Place
Mu Cang Chai
Rice terraces in northern Vietnam that almost no tourists reach — reached on a rented motorbike in the rain, and the base for several days living and working with a Hmong family.
Mu Cang Chai
A mountain district in northern Vietnam, famous for its rice terraces and — the reason Harry picks it — visited by very few tourists.
Getting there takes him a day and a half from Hanoi on a rented motorbike, most of it lost to navigation, and the last stretch in heavy rain on deteriorating road.
The valley
- The views don’t stop. His own summary after 300 km: he has run out of words, and the terraces continue for the entire ride.
- A villa in the terraces for 1,900, breakfast included, bookable online — and a soft bed, which he points out is unusual in Vietnam.
- The road to the villages is off-road, and technically a road on Google Maps.
The Hmong village
- Everybody is in traditional dress, not a few people for show — which is not what he expected.
- A stall selling women’s dresses and headscarves, priced around 100–200, and a seller who works methodically through every item she has.
- The people, as he researched them: around 15 million Hmong worldwide, with large communities in France and the USA, originating from what is now China, and historically isolated by these mountains (from video – unverified).
The homestay
Several days with a family, and the best material in a ninety-minute video.
- A bamboo house the host built himself, with a bed, a view and a toilet down the hill. Rice wine on arrival.
- A buffalo as transport, ridden bareback — no saddle, and harder than it looks.
- A day’s work in the paddies: clearing the field, opening the drainage channel so it floods, then ploughing behind the buffalo. The commands are one word each for go and stop.
- Planting, ten minutes outside the village: seedlings are lifted and replanted with more space, a bundle carries around 50 seeds, and the crop goes through the cycle several times before it is finished.
- The drainage is the thing he can’t get over — each terrace draining into the next so every level takes the same water.
- 6am to 7pm, and nobody complains, because not working isn’t an option.
- Dinner is a chicken that was alive an hour before. Asked its name, the host says it doesn’t have one: name it and you won’t want to kill it.
- A girl of about 17 carrying a full load of firewood in the heat, which he stops to film because it is the thing he keeps noticing about the whole region.
Harry’s tips
- Take a semi-automatic. He says outright that he’s glad he didn’t rent an automatic scooter, given the last few kilometres.
- Book the homestay, not just the villa. The villa is the reward; the family is the trip.
- Expect the rain to arrive with the altitude, and waterproof the bag rather than yourself.
