Our morning hike was up the mountain. Families were working, clearing terraced rice fields. Oxen were taking mud baths. We watched men on motorbikes dragging scores of long bamboo poles. We visited a pre-school where I could finally take pictures of children.
On a bridge, over a dry riverbed, Louis explained the purpose of a split-log bench. I’m too tired now to remember the specifics, but when a child is ill, he or she is placed on the bench and the spirits creating the disease are drained down, through the split wood and into the river. I remember the three of us talking about similar customs in other cultures.
Lunch was in a town on a main road. We briefly met two more French women. They left, and our French friends from last night showed up. Louis cooked for us and we all had lunch together, then they took off (very apprehensively) as passengers on motorbikes back to Sapa.
We resumed our walk, this time down a steep gully. A few times, we had to get out of the way of children herding oxen. One little boy threw his arm around a baby ox as if they were best buddies. The landscape was beautiful, but I was so intent on protecting my knees, it was hard to appreciate the view. Eventually, I asked that we get back on the road. Between my knees and Rachelle’s blister, it was the smart thing to do.
Back on the big road, it got really hot. Once we got closer to Ban Ho Village, we could see the hydroelectric project. There were hot springs not too long ago. Now we saw a huge pipe and heard the steady, shrill sound of the water pressure. The mountain above the pipe is sheared like a huge scar. Everyone living nearby was relocated, only the foundations of their houses remain.
A few steps on, we found beautiful spacious homes of lacquered wood. We walked through the town, over a suspension bridge to our homestay. The two French women we briefly encountered at lunch are also there. The Homestay family, of Red Dzao origin, have a beautiful vegetable garden, pigs, chickens and a hammock.
We found our sleeping spaces upstairs, similar set up to the previous homestay. Then we hung-out until dinner. We talked a bit with our host. He worked in the tourist industry as a driver for over 20 years, a few of them in Germany. The two French women go trekking all over the world.
It’s 5am now and I’m in the hammock listening to the town awaken. Roosters, barking dogs and motorbikes competing for my ears. The crickets win hands down. We are near the river and they never stop. Something too large to be anything but a bat just flew by. At 6am, the entire village is treated to government-sponsored news by loudspeakers placed everywhere.
