satellite dish outside the window. We sleep early tonight from the fatigue of the day. In the morning, the young woman of the house boils water for our bath. It surprises me that their bathroom is made of modern plumbing and pumps out spring water. Just as we are having our breakfast of banana pancake (again concocted by Truong), the wife begs to take her leave, carrying a woven basket on her back to start her day in the fields. Her appearance of frailty belies her strength for manual labor, and I would see that strength among women in Vietnam; they even shovel gravel or carry concrete bags to build roads. Down the Ho Chi Minh highway Our second day, as announced by Truong, is a trek of about 15 kilometers. But you can take your time in the morning, he says. In my moments of cynicism, I ask myself why I pay 40 U.S. dollars a day for a hiking trip that I could very well do back home and with rice terraces to boot, in Banaue. It may well be that, here, the limestone mountains loom over us, casting mystery. Or was I taken in by the bamboo forests, scattering a vibrant green over the grayness of the clouds and the rocks and the empty fields? Did the red bloom of the poinsettias charm us as it appeared here and there on our trail? Were we awed by the villagers harvesting manioc, or fascinated by the elderly tribal women welcoming us with open smiles of their betel-stained teeth? We take a lunch break of noodles in another house where the TV was on to a program of Vietnam Idol. The trek is easier on the flattened pathways of the rice fields, like walking on the edges of the earth. Two in our group undressed right there and then to dip into the clear pool formed by the cascading waterfall. That night Truong drinks a bit of the rice wine, and on the morning of our last day he goofs around the shortcuts of the trail. Just when I think the trip is done, the best part of it comes at the very end: on the way back to Ninh Binh, after Truong stops us smack in the middle of the highway to show us a part of the famous and historical Ho Chi Minh Highway that connects the north and the south of the country’s elongated mass, we take a ride through the water reservoir that the French had helped to build. I have read somewhere that heaven and earth trade places in Vietnam – and here we are going through it, kilometer after kilometer. There is no way back to the past or the future, it is as it is despite the motion of our motorcycle. Vietnam’s transition is on hold; there is a very keen sensation that we are part of a canvas of a brush painting, a watercolor. This must be why the French had come here, the country of Marguerite Duras’s lover. Back in Ninh Binh, we choose to stay somewhere quiet outside the town, in Chez Loan, which is owned by a friendly francophone Vietnamese woman. ‘Ici on parle Francais et on peut apprendre la cuisine Vietnamienne,’ says a sign outside the tall, solitary narrow column of a building typical in the north, a combination of the Orient and of Europe in ochre. It means “Here we speak French and one can learn Vietnamese cuisine," aptly describing our host who made a good hot pot on a quiet Christmas Eve. The limestones are within distance, and tourists also flock here for the Tam Coc and Cam Ang caves which are actually tunnels of waterways. After the hike in Pu Luong this becomes anti-climactic and it is best to just stroll the rice fields, seeing rare birds along the way. Most of the time there would be massive flocks of egrets, swirling around the jutted rocks like a white ribbon. – YA, GMANews.TV