8 October 2018
After breakfast at the Ly Van Homestay in the Hieu village, we started our hike through Pu Luong Nature Reserve to Kho Muong village. We were looking forward to seeing more of the golden terraced rice paddies and harvesting activities on this day.
Beautiful golden rice terraces during the harvesting season at Pu Luong.
We hiked uphill via the same path that we took to return to our homestay the previous afternoon.
Hiking up the hill behind Ly Van Homestay. The improvised lightweight bamboo hiking pole provided by Mr Ly came in useful immediately.
We managed to cross the stream that fed into the Hieu Waterfall without wetting the insides of our shoes.
Thac Hieu waterfall next to Hieu Village.
We went through the upper Hieu Village and went past the lookout point where we saw the beautiful rice terraces before.
We met an elderly couple carrying an entire chopped banana tree along the hiking trail. The friendly villagers told Long, our guide, that this tree would be used as food for his cows.
This set off an interesting conversation between Long and us about cow versus buffalo. I thought that a cow would be more costly than a buffalo and I was wrong.
Long told us a buffalo in Vietnam costs more than a cow as it is used for farming. It costs about USD 2000 per buffalo while a cow only costs one third that of a buffalo. The buffalo is also smarter and easier to train for farming than a cow.
Long and I having an interesting conversation about buffalo vs cow as we took this windy trail round the mountain behind Hieu village.
This part of the trail was on higher elevation and the cool breeze made it a nice comfortable walk. We could hear cicadas in the forest around us.
A beautiful vista of green paddy fields with a stream soon came into view.
Paddy fields in Pu Luong Nature Reserve near Hieu village.
We descended onto the road running by this stream and saw more water wheels used for irrigation.
Bamboo water wheels used for irrigation in Pu Luong.
Farmers were drying grains of rice on the side of the road. Just then, Mrs Ly zoomed by on her motor scooter and waved goodbye to us.
Drying of grains under the hot sun is a common sight during the harvesting season. The farmer has to rake the rice occasionally to ensure total drying before storage.
Rice with husks still on. They are dried and stored with husks intact.
We crossed the river via a rickety bridge made of wood and bamboo and continued our hike to the next village.
One of the bridges we crossed during our hike.
The views and surroundings in Pu Luong were just gorgeous. Butterflies and red dragonflies were seen.
October is the right time to see fields of green and yellow.
We saw more water wheels on the opposite bank of the river we just crossed. These were the same series of water wheels that we saw on our first day in Pu Luong as we drove towards Ban Hieu village.
The terrain was mostly flat after the initial morning climb. We hiked through small forests and open country, passing by corn fields, rice terraces, palm forests, farms and villages.
One of the corn fields along the trail.
We saw people going about their day. We followed behind a women carrying a long piece of bamboo trunk as she entered into her village. Up ahead, a man on a motorcycle was dragging three such pieces with their ends tied to his bike.
There were plenty of bamboo in this area and the bamboo is an ideal material for construction in the villages as they are fast growing and cheap. They can be fashioned for many purposes. For example, bamboo are used as poles for support, fencing, flooring for their stilt houses in the form of bamboo slats. Hollowed out stems are used for irrigation piping, water wheels and we also saw them being used to construct furniture.
Beautiful rural and unspoilt landscape in Pu Luong.
Entering into Lang Doc. “Lang” means village in Vietnamese.
At one of the village named Lang Doc, we chanced upon a middle-aged man working on a machine used to separate the paddy grains from the cut crop outside his house. This process is known as threshing.
The machine has a rotating drum with spikes or rasp bars powered by his foot, like those found in traditional sewing machine. By holding the crop against the rotating drum with spikes or rasp bars, grains are removed from the stalks. These are collected in a large bag.
The man invited me to try using his machine. Thereafter, his wife invited us into this house to rest since it was a very hot day and we were soaked in perspiration.
She gave us small oranges from her garden to quench our thirst while we rested under the cool breeze of electric fans in their relatively modern house. Compared to the traditional stilt houses that we had seen so far, the house of this couple is made of brick and mortar and has a zinc roof.
Pictures of political leaders, ancestors and family members are placed in their house. She showed us a picture of her son. She is proud that he is doing a well paid white collar job in the city.
After a short rest, we thanked the friendly couple, said goodbyes and continued on our hike through the village.
There were plenty to keep us fascinated as we hiked through the villages. Each family will have their dogs, chickens and ducks and cows in stall. Some have ponds with mud carps that are reared for food.
Friendly kids could recognise us as foreigners and would call out “hello” to us as we passed by their stilt houses. Dogs would bark at us but left us alone once we walked past the territory they are guarding. We even heard some silly roosters crowing at 10 AM in the day.
Our guide showed us how the locals make rice wine using an improvised distillery.
A typical gatepost or gantry seen at entrance and exit of each village.
Some of our hike was along paved roads that used to be clay tracks. The Vietnamese government had initiatives to improve the infrastructure in the area. They will sponsor material for paving the roads but the local villagers has to provide free labour to build these roads.
Long told us how each village will elect a headman using a democratic process. The elected headman will serve a 4 years term with no restrictions on re-election. The headman are mostly older man and/or ex army personnel who are more respected.
Entering the next village, we passed through a hamlet with a duck farm. This was the first duck farm I had seen during this trip, so I stopped and took quite a few photos.
Ducks with their own swimming pool.
Boat with fishing net at the duck farm.
These ducks with short and thick necks are reared for their eggs.
We trekked through a forest and a tapioca plantation before arriving at the stilt house of a villager in a White Thai village. We were to stop for lunch here. There were three cute puppies at the bottom of our host’s stilt house.
We quickly took off our shoes and climbed the wooden stairs to enter his stilt house before the mother dog found out that there are visitors. Dogs with pups are protective and hence could be aggressive to strangers. We made it to safety as the mother came racing back from the next house about 150 m away.
We watched the mother dog fed her pups while waiting to be fed by our hosts.
We rested and drank tea while our hosts cooked our lunch in the opposite end of the large house.
We sat on a straw mat and enjoyed a simple but delicious lunch.
Stirred fried noodles with pork, tomatoes, cabbage and fried egg. Cut apples as dessert.
After lunch, our hosts showed us his mini silkworm farm on a rack that I had not noticed earlier.
Silkworms feeding on leaves in a large tray.
These silkworms (caterpillars) are in the larva stage. They will form a white silky cocoon in the pupa stage. The cocoons are boiled in water and silk threads are extracted from them.
As it was too hot to hike in the mid-day sun, we took a short nap on the bamboo-slat floor. It was so quiet and peaceful that we could hear chickens clucking below us.
Taking a after-lunch rest inside the stilt house at a Thai minority village.
At night, the villagers will sleep on thin mattresses and blankets placed on the bamboo-slat floor.
Feeling recharged after our lunch and rest, we continued on our hike towards Kho Muong village. We passed by the mother dog who was wandering about in the forest without any incident.
We were lucky to visit Pu Luong during harvesting season and saw plenty of golden terraced rice-fields and harvesting activities along the way.
Cut and bundled paddy stalks drying in the fields after the reaping process that was probably done in the early morning.
Collecting paddy stalks that had been bundled and dried.
The villagers are well covered to protect themselves from the hot sun.
Loading onto carts to be transported back to the village.
Collecting the bundles of cut paddies.
Farmers are working in the muddy fields.
Unlike Ban Hieu where a few farmers were harvesting their own crops, it seemed that the people in the entire village here were all working in unison.
During harvesting, the people in the entire village were all working in unison. Some were at the fields.
Others were doing the transfers using carts. Some carried the crop with baskets slung over their foreheads.
Back in the village, women were drying the grains in the sun after the threshing process to separate the grains from the stalks.
Pu Luong was especially beautiful and non-touristy. We met many friendly local people in the villages and in the fields. Unlike Mai Chau, we did not meet any other visitors or hikers during our hike through Pu Luong Nature Reserve.
Ducks are commonly reared in the Vietnamese countryside. Normally confined, they are let loose after the rice crop had been harvested to feed in the fields.
Purple flowers of the water hyacinth, a floating aquatic plant seen in the waterways.
We hiked along a small river that flows along the valley.
Approaching a bridge where some boys were enjoying themselves in the river.
We saw boys bathing in the river after their half day school.
The children in this area goes to school in the morning only. They usually walk or cycle to their school. We saw a group of boys having a bath in the river after their morning school. With their bikes parked at the riverside, they were skinny dipping in the river and waved to us when they saw us passing by.
Village after village, fields after fields. The whole of Pu Luong were busy with harvesting the crop.
Villager collecting leaves instead of harvesting the rice. Probably to feed the livestock.
Looking back at the trail that we had taken and scenes of farmers drying grains on the footpath.
After harvesting, farmers prepare the fields for short season crops like peanuts and vegetables. Smoke could be seen as rice husks and unwanted stalks are burned, with the ashes to be used as fertilisers.
Smoke from burning activities in this part of Pu Luong.
A stream with rocky river bed that we had to cross later on our hike.
Beautiful golden rice terraces during the harvesting season at Pu Luong.
End September to early October is a good time to visit Pu Luong. In a few weeks, all the paddy would have been harvested. And what are left to see would be brown muddy fields.
Instead of our original plan of hiking all the way to Pu Luong Retreat where we would be spending the night, Long had contacted our driver Ha to pick us at a pre-agreed place, just before Kho Muong Village.
The red circle is where our car and driver is waiting for us.
We could see his white Toyota Innova waiting in the distant as we made our way across the last stretch of terraced rice paddies.
There was no clear path to our car. We had to find a way through the paddy fields and across a stream that flows in between.
Balancing on the soft and narrow bunds as we made our way through the paddy terraces.
We had to get our shoes wet and walked across the pebbled bed of the shallow stream.
We were glad to see our driver Ha and his air-conditioned car after our energy sapping trek. We did at least 12 km in the hot weather. Although the weather was sunny and warm, this was a memorable day where we really appreciated the beauty and hidden charms of North Vietnam, in terms of scenery, country and people.
Where we stayed: Pu Luong Retreat.
Pu Luong Retreat is one of the best places to stay in Pu Luong Nature Reserve. It offers the best views of rice terraces, valley and mountains from its elevated location along Highway 15C.
It features comfortable and well furnished rooms, an outdoor infinity edged pool, a restaurant and free Wi-Fi access in the public areas.
Views of rice terraces, valley and mountains from the infinity edged swimming pool at Pu Luong Retreat.
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