Bac Ha

We arrived in Hanoi and stayed in a hotel in the beautiful old quarter, that had another hotel going up next door. (Nearly everywhere we stayed in Vietnam had a new hotel going up next door – a measure of the booming tourist trade, which is presumably a good thing for the locals, but not so peaceful for us!) Everyone went to the fascinating and brilliantly curated Museum of Ethnology – everyone except me, that is. I was back at the hotel being sick, after foolishly having taken painkillers on an empty stomach.
In the evening, we left most of our luggage at the hotel and took the overnight train to Lo Cai. (Thankfully I had recovered by then.) This northern-most town is just across the river from China – you can wave to it from there! Locals travel across the bridge every day to buy up cheap and nasty Chinese goods for resale in Vietnam. There we met our regional guide and had breakfast in a cafe.

Then we piled into a minibus and drove up into the mountains to Bac Ha, where the Sunday market was in full swing. Thousands of tribal Hmong people walk into town from their mountain villages to sell their wares and buy supplies, eat weird/scary-looking stuff (I'm not even going there) and drink too much of the impressively strong local corn liquor.

The Hmong women all dress in traditional garb: bright, multicoloured, beaded and cross-stitch embroidered skirts, tops, scarves and wraps. It's one of those aesthetics where too much embellishment is barely enough. The effect is utterly delightful. I bought one of the skirts, and several pieces of cross-stitch embroidery, as well as some beautiful and intricate batik printed cotton.
Later, we went on a short hike nearby where we visited an elderly man whose nickname we were told was Uncle Ho (we assumed from this that he had once been in the Viet Cong). Full of charm and vitality, he pressed corn liquor on us (no was simply not taken for an answer in his house), played a local instrument made of bamboo, sang and danced. It was very much an interactive experience: we were encouraged to play and dance too, to amusing effect.
We tottered back to the hotel, feeling the effects of the corn wine. On the way we encountered some young Flower Hmong girls who were cross-stitching as they walked.

Mui Ne and Dalat

(Written 24 September 2008)

We left Saigon for Mui Ne, a beach-side town, where we stayed in a pleasant resort that is usually frequented by Vietnamese tourists. These have a habit of all going together in large family groups, of bringing their own food and snacks (they want it cooked just they way they are used to) and of singing songs in a rousing chorus before and after dinner, more and more drunkenly. Unlike your average Australians would be, drinking beer in such large groups, these people were all rather sweet and not at all offensive in their behaviour.

Next door was the almost unbelievably opulent Pandanus resort. No matter where you go in the world, you can always find somewhere to stay that will cost you hundreds of US dollars a night. This was one of those. We cheekily made full use of its facilities: silk weaving demonstrations in the vast lobby, full body massages in the spa and swimming in the fabulous, undulating pool.

Then it was on to Dalat in the mountains, where the French were once wont to go to escape the heat, and where they had built many large and beautiful villas that are now lived in by the well-off, when they are not sadly abandoned instead. People in Dalat are noticeably fashion-conscious, and tend to pile on the layers, despite the fact that it's not really all that cold.

We visited a silk factory, where you can wander about freely to observe the whole process. Large trays of silk worm cocoons are fed into troughs of hot water, which softens the threads and kills the worms. Women then remove the outer layer, and find the end of the silk thread. Ten strands are then put together to make one yarn, and are wound p above the trough, where the cocoons bob about as they unravel. When they are spent, the silk worms are collected (apparently they make good eating). On the other side of the room, the yarn is woven into fine, jacquard patterned fabric, using looms that still have punched cards to determine the pattern.

Later, we went to a small place that makes beautiful hand-woven cloth, where we bought up big and were entertained by a very cheeky little girl who played hide and seek with us.

In the afternoon, we went to the head office of a silk embroidery company, which is set up as a museum complete with tour guide and a series of shops at the exit. the embroideries are of an extremely high level of skill, and frequently of an enormous size. The embroiderers are considered artists and their job is a calling.

In one of the galleries they have displayed a piece that was made by a woman who had worked in a tea shop. She watched the embroiderers going to work each day and decided that it must be an easy job, so she applied to learn the trade. When she had finished this particular piece, she was asked to unpick her mistakes and to change some of the colours she had chosen. Instead, she cut slashes through it. It was the most perfect expression of the frustration of this kind of high-precision work. As our group are all crafters, we could very much relate! Fortunately, the company decided to assist her to continue and she is now one of their highly skilled artists. They decided to display the slashed work as an illustration of how difficult the work can be. (Not that we were in any doubt!)