“Take a picture with your mind, Christine”. I am young, maybe six. I can still hear my mom’s voice as she sits in the passenger seat of our van. I’m in the back seat, admiring the most beautiful sunset over the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. I still have these pictures from my youth. Mostly just memories of memories by now.
My mom taught me a lot. This is one of the lessons I’ve held onto very tightly my entire life. In this lesson my mom taught me how to live in the moment and to really see what I was looking at. She also taught me how to hold onto the perfect moments and shed the rest.
Today I listened to my mom’s voice as we cruised by incredible beauty. Today’s beauty wasn’t just the Karst Mountains, which are truly spectacular, but the people who inhabit them.
It’s Sunday. Sunday market day. The women of the villages dress in their most beautiful and colourful traditional clothes and walk for miles and hours through incredibly challenging terrain to visit the Sunday market. Here they will buy, trade and sell the goods required for their households to survive another week. Every larger town has a Sunday Market. Today as we rode we were witnesses to the many women walking along the roadside in their most beautiful rainbow skirts and colourful head dresses, carrying their bamboo baskets full of wares.
As we cruised along a particularly beautiful green valley, set between two of the rolling limestone hills, we saw an older woman carrying an impossible load of wood on her back as she climbed a steep path set up and over the valley. I took a picture with my mind. I don’t want to forget her. Her beauty and grace in the face of a tremendous challenge.
First stop was a cultural village where we were swarmed by children looking for candy. I had some of course. Although not usually keen on giving candy to kids – this is their shtick at this particular village, so candy they got. In return I got smiling faces of amazement as we took a selfie video. The kids thrilled to see their own angelic faces waving back.
Next stop was the H’Mong King’s Palace. A touristy and busy attraction that I couldn’t wait to leave.
The Ride:
We left Yen Minh at 10:00 am this morning, headed for Dong Van with an additional loop to Lung Cu, Vietnam’s “North Pole”. This voyage is popular with young Vietnamese tourists who wear t-shirts with the flag of Vietnam and travel in large groups on scooters, waving and cheering us as we pass.
The ride to Lũng Cu is spectacular. The road winds around the Karst Mountains, providing glimpse after glimpse into the various valleys below. Riding along the steep side slope is both nerve wracking and exciting, until the sing song tune of an oncoming tour bus forces you out of your reverie to concentrate on the hazard that is about to mow you down.
Lũng Cu itself offers a staircase to a large flagpole with the flag of Vietnam proudly snapping in the breeze. You gaze over the valley into China, only 2.5 km away. Here we were offered “sweet and sour” candy buy two beautiful Vietnamese women. I couldn’t decide if I loved or disliked the candy. Sweet and incredibly tart, I couldn’t stop eating it.
After non stop riding for several days, we needed to hunker down somewhere long enough to have our laundry done and recharge our batteries. The Hoang Ngoc Hotel was the perfect place to call home for a few days. Modern and clean in the cute and glitzy town of Dong Van. Dinner at Green Karst, a wonderful restaurant with pictures of every dish! Karaoke music in the background and Chum Vang rice wine topped off another great day.
Live Life Epic 