As we were booking our Spring Break travel, Vietnam began talks of opening the country to foreign tourism, doing away with the mandatory quarantine period for vaccinated visitors. Just weeks before we went on break, Vietnam opened to foreigners. This is a first for the country since March 2020, ending the headache for us going home to see family and has now opened the opportunity again to visit neighboring countries.
As we booked our trip already, we were happy to continue as planned. First, we went to the beach town of Cam Ranh, thanks to a voucher from a Tet party we received from friends who never got the chance to use it before they departed Vietnam. For two nights, we had our own villa and pool, with daily spa treatment and a view of the ocean for our meals. We were well taken care of.
After our relaxing beach vacation, we took a flight to Hanoi and a 4.5 hour car ride to the province of Pu Luong. We began the drive at dusk with a great local driver and a spacious car. The fog covering the city was dense, foreboding what was coming in the mountains.
The drive up was largely uneventful; our stop involved some local Vietnamese food with our driver. As we approached the homestay, the fog worsened to the point that the driver’s only tactic was flicking the brights on and off with some hope that would help him see where he was going. Going up a mountain on countryside roads with no streetlights would generally be challenging enough. By taking sight out of the equation, the drive became innumerably more difficult. After missing a turn and asking a local for directions, we got back on the right track and pulled up to the homestay at 11pm.
The homestay is called the Pu Luong Tree House. The homestay is situated between two large rice paddies, nestled in the mountains. The village had virtually no tourism about seven years ago, when the homestay was built. Apparently, only one homestay existed in the area before the tree houses were built. Now, about 22 homestays have popped up in the area, due to the natural beauty of the landscape.
As we woke up the next morning, amidst the lingering fog, the view from our humble tree house came into focus. Quite different from the concrete jungle I usually wake up to in the mornings in Saigon. Layers of rice paddies were sprinkled with traditional Vietnamese homes, with some farmers tending to their patches in the valley.
On our first day, we took one of the semi-automatic motorbikes out for a ride, needing to remember how to switch gears and use a foot pedal for the break. We visited some fields about 10 km away with wooden water wheels to irrigate the fields. The rice paddy workers are akin to water engineers. After awing at their ingenuity, we hopped back on the bike to find some bamboo rafts to explore the river. After driving on some bamboo log bridges and very local roads for an impressive amount of time, we found the place so we can go for a short boat trip. We were “paddled out” through the jungle, surrounded by mountains on either side. The man paddles by pressing a long bamboo stick into the ground and pushing. This technique would struggle in deeper waters. After our afternoon of exploring, we made it home before it became too dark.
After an early night, we woke up to a clearer sky the following morning. Good thing, as we had a walk planned with the manager of the homestay. On our walk, we saw a tree get cut down over the road with about 8 men pulling on a rope to ensure it didn’t fall onto the shop across the street. We saw quite a few homes being built, and politely declined an invitation to drink rice wine with one of the construction crews. Our walk ended by walking through the rice paddies, my first time ever walking through them. The paddies are flooded with water, having intricate irrigation systems and a maze of pathways just large enough for the width of my shoe.
After returning to some fresh lime juice and lunch, we took the motorbike back out to visit Hieu Waterfall. A few of the roads traveled could have been mistaken as rollercoasters, as the way was intensely steep. Upon our arrival, a squad of locals also entered the waterfall area. We all jumped in and they showed me the best places to climb up to the top of the falls. After taking some pictures and hanging out with my new friends, Elseline and I enjoyed hanging out at the waterfall for a while. We even found a little cave underneath the falls that we ducked into.
We had two different activities on our itinerary in the afternoon. Upon finishing our swim at the falls, we set back out on the bike to find the bat cave. On our way, we stopped at a construction site to ask for the best place to get gas. One jumped on a motorbike to fetch a liter and a half of petrol while another sat on the bike and revved the engine way too many times. The man came back with some gas and we continued on our way, for roughly two minutes. As I drove away, the bike began to sputter. I told Elseline that something seemed wrong with the bike. Soon, the bike died on a less traveled road. After trying to fix the bike ourselves (my vast knowledge of fixing motorbikes includes watching Vietnamese who have fixed bikes on the side of the road), our efforts failed. Luckily, a man stopped when he saw us broken down and fixed the problem for us. Whatever the revving man did to break the bike, our newest friend came to the rescue. We continued on our way.
After another rollercoaster ride on a steep and narrow path down a mountain, we arrived at a small village and large cave tucked into one of the mountains. Kho Muong Cave is enormous, much grander than expected. I ventured inside the cave and walked to the bottom. Bats could be heard overhead as I did my best not to look up, avoiding misfortune caused by any misplaced droppings. We left the cave and made it back home again right before darkness fell upon the countryside.
During our final morning, we took a longer walk through the countryside with the manager of the homestay, where I played with my macro camera lens. My favorite shots were of these small pink eggs left on blades of grass right next to water. Huy told us these are snail eggs. As we returned from our 10 km hike, we took a dip in the pool and had some lunch before getting back into our transport bound for Hanoi.
As we arrive back to Saigon, we are now on the final homestretch of my seventh year teaching internationally. While each year has presented their own challenges, this year has seemed more trying than the rest. This summer, we will be spending some of our time in the Netherlands, some time apart with our own families, and then ending with Elseline joining me in the States in mid July. We look forward to connecting with more family and friends in the coming months.