Before we left Dong Van this morning we visited their famous Sunday market.
It was a typical bustling local market full of every imaginable item you would ever want to buy. Many people were dressed in their ethnic clothes with beautiful velvet and embroidered fabrics. Lovely to look at but pretty hot to wear.
At the back, livestock were being traded. The piglets on leads were sold and then shoved into bags squealing loudly as you can imagine. The sacks had air holes so, once transported back home on the back of a motorbike or a basket, they would have been fattened up for a tasty supper. This pig ended up in a basket.
Hair cut? Knives?
We headed west and stopped after 15 km at the Kings Palace. This was the ancient northern palace of the king of Vietnam. It is very understated and simple, in keeping with the area. The last king of Vietnam, Bảo Đại, abdicated in 1945 and then acted as a puppet king until 1955, when he was finally ousted by a referendum that installed a Prime Minister. It is now pretty much empty, and a tourist attraction.
Our road today, like Saturday, was mountain snaky passes pretty much all day long. Slow going but fun to stop and photograph.
After lunch, we stopped by the Lùng Tám hemp cooperative. This government supported compound showcases the hemp cloth industry and aims to retain local traditional skills. It’s a long process to get to a hemp mat. The stems of the hemp plant are stripped, pounded in a mortar, then split and twisted by hand. Women twist hemp as they walk to make use of the time to/fro market etc. Once twisted it is wound onto spindles, with lumps smoothed out using the bamboo cane (expertly demonstrated by JC below). Next it is stretched on a cane frame then soaked for 4 hours to soften it. It may then be dyed. Now it is ready to be woven into fabric. Once the material is completed it can be smoothed using a seesaw arrangement of a large stone balanced on the rolling log (inexpertly demonstrated by me). Not as easy as it sounds.
We stopped a few more times at vistas. We climbed this viewpoint to see the Fairy’s bosom, named in memory of the fairy who came to earth and fell in love with a human and had a child. They were incompatible from the heaven/earth point of view so she had to return heavenward and left her breasts behind to feed the child and comfort the man.
This road from Dong Van, known as the path of fecundity, passes through Heavens Gate. This narrow pass, at one stage, was gated off by a local chief determined to control access. But now it is simply a high, narrow pass. We stayed arrived at our home stay in Ha Giang just as the sun was setting. Such a beautiful vista overlooking paddy fields.
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