April 8th, 2010

Today was rather uneventful, but pleasant just the same. We left Hanoi around 10:30 for our journey northwest to the mountains and the tribal village of Mai Chau, but first headed to the airport to pick up Dan (Hodes) who’d just flown in from LA to join us. Lam, our great guide, called a friend and got a recommendation for a place to stop for lunch. We ended up at a typical family-owned roadside café. Lam did the ordering while the kids kicked around the soccer ball in the adjoining courtyard. We were treated to some soup, of course (!), an egg dish which was quite good, yummy fried noodles with pumpkin greens, chicken in a clay pot, and a goat dish, we none of us ate! The chicken was a little too fresh for us, having just been killed for our lunch. L

As we continued on our way, the scenery became more and more beautiful. The sun had finally decided to show itself as we started our ascent up the mountains. This area is an agricultural one where every little morsel of land is used for crops. Besides the beautiful rice paddies – some are large fields, others are amazing wavy formations – there is mostly sugar cane. It’s so interesting to see how the cane grows both on the steep hillsides as well as on flat land. Occasionally we saw the terraced green tea plants as well.

Eventually we were smack in the mountains, reaching an altitude of 1000 meters-almost like Denver! These mountains are quite different. Instead of being a whole range, there are many individual lush “cones”. They are beautiful and a bit strange!

As we drove through the district of Mai Chau, along one of the highest points on the road, we saw a small town in the valley. It was amazing to us how much this reminded us all of Telluride!

When we reached the Mai Chau lodge in the village, it was almost 6:00. The kids were anxious to go swimming so we decided to relax and do nothing until dinner!

Marla and I sat out by the pool and shared some wine and a lot of laughs with a lovely woman from London, traveling with her 3 children. Later, Lam walked us all to the village where nibbled at our dinner (none of us were very hungry) and then were treated to a private show of native tribal dances. At the end, we joined in for a dance and then a ceremonial sip of fermented rice water (sweet rice wine) which we all sipped through long bamboo straws!

Tomorrow we’ll go back to the village in daylight so we can check out the homes, which are all built on stilts! More on that in my next post!