Vietnam - Thanh Hóa to Pù Luông

It was a grey day and a slow start. Lilz was still recovering. Our 33 miles cycle today would take us away from the awful Ho Chi Minh highway and up into the beautiful scenic hillsides of Pù Luông where we’d have two days rest.

Four hours southwest of Hanoi by car, Pù Luông is a nature reserve encompassing deep valleys enclosed by steep limestone mountains effectively cutting it off from the rest of the region. Rice terraces contour the hillsides in bright green. The area is not as big a feature on the tourist map as places like Sapa and Hà Giang, although I’d read it was Vietnam’s Bali, so we were not sure how touristy the area would be.

The relief to be away from the highway really lifted me. Not to have trucks bearing down on us and insane traffic doing insane things. The scenery was mountainous and beautiful. We passed three weddings, chatting children on scooters, and green, green paddy fields. In the fields large traditional bamboo water wheels - a feature of this area - turned to irrigate the land. Happy people on socialist posters raised triumphant fists and multitudes of red yellow starred flags fluttered everywhere.

Climbing the last eight miles to Pù Luông was tough. Especially for Lilz who after being so sick had eaten hardly anything and had nothing in the tank. Slow, sweaty and steady we climbed each steep mile. I saw three lads ahead - two on a scooter, one on a bike - who when they hit a steep ascent stopped. The lad on the bicycle hopped off, piled the bike crossways across the scooter behind the seated lads, climbed on behind, and all three, with bike, sped up the hill. Some festivities were taking place and I focused on the road ahead as to one side of me some men prepared a cow for butchery. On the other a group of men sat on the ground plucking chickens, the feathers floating into the ditch below.

Bản Đôn was once a tiny hamlet but is now where most tourists base themselves whilst visiting Pù Luông. With relief we found the resort we were booked into. Annie, the smiling lady who ran the eco lodge came out to greet us. Once a surgeon, she had moved from the coast back to Pù Luông to look after her parents. Her tiny cute dog Susu yapped at our feet.

The remainder of the day and all the next we took things easy as Lilz properly recovered. And what a healing place to do so. Our room felt like luxury, a large window and balcony framing a travel magazine view. Sitting on our balcony it was all there. The green rice paddies. The pale hazy mountains. Long banana leaves swayed in the non-existent breeze. Tiny chirping birds flitted past and swallows’ sweeped in long high arcs. I concentrated on watching a woman in conical hat pick her way through paddy paths. The soundtrack was of insect percussion, cockerels crowing, a repetitive gently whooping bird call, and knocking sounds of human work. I can sit here and watch it play out with a growing appreciation of the utter indulgence of that. No fomo to be elsewhere. Happily existing in the present. To feel and see and hear it all. The details. The whole. I suddenly wanted to be able to freeze time. To stay suspended in this moment until I hit ‘play’ again.

We abandoned our original high-energy plan to explore the steep valley by bike opting instead for a gentle walk. A new road, built to replace an old goat track linking Bản Đôn with the eastern more remote part of the Pù Luông region, is a tourism by-product I hope is making life easier for the locals too. The white road curves its way through the rice fields, making a dramatic sight popular with tourists conducting their photo shoots. Walking by a group of Chinese, Lilz was suddenly grabbed by the woman photographer of the group and ordered to be a part of her shot. Grinning he obediently stood and posed with the group!

The area is home to Thai and Muong ethnic minority groups. Vietnam recognises 54 distinct ethnic groups, the Viet making up the 85% majority. With the road suddenly dropping steeply we stood to take in the view high above traditional Thai stilt houses dotting the green valley below. It was fascinating to witness and try to understand how everything works and how families sustain themselves living on these steep slopes far from the big cities. From above it looked untouched, lives playing out as they had for centuries. However I wonder if creeping change will eventually change all we can see. A decade ago, accommodation in Pù Luông was mostly in cheap, local homestays. Tourists would provide extra income, sleeping on a mattress under a mosquito net in the communal upper floor of a family home among the rice fields with a shared bathroom. You can still find these homestays in the more remote valley below, but now a lot of the accommodation is more upmarket: eco-resorts, spa wellness retreats and boutique homestays with infinity pools, ensuite bathrooms, and mod-cons. The decor may reflect the local wood-and-thatch aesthetic, but places are run by business-savvy Hanoians rather than local families. Opting for ease we too had joined the masses looking for relaxation and comfort.

Contemplating this, and with a day of slow time to reflect, made me think about travel. People often brand travel as an achievement: see interesting places, have interesting experiences, become interesting people. I find some of this to be true. For myself, experiencing different places - unique systems, ways of living, diverse foods, the contrasts and all the unknowns - has given me a completely different sense of the world. And my place in it. It has also made me appreciate where I’m from in a fundamental way I couldn’t before have understood. Samuel Johnson once said “What I gained by being in France was, learning to be better satisfied with my own country.”

People are often impressed by our cycling feats, and all the learning about ourselves that we must be acquiring through our travels. In reality what I have really appreciated about our trip has been the daily simplicity of it. What occupies my mind whilst cycling is often just Where am I going to get drinking water? Where’s my next meal? Where am I going to sleep tonight? In ‘real’ life I have all sorts of complex social relationships to deal with – being on my bike riding simply from A to B is much easier compared to normal life. I wonder if, far from becoming more in touch with humanity, I am in truth now more divorced from it. Travel doesn’t seem to be so much an achievement but a privileged, fun, very individual thing to do and it’s not a mystery to me why most of us like it.

What is puzzling in a way is why we endow travel with such significance and insist on its meaning. The worst of it is that in our desire to showcase the interesting places and by dint the interesting people we are, travel actually turns us into the worst version of ourselves while thinking we’re at our best. We go to experience a change, but end up inflicting change on others and the host country we’re visiting. Places that cater for tourists stop serving locals and start serving strangers. Prices explode, infrastructure struggles, resources are stretched, local identity defaults to a version optimized for international comfort, with local cuisine as an optional add-on. A place that once had a soul now answers to tourist demand, a conveyor belt saturated by people taking photos.

Despite our journey’s simplicity, our own travel still has a footprint. This understanding doesn’t stop me. The compelling draw to see the world for myself, to sit amongst beautiful places brings me a joy I am not prepared to relinquish. As people say: “you only live once” and self-serving though it is I deeply value the memories we’re making, and hold dear the experiences inspiring us. So I raise my phone to take the photo, to capture the memory, to digitally preserve what may soon be gone.

Our last night in Pù Luông we sit high on the edge of the rice fields. The street light highlights the rings of terraces until they descend into darkness, amplifying the paddies’ contours. It was like looking down into a giant Roman amphitheatre and we were waiting for a grand natural show to begin. Or being on the edge of a huge vortex, spinning into the darkness, making me want to dive into the depths of the rice paddies’ whirling ocean. The sound of the insects and frogs was a wonderful cacophony - chirping, whistling, ticking, raving - so so loud when you tuned into its amazing beat. Fireflies danced magically at the fridges of our vision making the whole scene ethereal.Read more