Saturday, November 1, 2008

North Vietnam tour: Day 1: Walk About in Bac Ha

Me, Ju and Tom went on a little outing as thing were toning down in the project. Signed up for a Bac Ha-Lao Cai-Sapa package in Vietnam.Took a train from Ga Hanoi train station on Friday night. Nice sleeping coach (4 to a unit). Reached Lao Cai around 5:30am. Had local breakfast at a little local touring company designated restaurant.

We then head out to visit the famous Can Cau market which according to our guide comprise of 6 hill ethic tribes i.e. Flower H'mong, Phu La, Black Dzao etc. whom convene only on the weekly Saturday to sell their wares. In general they are known as the Flowery H'mong due to the local hand weave bright and vivid colour cloths they wore.

The journey was pretty bumpy at part due to road works and poor maintenance which lasted around 2.5 hours. We spend a couple of hours or so wandering around the market which is broken into the food section, the souvenior section, the food section, the cloth and the live stock market. The locals and the market was filled with a vast array of color making it a photographer dream. As it turned out, our visit during this time was on the brink of the rainy/autumn season(soon to be winter), it would be definately very vibrant in colour if we came during summer time.

Later on in the afternoon, we headed back to Lao Cai for lunch at then set out to vist a minority village which is a few kilometer hike away.  Took some of these shots on the way to the village.



Reached Loa Cai again at around 6pm for dinner and sleep!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

good pics bro... lucky guy..

Lee said...

thanks