Day 8 in Vietnam

After a night of homestay at the house of the Red Dao people, we've learnt about their different lifestyles, practices and living conditions. An example would be how we chanced upon the people cooking a forest rat by the fire in the morning for breakfast. That was quite a shocker though that seemed to be most acceptable by their standards. We have learnt yet again that we have much to see before we can grow accustomed to the different practices around the world. It was here that we all agreed that we all have led quite a "covered" lives, oblivious to the presence of other contrasting(to varying degrees) cultures around the world.

Today, one of the first stops was at the village school of Xéo Trung Hồ. The enrolment at this school is comparatively lower than the rest,we were told that most of them work in the fields for their families due to the agrarian culture in the rural areas. Education is not as much a given as we supposed. Here we once again delivered our load of stationery and gave some biscuits to the children which was met with much gratitude and enthusiasm on their part. We have much to be thankful for.

The tedious upward trek continues and lunch is had at an altitude of 1800metres at anpther Red Dao village. The trek really pushed all of us to our limits, but it was very gratifying to find ourselves making it to such heights. Along the trek we occasionally dropped by the village homes, delivering medicine bought from the pharmacies. We have never really began to consider medicine bought off the shelf to be that much important, but this time round the only modern medicine available to these villages in the mountainous region would be those we were giving(due to geographical distance between them and the main towns). It is really quite refreshing when we come to the realisation of how fortunate we are for off-the-shelves medication and more.

After another 15km of hard trekking going up and down mountain slopes, we were at the crossroads in front of a huge mountain. Ahead of us was the steep trails to Tả Trung Hồ, further in the distance we could see Thanh Phú, and right ahead was the village of Mả Quáy Hồ, and only after these will we reach our destination for the day, Bản Hồ (at an altitude of 600metres). This village is a Tay (another minority people group) family. Bản Hồ is accessible by motorcycle via a slip track from Sử Pán and hence there were more evidence of tourism. The local shops are well stock with provisions like can drinks and mineral water. The houses in Bản Hồ experienced better living conditions than those in Xéo Trung Hồ where their rural-village living conditions meant at most the use of basic or no electrical appliance. It is quite interesting to observe how different villages were influenced to varying extents by tourism.