Churches that Tell Stories in Russia, India, Vietnam, Portugal and the UK

Stories of Colonialism, Repression, a Long Christian Tradition, Natural Disaster, Commercial Exploitation and the Continuity of a Sacred Site

This post is an improved amalgamation of two older posts 'Three Favourite Churches' and...wait for it....'Three More Favourite Churches' - such originality.

Unlike Lynne, I am not a believer, but I am interested in religion and I do like churches. I like the architecture, I like the history they contain and the sense of community they embody. Building a church is somebody’s attempt at the sublime, sometimes for the greater glory of god, sometimes for the greater glory of themselves.

The six churches in this post all have stories to tell. and they are very different stories. From west to east they tell of colonialism, repression, an ancient Christian tradition in a place some find surprising, surviving natural disasters, commercial exploitation and the adaption of ancient sacred sites.

Colonialism

The Church of Giang Ta Chai, Lao Cai Province, Vietnam

The French ruled Indo-China for over a hundred years before independence in 1954 so it is unsurprising that there are many Vietnamese Christians – more specifically Catholics - and for a time, after independence and partition, there was a ruling Catholic elite in South Vietnam. Most Christians live in the urban centres; there are few churches in the countryside and they are particularly rare in ethnic minority villages in the northern highlands.

I cannot describe this church as 'sombody's attempt at the sublime', but it possibly has a rustic charm. It does not look like a Catholic Church, maybe it is an evangelical church, the work of more recent missionaries - a modern form of colonialism.

The Church of Giang Ta Chai, Northern Highlands, Vietnam

We passed the church of Giang Ta Chai, whilst trekking through the Muong Hao Valley in 2011. A village of the Hmong ethnic group, it has twenty Christian families. The photograph was taken in late March but the banner translates as The Church of Giang Ta Chai, Happy Christmas.

Repression

Cathedral of the Epiphany, Irkutsk, Russia

Cathedral of the Epiphany, Irkutsk

At the start of the 20th century the Siberian city of Irkutsk had two cathedrals and two other major churches clustered round one square. A decade of civil war and sixty years of communism saw them all either destroyed or converted to other uses. Since 1990 the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Epiphany has been reconsecrated, restored and repainted. Resembling an elaborate birthday cake it raises a smile in an otherwise rather dour city.

A Little Known but Ancient Christian Tradition

St Mary's, Thalassery, Kerala, India

Christianity is a minority religion in India, practised by only 2.3% of the population - but that is still 30 million people! In the 16th century Portuguese Catholic missionaries claimed many converts, paricularly in Goa while in the 18th century Protestant British and US missionaries worked in the north-east

St Mary's, Thalassery

22% of India's Christians live in Kerala, India's most southwesterly state, and few of them owe their Christianity to European missionaries. When asked, many Keralan Christians will describe themselves as 'Catholics', but most are not Roman Catholics but Syriac Catholics. According to tradition the church was founded by the apostle St Thomas who came to India about 40 CE and is buried in Chennai (formerly Madras) predating the arrival of European missionaries by more than a thousand years. The church above was photographed in 2010 at Thalassery (formerly Tellicherry) on the Keralan coast. Like Irkusk cathedral it could be mistaken for a birthday cake, but with very different icing; the light in India is different and demands strong colours.

Surviving a Natural Disaster

Igreja Matriz, Estômbar, Algarve, Portugal

Sitting on a low hill between the main N125 and the road to the ‘Slide and Splash’ water park, Estômbar has somehow remained aloof from the development that has gone on all around. Although it is now largely a dormitory village for the nearby city of Portimão, the tides of tourism have washed round the village not over it.

The light is different in Portugal, too. Although cooler than India the Algarve sees more sunshine than anywhere else in Europe and white and silver are the order of the day. Rows of whitewashed houses descend the hill from the central square which is dominated by the gleaming bulk of the Igreja Matriz (Mother Church).

The Igreja Matriz, Estômbar, Algarve, Portugal

Constructed in the late 18th century, a time of great prosperity in Portugal, it looks like a symbol of permanence and stability, but in 1755 a great earthquake and tsunami destroyed 85% of Lisbon's buildings, killing a quarter of its population, and inundating the Algarve. Estômbar's church was destroyed, except for the Manueline doorway, which the builders incorporated into their new church. The Manueline style was peculiar to late 15th and early 16th century Portugal and is exemplified in the Torre de Belem and the Jeronimo Monastry in Lisbon.

Commercial Exploitaton

St Bartholemew's Tong, Shropshire, UK

Built over an earlier Norman church in 1406 and remodelled in 1510, St Bartholomew’s is not an architectural masterpiece, though the octagonal tower is unusual. Much more interesting is the story attached to the church.

St Bartholmew's, Tong

Charles Dickens knew Tong well; his grandmother had been housekeeper at Tong Castle (the site now lies beneath the M54). The death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop was set in Tong and she was buried in a fictionalised version of St Bartholomew’s. The book's enormous popularity and Dickens' lecture tours in America, led to a spate of Americans coming to England to visit scenes featured in the story. Seeing an opportunity George Boden (or Bowden), the parish clerk, forged an entry in the parish register of burials, had a gravestone carved and charged visitors to see the grave of Little Nell. It did not seem to worry the visitors – and it certainly never worried George – that they were paying money to see the ‘real’ grave of a fictional character.

Ancient Sacred Site

St Margaret's, Bagendon, Gloucestershire, UK

St Margaret's, Bagendon

One of the delights of the Cotswolds is the way buildings can be so much part of the landscape they seem to have grown organically from it. The tiny church at Bagendon is a perfect example, and also an embodiment of two thousand years of Cotswold history. Although the earliest parts of the building are Saxon, Roman votive artefacts have been found in the churchyard suggesting the site was of religious significance in pre-Christian times. The tower is Norman, but the nave was rebuilt in the late fourteen hundreds. The enormous wealth brought to the Cotswolds by the wool trade at that time resulted in many churches receiving a Perpendicular Gothic makeover. Nineteenth century restorations and the addition of a porch in the 1960s were done so sympathetically it is hard to tell what is new.

see also...............

Taoist (or Daoist) Temples

Synagogues

Jain Temples

Trekking from Sa Pa (3), Around Ban Den then back to Hanoi: Vietnam North to South Part 7

Those more familiar with OS maps might note that red indicates a (largely) metalled road of any size.
Tracks shown in yellow are footpaths or concrete strips for motorcycles

Next morning, despite Minh’s assertion that today’s walk was all on a nice simple concrete path, one hour out, one hour back, Lynne could not be persuaded to leave the homestay. So after a bowl of noodle soup with a fried egg and a couple of slices of watermelon, Minh and I set off without her.

Minh and I set off without Lynne

Sitting in the middle of the road to the village was a young man eating fruit from a plastic box. ‘Would you like to try?’ Minh asked. The fruits were about the size and colour of plum tomatoes, but more cylindrical with a core running down the middle. I bit into it and winced, it was almost as bitter as a sloe. ‘It’s better dipped it in salt,’ Minh suggested. The lad offered me his salt and that improved it enough for me to finish it, but not so much I wanted another one. ‘What are they?’ I asked. ‘Nhot,’ Minh said. I tried ‘nhot’ in Google Translate, and it came up with ‘viscosity’, which is a strange name for a fruit. 

We walked through the village, crossed a suspension bridge over the main stream and then another over a side stream. The deck of the second was seriously rusted, some of the holes being as big as my feet. Through the bridge I could see the rocks and tumbling stream below, expecting to be in it at any moment.



The centre of Ban Den village

Once out of Ban Dem we found the concrete path. What Minh had not told Lynne was that the ‘one hour out’ was all uphill, sometimes gently, but more often steeply. I kept up a cracking pace leaving Minh trailing in my wake. At least that was what I want to believe, though, more probably he was just allowing me to set the pace.



Minh lags behind - or not

The concrete path was not entirely continuous, but after an hour’s walking we did indeed arrive at the collection of rough wooden houses that are the Dao village of Nam Toóng.



Nam Toóng

We walked between the houses to where the path ended and the rice terraces began. The farmers would soon be planting their crops and we watched a man carry his plough down the hill to his waiting buffalo.

Farmer carrying his plough

Wading through the mud, we returned to the village and dropped in on the school where relay races were taking place. I slipped a few thousand dong into the cardboard box standing at the entrance and we stood and watched.

There was great enthusiasm among the children and the young male teacher adjudicated on close finishes, penalised those who set off too early and dealt patiently with the unco-ordinated who ‘hop’ using alternate feet and never quite realise they're running (there is one in every school). His decisions were swiftly given, as fair as was humanly possible and accepted without question. After each race the winning team shouted and waved their arms in the air and lined up for the next with barely suppressed excitement. The money in the box is supposed to help the children, but if it ended up in the teacher’s beer fund, I would not begrudge it; it is always good to watch a professional at work

Relay races, Nam Toóng school

We moved on to a house where Minh was greeted as a friend. The older child – who perhaps should have been in school – was waving round a large beetle attached to a bamboo frond by the stump of a severed leg. The beetle tried desperately to fly away, but could only buzz in angry circles. The younger child, held in his mother’s arms, had a slightly smaller but particularly evil looking bug in his hand and was clamouring for his parents to attach that to a similar frond. I do not generally find I have much sympathy for insects, and I know these children do not have access to the wealth of toys my grandson enjoys, but the game made me feel distinctly uncomfortable.

We set off back down the hill to Ban Den. I do not like long descents, they hurt my knees, but we moved along swiftly and in forty minutes were back at the rusted bridge. Minh was right to say it would take us two hours, but it was an hour up, twenty minutes there and forty back rather than an hour each way.

Minh leads the descent

I held my breath as we crossed the bridge, though I doubt that made me any safer. Minh had suggested a twenty minute detour to a waterfall, so a hundred metres later we turned off the track and worked our way obliquely back towards the river along a jungle path. Reaching the water’s edge we crossed a small beach and scrambled onto a boulder a couple of metres high for the best view.

Along a jungle path

The waterfall was truly underwhelming. However whilst sitting on the rock I suddenly noticed that despite the usual hundred per cent cloud cover it was now distinctly hot. I had a slurp of water but realised that what I wanted more than anything else in the whole world was a cold beer.

Not the world's biggest waterfall

We clambered off the rock, always harder than climbing up, and made our way back to the homestay, arriving at almost exactly the time we had told Lynne to expect us. Minh stuck his head and shoulders into the chest fridge on the terrace and emerged holding a couple of bottles of Tiger beer. Never had anything tasted so good. Lynne had one, too, though I had to point out (more than once) that she had done nothing to earn it.

She had spent a pleasant morning sitting in the garden chatting with the various people who wandered in, some to sell handicrafts, some just to talk. The conversations were, it seemed, not particularly hampered by the lack of a common language. It seemed quite normal for anyone to wander in as they pleased; at one point a boy had walked up the garden path, gone into the kitchen and helped himself to two slices of water melon. Mrs Ut neither acknowledged his presence, nor chased him away.

Looking about her, Lynne could not help noticing how widely bamboo was used; there was a birdcage, the garden railings, several baskets, a range of drainpipes and gutters, and last night's dinner to point out only the most obvious. I was able to add instrument of insect torture to her list. [And as of July 2016, she can add 'gramophone needle']

It was nearly lunchtime and Minh brought a plate of fried potato slices out from the kitchen. We nibbled our way through that and then another plate arrived. We finished the second just in time for lunch, and we set to work on a huge plate of fried rice with pork, the remains of yesterday’s bamboo and other assorted goodies. It was excellent, but the quantity eventually defeated us.

Feeling pleasantly stuffed we took our leave of our hosts, walked down the track to Ban Den and found the car ready and waiting to return us to Sa Pa where we were reunited with our suitcases.

Down the track back to Ban Dem

During the hour’s delay before the car was available to transport us down to Lao Cai, we watched a funeral procession bring the centre of Sa Pa to a halt. Pictures of the deceased in what seemed to be police uniform were carried in front of the coffin. ‘Was he a very important man?’ I asked Minh. ‘A very old man,’ he replied ‘that is why the funeral is so large.’ I was just musing on the thought that at home, the older you are the smaller the funeral usually is when Minh added, ‘He was 64.’



Funeral, Sa Pa

The journey to Lao Cai passed quickly and we checked into the Thein Hai hotel for a shower and to change the clothes we had been wearing for three days.

Minh had recommended a couple of restaurants, but we were still full of fried rice so we wandered the street market in search of something we might eat on the train. We found a woman sitting on a blanket with the last of her banana stock. The local bananas are sweet but small so we asked for four. This was clearly an eccentric request. Waving a 10000 Dong note to indicate her price, she made it clear we could have the whole branch – some two dozen – or nothing. For 30p we took the lot. We ate four on the train, nibbled a few more the following day and left the rest in our hotel room. I hope they were of use to somebody. One legacy of French rule is that the Vietnamese bake decent bread, so we bought a baguette and a triangle of ‘La Vache Qui Rit’ cheese, the Laughing Cow being yet another French legacy. At home any shop would sell a single banana but few (or less) would split a box of foil wrapped cheese. In Vietnam it is the other way round.

Street market, Lao Cai

Equipped for our picnic, we said farewell to Minh at the station and enjoyed an uneventful overnight trip back to Hanoi.

Vietnam North to South

Prelude: Raybans in Heathrow and Saigon

Part 1: Hanoi (1) Ethnic Minorities, The Old City and Water Puppets

Part 2: Hanoi (2) Bat Trang, Quan Ho Music and Fighting Cocks

Part 3: Ha Long Bay

Part 4: Lao Cai, Coc Ly Market and Sa Pa

Part 5:Trekking from Sa Pa (1), Sa Pa to Ta Van

Part 6: Trekking from Sa Pa (2) Ta Van to Ban Den

Part 7: Trekking from Sa Pa (3), Around Ban Den then back to Hanoi

Part 8: Hanoi (3), The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Temple of Literature

Part 9: Hue (1), The Citadel, The Battle of Hue 1968 and Some New Things to Eat

Part 10: Hue (2), A self-Immolating Monk, an Impotent Emperor and Imperial Dinner

Part 11: Da Nang

Part 12: Hoi An and My Son

Part 13:Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Part 14: The Mekong Delta (1), Can Bei and a Cornucopia of Fruit

Part 15: The Mekong Delta (2), To Vinh Long and Can Tho

Part 16: The Mekong Delta (3): Cai Rang and My Tho

Part 17: The Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai Gret Temple

THE END



Trekking from Sa Pa (2), Ta Van to Ban Den: Vietnam North to South Part 6

Those more familiar with OS maps might note that red indicates a (largely) metalled road of any size.
Tracks shown in yellow are footpaths or concrete strips for motorcycles.

I did not feel at my best the next morning, but I was up early and we sat in the yard ready for breakfast. Eventually Der surfaced, gave me a conspiratorial smile, and started on his daily chores. There was no sign of Minh.

A little later Der went off on an errand taking Nhu with him on his motorbike – something that looks terrifying to us, but seems second nature to most Vietnamese.

Der and Nhu go off on an errand
Ta Van

We went in and sat by the fire in the kitchen, the scruffy little cat choosing to sit on Lynne’s foot.

Der returned, chopped up some pork and put it in a pot over the fire, and still there was no sign of Minh. Eventually he appeared looking like a man who had come a distant third in a drinking competition he had never wanted to enter. Der – who seemed to do most of the cooking – made some pancakes.

We sat outside at the ‘normal’ sized table, drank tea and ate pancakes spread with something sweet which may or may not have been jam. Outside the Hmong women gathered like vultures, awaiting the first tourists of the morning.

Waiting for the first tourists of the morning
Ta Van

Breakfast over, we shook hands with Der, gave grandma an opportunity for a last giggle, and set off. We felt privileged to have become part of their family for the day.

Our plan was for a half day walk to the Dao hamlet of Giang Tu Chai and then down to Hoa Su Pan 2 where a car would pick us up and take us to our next homestay in Ban Den, the chief settlement of Ban Ho village.

A Vietnamese ‘village’ is actually an administrative area, sometimes quite large, comprising several settlements described as ‘hamlets’. Usually they have individual names, but in some villages, like Su Pan, they are known as Hoa Su Pan 1, Hoa Su Pan 2, etc. Sometimes, as in Ta Van, the village and the largest settlement have the same name, while in others, like Ban Ho, there is no settlement of that name.

Again we had a choice of routes. The easier way involved walking along the valley and approaching Giang Tu Chai from below, the more demanding led up the valley side and approached the hamlet from above. Again we settled for the easy route.

We walked back through Ta Van, down to the river….

Down to the River at Ta Van

…..and then up the other side of the valley, from where we could look back to where we had stayed.

Looking back at Ta Van across the valley

We were now back on the metalled road from Sa Pa, and we followed it through an area renowned for its ancient carved boulders. A small museum attempted to explain some of the carvings, but the meanings of most, assuming they have any, are yet to be decoded. Sadly the museum contained only photographs as most of the boulders have been removed for study in Hanoi. Two remain lying in the grass outside. I found it difficult to pick out the carvings from the marks left by several million years of weathering.

Leaving the road we descended back into the valley through the hamlet of Giang Ta Chai (not to be confused with Giang Tu Chai).  It is a Hmong settlement which, unusually, has several Christian families and a church. The French ruled Indo-China for over a hundred years before independence in 1954 so there are many Vietnamese Christians – more specifically Catholics - but most live in the urban centres. There are few churches in the countryside and even fewer in the ethnic minority villages of the northern highlands.

Giang Ta Chai Church

Easter was ten days away, but the banner reads The Church of Giang Ta Chai, Happy Christmas.

We crossed a metal suspension bridge built beside an older rattan bridge. Beneath the bridge a bored Vietnamese guide was watching two westerners who had clearly come on a fishing holiday. I have difficulty working up any enthusiasm for fishing as a participation sport, but as a spectator sport its tedium is surely without parallel. The guide had my sympathy.

On the far side we found tables and chairs lurking beneath a thatch-roofed enclosure and took the opportunity for a well-earned cup of tea. Relaxing for a moment we had time to notice that although there was still complete cloud cover, it was starting to warm up down in the valley bottom.

Just over the river is a thatch roofed tea house
while below the bridge is a man on a fishing holiday

The earlier wide path along the river had narrowed to one passible only by pedestrians and motorcycles, but it was flat and easy going. After a kilometre or so we took a rough track rising along the valley side.

It was a good steady climb, sufficient to bring out a sweat and raise the heart rate. Regular visitors to this blog will know that I may be over-weight and over-sixty, but I do regularly put on a pair of walking boots and am no stranger to rough paths and modest gradients. Such walking, though, is not one of Lynne’s hobbies and she soon started to flag and as she flagged she started to complain. Long before we reached the top she was voicing the opinion that it was all a plot to kill her, and that Minh and I were doing it deliberately.

Lynne struggles upwards

With effort and appropriate encouragement we made it to Giang Tu Chai, a collection of ramshackle wooden houses perched on the valley side. It was the only hamlet we visited that had no motorcycle access and, as far as we could see, no electricity.

Giang Tu Chai

We entered one of the houses, a large single room dwelling with a wattle partition dividing what Minh called the ‘front room’ from the kitchen. The only light came through the open door and the gaps in the walls.

The ‘front room’ was more like a farm shed than a living room. In one corner a man was making one of the large baskets local women carry on their backs. He did not look particularly pleased to see us and soon put down his work, picked up his pipe and went outside for a smoke.

Minh seemed on better terms with the old woman – presumably the man’s mother or mother-in-law – who squatted in the kitchen cooking lunch. Except for the flames of her fire, she seemed to be working entirely in the dark, though my flash photograph rather spoils the effect. A cat sat by the fire staring at her as she stirred some green leaves in a pot.

Squatting by the fire cooking lunch

She chatted with Minh while we let our eyes accustom to the light so we could get a proper view of a life which cannot have changed for a hundred years or more. Almost all Dao women still wear the traditional red headdress, but lower down in the valley most of them seemed on nodding terms with the twenty-first century, somewhere up that valley side we had walked out of the modern world and into an older and harsher environment.

Eventually we realised we had intruded for long enough, and had to tear ourselves away. As we left, the old lady scuttled from her kitchen and introduced us to her pile of handicrafts. She may have been Dao but she had the same stock as all the Hmong women. Now, though, seemed the right time for a token purchase.

Even Lynne had to admit that the effort of getting there had been worthwhile, but now we had to get back. Our ascent had been a steady rise along the valley side, but our next path dropped straight down to a suspension bridge we could see far below.

Minh with the bridge down below

The descent was, by any standards, steep and slippery; my walking poles would have been useful but they were in a cupboard on the other side of the world. Occasionally we needed our hands to climb down rocky sections or had to grab at convenient plants to prevent an over-precipitous descent. Neither of us found it easy and Minh’s trainers were giving him less grip than would have been comfortable.

Struggling down

Long before we reached the bridge Lynne was telling anyone who would listen that she was going to die. There was no one to listen except Minh and me, and we ignored her. According to her diary ‘I was now so tired I could barely put one foot in front of another. I was getting close to despair, my feet hurt, my legs hurt, I’d had enough.’ She does so go on. 

We got there in the end – to Lynne’s great relief. She posed with Minh for a photograph on the bridge looking ‘fine and smiley.’

Posing on the bridge 'fine and smiley'

Then it dawned on her that to be picked up by a car we had to reach a road and that meant ascending the other side of the valley. It was not a long ascent and a nice, simple concrete path of moderate steepness led straight up the valley side. Minh and I strode upwards and let Lynne proceed at her own pace. I paused to take a photograph of her, ‘Smile,’ I said cheerfully. Lynne however did not have the will. Her diary says ‘I did feel that if I were to drop down dead in the next few moments David should have a last photo to remember me by. I couldn’t raise my head,  I was that tired as I crawled up the slope, but I summoned all my final energy to raise two fingers at the cruel bastard who thought this was some idea of fun!’

Two fingered salute

She made it, still alive and complaining, and Minh phoned for the car.

A tiny old man had followed us up the path. Minh and I were sitting on a boulder when he reached the top and I was flicking through the pictures on my camera. Attracted by the bleeping he came over to have a look. He seemed fascinated by the electronic magic. ‘He says he’s 89,’ Minh said as the old man squatted down to have a better look. My one-year-old grandson can manage that manoeuvre, but I lost such suppleness many years ago. The old man inspected the camera with interest, marvelled briefly at my digital watch and then, as if to prove he really was from another age, opened and closed a zip on Minh’s rucksack as if he was seeing one for the first time. When our car arrived he straightened up with complete ease, while I struggled upright from my boulder.

Electronic magic

We were driven further down the road and found ourselves enveloped in thick mist while the temperature plummeted. After a few miles we took the narrow side road descending steeply towards Ban Den.

‘Ban Den is lower and warmer,’ Minh had told us, and he was right. Once we were below the mist the temperature rose pleasantly into the low twenties. The tarmac ran out on the edge of the village so we strolled into the centre where we had a late lunch of  pho bo, noodle soup with beef. Coriander is the usual herb in pho, but on this occasion the soup was strongly flavoured with mint. As I slurped my noodles, I heard the distinctive and not entirely unfamiliar rumble of my grandmother rotating in her grave. A Vietnamese village café was one thing, but to eat beef with mint sauce was clearly a step beyond civilization.

Our home for the night was at the farthest and highest point of the village, which Lynne saw as the straw beyond the last straw.

Our hosts, Mr & Mrs Ut, were an elderly Tay couple who were clearly important within the village. Their large wooden house, set in a substantial garden, was a manorial hall compared with Der’s modest residence. The kitchen, though much larger than at Ta Van, had a similar packed earth floor and an open fire. There was little in the way of kitchen appliances except the usual two ring gas burner.

The Ut's house
Ban Dem

Downstairs was open at the front and had as many tables and chairs as a restaurant. At the back was a curtained off sleeping alcove and a television. The huge single room upstairs was reached by an outside wooden staircase. A dozen mattresses had been laid out on the floor, two of them had been covered with sheets for us. There were stairs up to the gallery where there were more mattresses, one of which was for Minh.

There was a shower room on the back wall and while we made use of that Minh walked back into town to buy some bamboo tips for dinner.

Minh helps Mrs Ut in the kitchen

There was a carp pond beside the house and large fish could be seen patrolling its milky depths. A little further away was a similar pond on a slightly lower level. A narrow concrete channel fed water from one pond to the other and over it had been erected a sturdy wooden hut. Breeze blocks on either side of the channel provided a place to squat and waste was swept away by the rushing water. As toilets go it was simple and effective and as fragrant as any toilet anywhere. There were carp in the upper pond, carp and crap in the lower pond but nature seemed easily capable of dealing with this low level of pollution. More worrying was the narrow and uneven path between the ponds, but thankfully that was lit at night.

The path between the ponds

Lynne went for a nap and I pottered around for what was left of the afternoon. When she returned we were offered a cup of tea and cakes of banana pounded and boiled in sticky rice and stored in banana leaves. They tasted as appetizing as they looked and neither of us persevered beyond the first bite.

Banana and sticky rice

Dinner was again at 6 o’clock when the sun set. We ate with Minh and the Uts seated at a ‘normal’ table on the terrace. It was basically the same meal as our previous dinner and the two lunches before, but this time with fried bamboo tips rather than cabbage. There were also a large pile of boiled bamboo fronds. These were to be dipped into a paste of pounded herbs collected by Mrs Ut herself. ‘It’s very bitter,’ Minh warned us.  He was right, we both found it too bitter to be enjoyable and judging from the way Minh avoided them he agreed. Mr and Mrs Ut, though, took a different view, slapping the fronds into the paste with vigour and chomping them up with obvious relish. Between them they demolished the whole huge bowl but only picked at the beef and chicken.

Mr Ut also produced a water bottle full of rice wine, a gentler fruitier distillation than Der’s. Glasses were filled, clinked and emptied and then refilled. Minh informed us that, on doctor’s orders, Mr Ut would drink only three glasses as he had a stomach problem but we were free to carry on. After the previous night’s excesses this seemed a good time to call a halt.

Lynne went to bed soon after dinner complaining of sore legs, sore feet, sore everything. Minh and I sat and chatted while the Uts watched television with their granddaughter who had turned up around five o’clock and had been doing homework ever since.

Vietnam North to South

Prelude: Raybans in Heathrow and Saigon

Part 1: Hanoi (1) Ethnic Minorities, The Old City and Water Puppets

Part 2: Hanoi (2) Bat Trang, Quan Ho Music and Fighting Cocks

Part 3: Ha Long Bay

Part 4: Lao Cai, Coc Ly Market and Sa Pa

Part 5:Trekking from Sa Pa (1), Sa Pa to Ta Van

Part 6: Trekking from Sa Pa (2) Ta Van to Ban Den

Part 7: Trekking from Sa Pa (3), Around Ban Den then back to Hanoi

Part 8: Hanoi (3), The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Temple of Literature

Part 9: Hue (1), The Citadel, The Battle of Hue 1968 and Some New Things to Eat

Part 10: Hue (2), A self-Immolating Monk, an Impotent Emperor and Imperial Dinner

Part 11: Da Nang

Part 12: Hoi An and My Son

Part 13:Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Part 14: The Mekong Delta (1), Can Bei and a Cornucopia of Fruit

Part 15: The Mekong Delta (2), To Vinh Long and Can Tho

Part 16: The Mekong Delta (3): Cai Rang and My Tho

Part 17: The Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai Gret Temple

THE ENDanoi

Trekking from Sa Pa (1) Sa Pa to Ta Van: Vietnam North to South Part 5

A Day's Walk in the Muong Hoa Valley and a Night at a Homestay

Unlike OS maps, red indicates a (largely) metalled road of any size. Tracks shown in yellow are footpaths or concrete motorcycle strips

Down from Sa Pa into the Muong Hoa Valley

Our target for the day was the Day village of Ta Van but there were two possible routes. Discussing it on Tuesday I had given in and settled for the easier route but fell asleep wondering if I might make another bid for the more demanding route in the morning. We awoke to the sound of a thunderstorm unleashing a deluge on the Muong Hoa Valley, and the issue was settled.

After a fortifying bowl of pho we met Minh and set off down the road south from Sa Pa. The rain had stopped and as we left town we had excellent views of both the mist below us and the mist above.

The mist below, Muong Hoa Valley

We marched along among a battalion of tourists, accompanied by at least as many Black Hmong women, their baskets full of handicrafts. I had been looking forward to the walk, but this was more like being part of an invading army. Then, about a kilometre out of town, we reached a handicraft centre. Everybody else turned off, and we were left pretty much on our own.

All tourists have Black Hmong attendants, Leaving Sa Pa

A kilometre later we left the metalled road, passed through a hamlet where a gaggle of children were playing in the dirt and joined a wide path leading gently down into the misty depths of the Muong Hoa Valley.

We leave the road past children playing in the dirt, near Sa Pa

We descended on a broad and gently graded track. Minh wore a pair of trainers which had seen better days and was keen to keep his feet dry, skipping over the puddles and round the worst of the mud. I did not bother.

Lynne and Minh take a breather, Muong Hoa Valley

‘Those boots are waterproof?’ he asked as we took a breather. ‘Completely,’ I answered. ‘But very heavy,’ he countered. ‘They’re surprisingly light,’ I told him, but he looked unconvinced. They really are light, as boots go, but two pairs of walking boots had added weight and taken up space in our luggage. At home we had wondered whether we would really need them; by the end of the first hour we knew we had made the right choice.

Terraces filled with water and ready for planting, Muong Hoa Valley

We passed through a farmstead or two and beside many rice terraces and eventually found ourselves below the mist.

The valley bottom comes into view....

The view into the valley was filled with many, many more terraces, filled with water and ready for planting.

...with many, many water filled terraces

Indigo

We dropped in on a handicraft centre, where we could look without pressure to buy and then stopped to inspect a small field of indigo, which I had not realised was a plant, never mind a commercial crop. Later I learnt it produces exactly the same dye as woad – a plant my ancestors would have known well.

A small crop of indigo, Muong Hoa Valley

It took us a couple of hours to work our way down to the bottom where we crossed the river by the Lao Chai bridge, one of many suspension bridges for pedestrians – and the inevitable motorbikes – spanning the Muong Hoa River.

Lao Chai at the Bottom of the Valley

Lunch

Beside the river, in a large breeze block building we found a kitchen, a lot of people and a dozen or more long communal tables. We sat down and Minh disappeared to order. The Australians on the next table had a huge pile of flaccid buns, triangles of processed cheese and omelettes that could have been used as building material. They seemed happy, but it did not fill me with optimism.

A girl was circulating with a tray of drinks, so we selected a couple of bottles of beer and waited to discover what Minh had ordered for us. It turned out to beef in a gingery sauce, chicken with mushrooms, tofu with tomatoes, cabbage and rice. It was much the same as the previous day’s lunch, but well-cooked and vastly preferable to processed cheese in a flaccid bun. As we ate, more and more customers poured in, some crossing the bridge, others descending from the other side of the river, almost everyone had an accompanying Hmong retinue. We had seen a few other parties when walking, but we were largely on our own; now we could see just how many walkers had been out there in the mist

Outside the restaurant, Lao Chai, Muong Hoa Valley

School

After lunch we followed the road along the valley bottom. Although unsurfaced it was passible by motor vehicles (though easier with four wheel drive) but the traffic was almost entirely pedestrian. We briefly visited the village school. The classrooms were clean and airy and one little girl was busily working through her lunch hour (or was she in detention?)

Working through her lunch hour, Lao Chai, Muong Hoa Valley

Outside a group of girls played jacks.

Playing jacks, Lao Chai, Muong Hoa Valley

Lao Chai to Ta Van

We walked past terraced fields and the houses of the people who worked them. Children played in the mud, piglets scampered across the road, and a flotilla of ducks sailed serenely up a field. Everywhere water buffaloes grazed or wallowed as the mood took them.

A flotilla of ducks, Muong Hoa Valley

The flatlands of the Red River and Mekong deltas produce three harvests a year. Here the mountain climate is less generous and the small terraced fields prevent much use of mechanisation – not that many farmers can afford anything more mechanised than a buffalo. Lao Cai is the poorest province in Vietnam, and it looked like it.

Fields and the houses of the people who worked them, Muong Hoa Valley

Ta Van

Meeting Tuonz and his Mother-in-Law

We reached Ta Van in mid-afternoon. Minh lead us through a gate into a covered concrete terrace outside a well-built village house. We were greeted by a smiling young man carrying his two-year-old daughter in a sling on his back.

Der's (Tuonz's) house, Ta Van, Muong Hoa Valley

‘This is Der,’ Minh said introducing our host. Vietnamese is a tonal language and although I have a tin ear for tones ‘Der’ was clearly pronounced in what we might call ‘imperative voice.’ I asked Minh how it was spelled. ‘T-U-O-N-Z,’ was the answer. Vietnamese has been written in Roman script since the seventeenth century but to the untutored eye the writing does not always match up with the pronunciation.

Der (I could write Tuonz, but I have set a precedent by writing ‘Joe’ for Truong throughout the Hanoi posts - and it is easier for the English speaking reader) lived here with his rather uncommunicative wife and their daughter Nhu. Grandma – Der’s mother-in-law - was visiting from Sa Pa. Our host were Day, the women being dressed in much brighter colours than the Black Hmong, with complicated checked headscarves.

Behind the terrace the open front room contained the usual altar to the family ancestors. To the right was the dark recess of the kitchen. It had a packed mud floor, permanently running water collecting in a plastic bowl before spilling down the drain and an open fire which was heating a cauldron of pig swill; the pigs had a sty at the end of the garden. There were shelves for the usual kitchen utensils, a two-ring gas burner and the inevitable low dining table.

The family altar at Tuonz's House, Ta Van, Muong Hoa Valley

To the left of the altar was a curtained recess containing a bed and a television and beyond that, in a lean-to extension, was a five-bed dormitory. As these beds were ours – all of them – Lynne lay down and had a nap. There was another dormitory upstairs, which Minh had to himself, and somewhere, though we never discovered where, sleeping accommodation for Der, his wife and Nhu.

I sat at the ‘normal’ sized table on the terrace and Minh brought out some tea and a ball of sweetened puffed rice. It resembled a large ball of Ricicles, but was homemade and had a slightly smoky tang. Eating it involved scraping off the outer layer, collecting up the grains and popping them in your mouth. Grandma seemed to find something immoderately funny in the way I did this. Disappearing into the kitchen, she returned with a metal spoon, scraped off some rice, collected it in the spoon and handed it me. I poured it down my throat. This was hilarious. We repeated the game several times, and each time my actions were as comical as the time before. I have no idea what I did that so amused her, but I was happy to play along

Tea and a large ball of 'Ricicles', Ta Van

A Stroll Round the Village

After a while, Lynne emerged from her nap, Minh said he was going to help with the cooking and suggested we took a walk round the village. The village, indeed the whole valley, is criss-crossed by concrete paths about a metre wide. Most villages are inaccessible to four-wheeled vehicles but the paths provide motorcycle access almost everywhere.

Village house, Ta Van

Our circuit of the village followed a concrete path down through the houses and across the top of some rice terraces. Here a water buffalo blocked our path but despite their size and their horns they are docile beasts and it was easy to push it out of the way. We walked down to the river, below some terraces and then back up to the house.

Walking round Ta Van, Lynne about to show a buffalo who's boss

We walked down to the river, below some terraces and then back up to the house.

Below the rice terraces, Ta Van

On our return, Grandma was there to greet us and insist we finish the rice ball. She also produced a welcome bottle of beer each. A concrete outhouse at the side of the terrace contained not only a flush toilet, but a shower, so we made good use of it.

The Hmong Women, their Handicrafts and Sales Techniques

Ta Van has a number of homestays so there were several foreigners in the village, but by now walkers had stopped passing, so a group of Hmong women gathered outside our gate. It is sometimes said that much of their handicraft is actually made in factories in China, I cannot vouch for all of it, but market traders in Sa Pa had sowing machines behind their stalls to fill in quiet moments, and the women outside our gate were all busy sowing as they chatted. Whether or not there is a big enough market for this vast avalanche of bags, scarves and mobile phone covers I do not know, but the quality is good and the provenance of much of it is genuine enough.

A thirty-something American staying nearby came out to talk to them. The women were keen to extract some money from him, and although he made some purchases they wanted him to buy more, telling him how rich he was and how happy they would be to share some of his wealth. He ended up giving them a lecture, though how much they understood is debatable. ‘Money,’ he told them, ‘cannot buy happiness. It is far more important to have good health and to be surrounded by a loving family.’ He was, of course, right, but the argument is far easier to understand when you have ample money for your basic needs and a bit more besides.

Dinner and Rice Wine with Tuonz and his Family

Darkness fell about 6 o’clock. ‘Do you want to eat out there or in the kitchen with the family?’ Minh asked. The decision was simple, though it meant folding ourselves down on to tiny stools beside the low table – not an action that comes naturally to me.

Der brought shot glasses for himself, Minh, Lynne and me – local women do not drink alcohol (in public, anyway) – and a half litre bottle that had once contained water but was now was full of rice wine. Although it is called ‘wine’ it is actually a spirit, the distilling being done locally, sometimes even at home. ‘Try it and see if you like it,’ Minh said. He would not have asked if he had known us longer. Over the years we have survived and even enjoyed Irish poteen (illegal), Sudanese arrigi (very illegal) and Armenian mulberry vodka (legal) - among others - and consider ourselves aficionados of home distillation.

Clinking glass with Der, Ta Van, Muong Hoa Valley

Glasses were filled, clinked together, emptied and refilled and we got on with the serious business of eating. The food was excellent, if very similar to our last two lunches. There was no tofu this time, but the beef was particularly good, the tender meat spiced with the flavours of ginger and lemongrass.

Mrs Der, Nhu and Grandma, Ta Van, Muong Hoa Valley

Half way down the second bottle Lynne called a halt. I think Minh was quite relieved, he did not want to lose face by being the first to drop out, but he had reached his limit before the second bottle was drained. I knew - without any need for a common language – that Der wanted to open a third, but needed support from one other person. He looked at me. It would have been sensible to shake my head, but I am not always sensible. I nodded.

The small, scruffy house cat deals with his flees, Ta Van, Muong Hoa Valley

We sat and drank as relatives and neighbours drifted in and out for a gossip or to stare at the strange foreigners. After a while my aching knees told me I had to give up sitting on the low chair, so I found a ‘normal’ chair, sat in the corner of the kitchen and let Vietnamese domestic life wash over me.

Friends and relatives drop in for a chat while Der stirs the pig swill, Ta Van, Muong Hoa Valley

Eventually we went to bed. Dinner had started at sunset, so although it had been a long evening, we went to bed about 9. As I made my way to the outside toilet I realised I had drunk more than was strictly good for me, but by then it was far too late to do anything about it.

Vietnam North to South

Prelude: Raybans in Heathrow and Saigon

Part 1: Hanoi (1) Ethnic Minorities, The Old City and Water Puppets

Part 2: Hanoi (2) Bat Trang, Quan Ho Music and Fighting Cocks

Part 3: Ha Long Bay

Part 4: Lao Cai, Coc Ly Market and Sa Pa

Part 5:Trekking from Sa Pa (1), Sa Pa to Ta Van

Part 6: Trekking from Sa Pa (2) Ta Van to Ban Den

Part 7: Trekking from Sa Pa (3), Around Ban Den then back to Hanoi

Part 8: Hanoi (3), The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Temple of Literature

Part 9: Hue (1), The Citadel, The Battle of Hue 1968 and Some New Things to Eat

Part 10: Hue (2), A self-Immolating Monk, an Impotent Emperor and Imperial Dinner

Part 11: Da Nang

Part 12: Hoi An and My Son

Part 13:Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Part 14: The Mekong Delta (1), Can Bei and a Cornucopia of Fruit

Part 15: The Mekong Delta (2), To Vinh Long and Can Tho

Part 16: The Mekong Delta (3): Cai Rang and My Tho

Part 17: The Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai Gret Temple

THE END