Da Bac and Pu Luong villages
As we sat with our knees against our chests in two separate wooden tubs, we wondered whether being boiled alive in mulled wine was the correct choice for the evening’s pre-dinner activity. Our ‘herbal bath’ was a rich crimson in colour, had around 30 types of local leaves, pounded and crushed, and smelt vaguely of cloves and cinnamon. It was also unbearably hot and took us 5 minutes to gingerly lower ourselves into. It included mugwort for pain relief (somewhat ironic), star anise for constipation and Vietnamese coriander for diarrhoea. At least we were covered on the healthy bowel front as our skin was slowly flayed from our bodies.
To our credit we lasted about 15 minutes. The old woman who’d lugged many buckets of steaming water to fill our tubs seemed impressed. That’s what we took her grunts for anyway. To be fair, once out, we felt on top of the world. Endorphins flooded our system and we had a very hearty appetite. Or maybe that was simply relief at escaping our watery furnace.
Sung village house with outdoor ‘wardrobe’
This was one of the activities we’d signed up for as part of a visit to the tiny village of Sung in north-western Vietnam, where the local populace had established a fledgling community based tourism enterprise. Located in the remote Da Bac region, Sung has around 30 traditional wooden houses, 3 of which have been turned into homestays for tourists. We were a party of three, Helen, myself and a girl from Somerset called Molly and stayed in a couple of lodgings with incredibly welcoming hosts. Over a few days we got to do a variety of things, all of which help boost the village income and provide visitors with an insight into the skills, traditions and simple ways of life in the village.
Sung village, Da Bac
Sung village, Da Bac
Sung village, Da Bac
Whilst we soaked ourselves, our new friend Molly tried her hand at indigo dyeing using a bees-wax technique, where small metal rods are used to apply hot wax in specific patterns before the dye is applied. Unlike our experience in Japan, here indigo dye is considered sacred and no mere foreigner is allowed anywhere near it. Nor are menstruating women, those who’ve recently had a death in the family, or those who’ve just killed a pig. It’s made using a very hit & miss technique and the production of a batch will often fail. When it does work however, the effect is to produce an incredible and wonderfully rich, dark colour. As we wandered around the village later we saw many batches of traditional material drying on racks, raised lines of beeswax still in place and awaiting removal via a quick boiling operation.
The three of us also tried our hands at traditional paper making. A newly resurrected factory produces beautiful rough & ready sheets of thick paper using the pulp of several local tree varieties. About 10 women are employed here, some chopping up & stripping branches, some mulching the strips with water and some using filter trays to create uniform sheets of wet paper ready to be pressed and dried. It’s a small but healthy business and has orders from all around Asia. We had a go at creating a design using ferns and other leaves, sandwiched between two sheets of paper that we filtered-out ourselves. The technique is to grab the tray with both hands, dip it at 90 degrees into a vat of pulpy liquid, bring it towards yourself then raise it, all in one continuous motion, then shake the tray a few times and quickly dispose of the excess liquid. Repeating the process again gives you one large sheet of paper which you can then remove from the tray via a bamboo mat. Helen tried it first. In and out, quick shake, done. She repeated the action again to the same effect and produced 2 perfect pieces of paper, first time, in about 20 seconds. The local women were amazed. I tried it next. It took me 10 attempts and a good 5 minutes to get it right. Molly was even worse. Only one of us has prospects of employment there…
Our homestay hostess, Sung village
We also met a master of ancient Chinese writing, one of only three people in the village capable of writing traditional Chinese script. Though revered like an elderly statesman, he was a lovely guy and took some time to write out a few examples he thought we could copy using simple calligraphy. Sung is a Dao village, one of several ethnic minorities in Vietnam that are of Chinese origin. A number of groups were exiled, in effect, from China around 700 years ago and many found new homes here or in Laos & Thailand. Though now fiercely Vietnamese, the village still clings to its distant past and maintains traditions such as these as a means to celebrate their own distinct identity. We all had a go at mimicking the master’s technique and all, to be fair, made a pretty decent stab at it.
Paper factory, Sung village
Making paper, Sung village
Chinese calligraphy master
Indigo dress models, Sung village
We were accompanied here by a guide, Quang, a young Vietnamese lad with perfect English without whom a trip like this would have been almost impossible. Not only was he blessed with a sense of humour akin to our own, he was also not shy of showing us the more negative aspects of life in Vietnam as well as success stories like the paper mill. We toured the village with him, discovering how people survive on the poor agricultural land here, using cassava and corn as main crops, and how their attempt to boost income via a trickle of tourism is being thwarted by the government. It seems the place was once frequented by Vietnamese tourists, mainly in summer, attracted by its wealth of traditional buildings. A wooden schoolroom was apparently a big draw here, built by the locals several years back and used as a centre for traditional Chinese education for the surrounding area. But for reasons no-one could fathom, a government work-force suddenly appeared about a year ago, removed the wooden structure and replaced the whole lot with an ugly concrete replica. They did the same thing at a nearby cave, shifting out an old stone staircase and replacing it with a concrete monstrosity. As a result, Vietnamese tourist companies have now removed the village from their itinerary, leaving local businesses with no compensation and a reliance on the miniscule amount of European visitors that occasionally turn up, like us, in the winter.
Molly left at this point, but we stayed on for a few more days. We met a very enterprising local woman and helped her with a new business idea. We’d signed up to do a bit of ‘farming’ which at first involved Quang and myself laboriously digging up cassava plants with a sharpened stick, a back-breaking and very sweaty endeavour. We soon realised that we’d all be better employed helping her with her new venture, a farmstay on a patch of land above the village that she was creating in the hope it would attract a different kind of visitor. She took us to the grounds high above her cassava plantation and showed us a few rudimentary huts she’d built and the grounds she intended would become a vegetable patch. Her idea was based on a pick and cook your own food experience where people could come and switch off from daily life and spend a few days gazing out over the wonderful scenery below. With the aid of some brutal scythe like implements that wouldn’t look out of place in a torture chamber, we got stuck in clearing a large patch of land covered in scruffy plants and weeds, chatting all the while about our respective experiences. We continued until the sun started to set. It was a truly wonderful few hours. Later, as we tucked into some roasted cassava (tasting of baked potato it felt like a real treat), she asked for our opinions on the plan and we gave her loads of gratefully received advice.
Countryside around Sung village
Cassava farming
Cassava cooking
Fledgling farmstay above Sung village
Clearing the ground above Sung village
After the sun had gone down we went back to her house, a simple wooden construction with a large sleeping area and a place open at two sides where the cooking took place. We started to help out with some of the preparation, stuffing some pork and onions into a large tube of bamboo, bunged-up at one end with a scrunched up banana leaf and due to be cooked on the open fire. We were distracted though by the woman’s father when he produced a tub-full of large dead rats, which he proceeded to chuck onto another fire burning away outside the house in the yard. We joined him with his rat roasting. The technique, if one can call it that, is to flop a whole rat onto a metal grill above the flames, wait until it starts to char, then scrape off the fur with a knife. It takes a while to do this and you end up with a very blackened little beastie. At some point when it cools down, the disembowelling takes place and then the remains are hung up to dry, like jerky, for several days. A few days later in a marketplace I saw groups of rats skewered on thin bamboo rods (up the backside, out through the mouth) ready for nibbling. A most tasty looking treat indeed….
By the time we’d finished with the rodents, our dinner was ready. Our hosts plied us with rice wine, some of which was eye-wateringly strong and apparently quite rare (we must have made a good impression as visitors rarely get this treatment it seems), and a few drags on their bong pipe. A most entertaining and wonderfully welcoming evening in simple surroundings with lovely, generous people to top-off a fabulous day. Another reminder of why we’re travelling like this.
Our host roasts his rat
Preparing to cook pork in bamboo
The day after, we got a transfer to another ethnic minority village around 50km away. Our move involved a fair bit of logistics. We needed to get to the shore of Lake Hoa Binh about an hour’s drive away and the only practical way to do so was via motorbike. We ended up with 5 of them, 3 for Quang, Helen and myself and 2 for our bags. We set off in convoy, bouncing up and down rough roads and taking turns to whizz past each other. The view from the bikes was spectacular – the lake in the distance surrounded by high hills and shimmering in the sunlit mists of the morning.
We were dropped off at the lake shore at a makeshift jetty. Next to this was a massive industrial barge on which large cranes were slowly shifting a huge steel tube into the water. A new highway is being constructed here, in this most bucolic of places, as a means to connect distant towns in the west to Hanoi. In an act of what seemed to us to be monumental folly, the route makes absolutely no concession whatsoever for the beauty of the lake or any nearby villages that happen to be in its path. Another example of bureaucratic decision making based on dollars alone, regardless of environmental or societal impacts. Vietnam, as we’re discovering, is incredibly beautiful but run by one of the most corrupt and inconsiderate governments we’ve ever come across.
View from Phu Mau homestay
A small flat-bottomed steel boat chugged up to the jetty and picked us up and we crossed the lake as the morning’s heat started to rise. A further car journey at the other end eventually brought us to the village of Phu Mau, an ethnically Thai village built using traditional stilt houses. A very different proposition here as our beds were in a communal room, which we shared with Quang – a simple hard mattress on the floor and a blanket as big as a bear to keep out the intense cold of night in the open and draughty room.
Inspecting the cooked rice cakes
Countryside near Phu Mau
A visit to yet another hot springs on this trip was largely forgetable, though pleasant enough, but we had a better time back at the homestay where our hosts taught us to make traditional rice cakes. We spent a couple of hours after dinner (having had a few beers too) rolling up banana leaves into cones, stuffing them with sticky rice and small red beans and tying them up with thin bamboo strips. We also made a few larger square cakes, these with the luxurious added extra of a slab of juicy, fatty pork. Fun though that was, our lady host became hilarious as she recounted how the neighbours once cocked-up their rice cake cooking in a big way. It’s a huge thing here to make these cakes at New Year and families pride themselves beyond reason as to the quality of their produce. Cakes are made much bigger than the ones we were trying out and can take a good 10 or 11 hours to cook in enormous vats of boiling water. People stay up all night to cook them to ensure they’re ready for the big day, as some as required to be taken to the local altar first thing in the morning. The neighbour had apparently fallen asleep and the pot had boiled dry, ruining the cakes – not so much a funny story itself, more the absolute hysterics it inspired in our host as she fell about laughing endlessly about the incident. We laughed along but I guess you must have had to be there…
Towards the end of the evening we were invited into the living room to watch the end of the South-East Asian cup final with the rest of the family, a close run affair that Vietnam edged, beating Thailand 3-2. We thought they might have divided loyalties being of Thai extract, but they cheered the Vietnamese side as loudly as we would our own. We found a common language in our mutual appreciation of the game, affecting mock disgust at over-eager Thailand tackles and cheering together as a Vietnamese forward nutmegged a hapless Thai defender. Marvellous stuff indeed.
We took a walk with Quang in the sunshine next morning, a hot day and slippery terrain, but a lovely short 6 kilometer amble through pristine forest and small hamlets. The homestay’s dog came along with us and we had flashbacks to our episode of losing Rosie at Song Kul lake a few months back. The walk ended at a lovely and extremely cold pool fed by a gently flowing river. We braved the dip for a half hour to show willing, but we were glad to get out and bask like lizards on rocks in the warmth. We met an old lady in a shack there, her mouth and teeth caked red-black from the leaves she’d been chewing over the decades – a little like betel nut where you get a mildly narcotic effect at the expense of your oral good looks. Though a lovely person, when she grinned she looked terrifying. As she slowly stumbled towards us, mouth open, she looked for all the world like a flesh-eating zombie – one who’d just tucked into an unfortunate victim and was now after us.
Countryside near Phu Mau
Countryside near Phu Mau
Cooking in shack near Phu Mau
We retreated back the homestay as pillion passengers on motorbikes. The homestay’s dog gamely ran after us for many miles, but was eventually left behind, exhausted no doubt. The guilt resurfaced again. Quang tried to reassure us that it does this all the time, but he wasn’t convincing and we didn’t believe him. When we left the homestay a few hours later, it still hadn’t turned up.
Then a distinct change of pace. Our time with Quang ended and we moved another 50 kilometers south to the district of Pu Luong, a more established stop on the tourist trail, but a low-key one nonetheless, and even more so in the winter off-season. Here we stayed at the luscious and lovely Lua Lodge, a small collection of round houses made from iron wood, surrounded by banana trees and with views over the countryside. This was the kind of hotel we’d have booked had we been travelling on holiday – a more expensive, well appointed semi-rustic place that just charms the pants off you. Outside our fabulous little house was a small infinity pool. Tough gig this one.
View from Lua Lodge, Pu Luong
Lua Lodge, Pu Luong
View from Lua Lodge, Pu Luong
Pu Luong
Burning paddies, Pu Luong
We’d primarily come here though to trek in the hills, as this time of year in northern Vietnam is just about OK for Westerners as the temperature and humidity level is fairly manageable. Plus it’s also home to some unique and slender waterwheels that are made entirely from bamboo and elegantly irrigate the surrounding rice paddies.
Bamboo waterwheels, Pu Luong
Bamboo waterwheels, Pu Luong
We’d arranged a trek with a guide – not something we’ve ever done before, but pathfinding round here is notoriously tricky and offline maps aren’t up to much. To our mild surprise it turned out to be a good shout as we paired up with the talkative and appropriately named ‘Tung’, a local guy who waxes lyrical about the area and pretty much knows everybody.
Tung took us on a 19 kilometer jaunt up an incredibly steep hill, and down through slippery paths bisecting flooded rice paddies and mini hamlets, again full of wooden stilt houses. It’s between rice seasons in December here, so some paddies were muddy fields with dry stubbly vegetation, but most were full of water softening the ground before the next crop is planted in February. Lush and vivid green rice leaves we didn’t get, but the next best thing – shimmering reflections of the clouds in the hot sunshine.
Trekking in Pu Luong
105 year old resident, Pu Luong
Rice paddies, Pu Luong
Rat-catcher, Pu Luong
Trekking in Pu Luong
We visited the home of an elderly gent who was in the process of chopping up some meat for lunch – a recently caught and rather fat rat. Seems like everybody’s at it. The rat-man also had a bong pipe that Tung eagerly jumped on and lit up a pungent and very strong wad of tobacco. I know this as he thrust it my way and I was obliged to sample the smoke. Tung was very keen on bong pipes. Very keen indeed. He managed, in fact, to find a whole host of pipes that were strewn around the countryside in rather odd places. He found one in a heap of bamboo. He found another in a cow shed. He told us local people create and leave these pipes in well known places, so anyone travelling with a wad of baccy and a lighter can bubble away on one to their hearts content, a practice he was evidently keen to demonstrate.
We had lunch in a local village where, disappointingly, several other tourists were gathered (we’d seen absolutely none until then). Disappointment was soon forgotten though, as the restaurant owner offered us several samples of what he called ‘happy water’, a home-brew kept in grim looking specimen jars containing floating bits of lord knows what. Nothing like 3 shots of random 70% proof liquor followed by a couple of beer chasers to reinvigorate the weary walker. At least we didn’t go blind and we took that as a positive.
Rice paddies near Thac Hieu
The rest of the walk again removed us from the trappings of tourism and we roamed around more fields and paddies, greeting the workers where we found them and felt like we were the first and only westerners around. Tung chose a homestay for us in our final destination, the village of Thac Hieu, a sprawling place built up and around a series of waterfalls. A basic wooden shack but a comfy bed and an attached bathroom. We played with the resident dog whilst we waited for some electricity to materialise (it did eventually), an old and unfortunately silly looking animal whose tongue permanently lolled out of one side of its mouth. “Look at his tongue Tung”, I said, rather humorously, though I think the joke was lost….
Helen was very tired from the heat and exertion. Though it’s winter, it was still extremely hot at times and the effort of the initial climb in the morning had done its work. As a result she opted to take a motorcycle taxi back the next day, leaving Tung and myself to make our way back on foot. The day before we’d avoided a particularly sketchy and difficult 4 kilometer stretch as the day drew to a close and we’d just about had enough. Today however, we tackled it in earnest, Tung striding out at a rapid pace as we scaled a ridiculously steep and slippery incline. I managed to keep up, but only just. I was soaked in sweat from head to toe in a matter of minutes. It was hotter today and the humidity level had seemingly gone up a notch. Quickly tired, soggy, muddy up to my knees, pushing aside foliage in a hard but pristine section of forest. It was exactly what I wanted and I was completely loving it.
I sensed that Tung knew what I was thinking as he pushed on even faster. We’d soon covered the hard section and were back down to a small road, eventually coming to a little market town where his house was situated. After a quick nip inside to make sure his home-alone kids of 5 and 6 were OK (they were) we slowed it down and wandered through the local market. Here were the rats on sticks I mentioned earlier, along with a variety of insect produce too. Local people trawl their flooded paddies with lacrosse-style nets on sticks to catch all manner of delectables to sell here, from little snails to dragonfly babies with undeveloped wings. These are especially delicious fried, apparently. There was also a small arsenal of steel weapons for sale. Massive machetes and enormous Bowie knives in abundance, many like the ones we’d made in Hanoi. You could have started a small war with them. Or at least a mini peasants revolt.
Hills above Thac Hieu
Pu Luong countryside
Rice paddies, Pu Luong
After 13 kilometers or so, as we neared home and in a quiet stretch of forest, I asked Tung what his views were on the communist system in Vietnam. We’d been talking a lot about all manner of things up until then anyway, but now it was like I’d lit a blue touch-paper. It took him a good half-hour of frenzied diatribe to get his opinions off his chest. He wasn’t its greatest advocate, it’s fair to say. Policy and government corruption running rife, rents and taxes astronomical, the poor kept poor by lack of education and proper work opportunities, no communal sharing of the country’s output or emerging wealth, policies stacked against individual progress (a car licence costs a whopping $2,000 here!) – you name it, he railed against it…. It was hard not to agree with all he said, but I felt guilty for bringing the subject up. I asked him if he thought it would change at any time in the foreseeable future. “No,” he said, “not unless Superman is real and decides to visit” was his slightly strange answer, but you get the point.
We left this part of the world once again glad to be alive and revelling in the beauty of the place, despite the obvious challenges and corruption the people are faced with on a daily basis. We felt like we’d stepped back into a world that was completely genuine. We felt welcome here and 99% of the time totally off the beaten track. It could not have been a better antidote to the crushing disappointment of Hanoi in its unbridled commercialism.
Footnote: Though we tried to get our Phu Mau homestay hosts to let us know when their dog had got back safely, they didn’t feel the need and were much more blase about it than their counterparts in Kyrgyzstan. So unlike the happy ending with Rosie we’ve no idea what happened to this one. The dog didn’t have a name. Nothing does. All the cats in Vietnam are referred to as ‘miaow’. No-one is overly sentimental about their animals here.
Simon (23rd December 2025)
I really hope you didn’t try the rats. Stick to rice. Sounds very exciting making things you haven’t made before. Well done.
We tried to have some rat, but the homestay wanted to keep them to dry out and sell later. Reading between the lines, we suspect they may have been trying to protect us / them from any problems if we’d eaten any. I think the thought of potentially giving us food poisoning might have had a very bad impact on the already fragile state of tourism there (which is fair enough to be honest)…
What a trip!
Sounds as though you have found new jobs in paper making & growing your own food…not so sure about the rats though as a source of protein .
Take care and Happy New Year to you both x
Happy New Year to you Clove. We should get jobs as tourism consultants the amount we’re doing…!!
Yes I was wondering if you tried the rats too?? Sounds like a great visit and better than Hanoi. Your skin should be glowing between sweat and the hot soakings 😂.
Alas, no rats were consumed despite my asking – see my response above. We both look 20 years younger now though (I wish)