Day 9: Bắc Hà Market
Index
| Day 1 | Departure Oslo |
| Day 2 | To Hanoi |
| Day 3 | Hanoi sightseeing and night train to Lào Cai |
| Day 4 | Sa Pa, Mường Hoa Valley – Sín Chải A |
| Day 5 | Sín Chải A to Nậm Cang |
| Day 6 | Nậm Cang to Sa Pa |
| Day 7 | To Fansipan campsite at 2800m |
| Day 8 | Mt. Fansipan – Bắc Hà |
| Day 9 | Bắc Hà market |
| Day 10 | Bắc Hà to Hoàng Su Phì |
| Day 11 | Hà Giang |
| Day 12 | Back to Hanoi |
| Day 13 | Departure Hanoi |
Sunday: After 3 days of trekking in the Mường Hoa Valley and 2 days spent on Mt. Fansipan, we were now in the town Bắc Hà and had spent the night at the Sao Mai Hotel.
The plan for the day was to first visit the market, which was said to be quite special. And secondly, a walk through the town.
But first, breakfast.
Television Station & Bắc Hà Market
We were supposed to meet in the hotel lobby at 9 AM, but I saw that I had time for a quick outing on my own before we gathered.
A small hill in the middle of the town seemed interesting. Perhaps I could get some decent town pictures from there.
The walk from the hotel to the top took only 10 minutes.
There was a building at the top, with the letters TTTH above the entrance – likely an abbreviation for Đài Truyền thanh – Truyền hình (Radio and Television station)
But when I reached the back of the building, it looked as if this were someone’s home. Startled chickens scattered wildly in every direction, and I decided I shouldn’t disturb things any further.
As the backyard was fenced in, I wasn’t tempted to explore whether I was at the very top of the hill. Instead, I took some photos and returned to the hotel.
It was already past 9 AM, and I assumed the others had left the hotel. I figured, however, that I would find them down at the market.
Studying everyday life was interesting in itself.
The group had not yet left the hotel when I returned, and then we headed to the market.
Vietnamnews.vm: The Bắc Hà market in the mountainous province of Lào Cai is the largest market in this part of the country. The market is held every Sunday with people from 14 ethnic minority groups in nearby towns and villages coming together to trade, exchange news and socialise. The market used to be the region’s hub for the buying and selling of horses – the most popular method of transport in the mountains – but now it’s a bustling market with a wide variety of goods.
Bắc Hà is a small town(ship) by Vietnamese standards. About 4,000 people live in the town itself, while the entire district has around 70,000 inhabitants.
For someone like me, who does the daily shopping at a local convenience store, the encounter with the market was a big transition…
The question wasn’t “what do they have here?”, but “what do they NOT have here?”
This was altogether a new experience…
Our guide Kong appeared to have full knowledge of all the of dried herbs, roots and spices at this particular stall.
Some translations are just not obvious…
Tam thất gây: Panax pseudoginseng causes
Tam thất bai thai lat: Sliced Panax notoginseng (Bai Tai grade)
The girls had still money to spend. Including Anne, after I gave her all my money…
What appeared to be a tobacco stall caught my interest. There were several traditional Vietnamese bamboo water pipes (điếu cày) available for customers. Whether people were sampling the tobacco before buying it or simply stopping for a smoke, I couldn’t tell.
In the food “department” only produce and raw ingredients are available. No fast food here…
Bắc Hà Market is not for the faint-hearted, especially if your closest encounter with a pig has been a slice of pepperoni on your pizza.
The Hmong people are an ethnic group from East and Southeast Asia (originally from China). Hmong groups are often named after the dominant colors or patterns of their traditional clothing, style of head-dress, or the provinces from which they come.
The Flower Hmong (Hoa Hmong) are particularly eye-catching due to their extremely colorful clothing.
Another stall offered a colourful selection of decorative textiles, likely intended as table runners or wall hangings.
Usually, when I’m in crowds, I have all my senses on high alert. But here -and even in Hanoi – I felt safe and relaxed. Still, I was a bit surprised to find a photo of myself with a stranger standing right next to me…
Vietnamnews.vn: The market is divided into different sections: livestock, handicraft products, clothing, herbs and spices as well as many outdoor eateries for hungry traders, some of them having walked for miles to get there early in the morning.
But now we learned that the livestock sale had been moved to another location. From what I could see, only ducks, chicken and dogs were being sold here.
And while the sight of tethered hens made me feel uneasy…
… the sight of dogs for sale was the final straw. The dogs had thick fur, and there wasn’t a water bowl in sight.
That doesn’t mean I automatically thought of animal abuse. Hopefully, the animals are doing well all the other days of the week, and hopefully, the dogs will find a home where they are well cared for.
But I didn’t have to watch it…
It felt good to leave this part of the market.
It was time for refreshments!
Fresh sugarcane juice was on the menu!
Sugarcane juice, or “nước mía” in Vietnamese, is one of the most looked-for beverages on streets across Vietnam – especially on these warm days.
I was amazed by how much sugarcane went into making a relatively small amount of juice. The mountain of discarded fibres was quite something. Hopefully, some local buffaloes would get to enjoy the leftovers.
Flavorsofhanoi.com: Sugarcane is a grass plant, which can grow up to 6 meters mature height with stout, jointed, and fibrous stalks. The plant is native to the tropical countries, such as Vietnam – where it’s grown mostly for sugar production.
Sugarcane juice is a fresh, sweet, and syrupy liquid that’s squeezed, by a hand-mill or machine, from peeled sugarcanes. The juice is the key ingredient for a dozen of other products like brown sugar, jaggery, rum, molasses, biofuel, and ethanol.
Both the outer peel and the fiber-rich waste (known as bagasse) benefit many animals. Sugarcane waste is, in fact, a valuable resource in a circular economy, but it must be used correctly because it has a very specific nutritional profile.
To create a half liter of sugarcane juice, 2 to 3 sugarcane stalks are needed. Each stalk is typically 1-1,5 meters after peeling and cutting.
There was of course a honey stall also…
All vendors did not just sit quietly in their assigned spots. Many were mobile, and it was not always easy to politely decline.
I wasn’t in the mood to shop, but some others had a pretty good day at the market…
The Hmong women were quite visible, everywhere…
Eventually, we returned to the hotel…
Swapping hotels
The plan for climbing Fansipan included taking the cable car back down. However, since it wasn’t running, the trek turned out to be longer than expected. New plans were made, and now we were to spend two nights in Bắc Hà instead. But it turned out that the hotel where we were staying wanted to charge more for an extra night. As that was not within the budget, the guides had to find somewhere else for us to stay.
The solution to the problem was Ngan Nga Legend, a small hotel with both traditional rooms and garden bungalows, arranged around a spacious outdoor communal area. It was a short walk from the Sao Mai Hotel and our guides decided to transport our luggage on a motorbike.
Transporting heavy bags on a motorbike requires good balance. Whether any bags fell off, we never found out…
Next, we enjoyed a nice lunch…
… before the rooms were assigned.
The rooms were simple, yet luxurious compared to the homestays we had stayed at earlier in the week.
We relaxed in the garden until it was time to take a walk through the town.
Bắc Hà sightseeing
Then it was time for getting to know the rest of the town…
A huge red banner stretched across the road, calling on everyone to unite in building modern roads and transport infrastructure. Whether this referred to a specific local project or was simply a general government slogan, I couldn’t tell.
I was just thinking “timber”, but Kong was likely showing us logs from cinnamon trees which are among the most important and well-known agricultural products in Lao Cai Province, and especially around Bắc Hà.
It was nice to go for a walk again, even though it was on asphalt…
I was mostly focused on the surrounding hilltops and didn’t catch everything Kong was talking about.
Then we passed a lodge with a name that looked familiar…
Kong pointed out an impressive two-storey house, apparently a sign of considerable wealth in this community. The exterior was nearly finished, although the upper floor and surrounding grounds still appeared to be under construction. I couldn’t help wondering whether appearances mattered more than interior comfort, or whether furnishing the house was simply the next step in a long building process.
I asked Tang what a perfectly ordinary house looks like here, and he pointed to the house on the left. Then I asked about the house in the middle, and he said that the financial situation there was probably a bit better. I felt that I had captured the entire spectrum in a single picture…
We moved on…
I still wanted to hike in the local mountains, but realized this would not be on the agenda for the day…
That said, walking along the road wasn’t boring either…
We saw what I assumed were propaganda banners, although in today’s Vietnam they serve just as much as visual reminders of national identity, celebrations, and political policies.
We passed a banner reading something along the lines of “National Intangible Cultural Heritage” – likely an expression of deep national pride that the unique living traditions of local minority groups are being officially recognized and protected by the state.
Further up the street, we spotted a young boy with a musical instrument. Kong took us into the yard, borrowed the instrument, and explained a bit about its significance. It was a Khèn Mông – the signature instrument of the Hmong people. This was maybe a good practical example of “intangible cultural heritage.”
The boy seemed a bit bewildered by the presence of 16 strangers in his yard, but he was given a generous tip, after which he ran proudly toward his father, who had been watching the entire scene unfold.
As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Kong took us into a house where an elderly woman was engaged in a crucial task. Spread across the concrete floor was a massive pile of steamed corn kernels that had already been mixed with the unique local herbal yeast. She was using a wide shovel to turn and aerate the mash – a vital step to regulate the temperature and ensure an even, healthy fermentation process. This careful labor lays the very foundation for the area’s most famous specialty, Bản Phố corn spirit.
The large pot over the open fireplace is used for the initial stages of the work, such as boiling the raw corn before fermentation, heating water for the process, or simply for the family’s everyday cooking
The large wooden barrel next to it serves as the actual distillation apparatus. Once the fermentation on the floor is complete, the mash is heated so the alcohol vapors can rise, condense, and transform into the potent local spirit.
The knife set probably served their purpose well enough, but they have seen better days.
I found it rather peculiar to just wander around someone’s home and front yard, yet no one seemed to take any particular notice…
Some local birds caught my attention. In the picture below, we see a traditional and highly distinctive Vietnamese breed known as Gà Chọi (often referred to as Gà Nòi).
This is a type of Vietnamese gamefowl – or fighting cock – that differs fundamentally from the common chickens we are accustomed to in Norway.
Although the breed was historically used for cockfighting, today they are kept just as much as a source of local pride, as guard animals on the farm, or as a culinary delicacy, since the meat is extremely lean and muscular.
The fighting cocks also had a male representative – a genuine Vietnamese “tough guy”
These roosters are allegedly extremely valuable to their owners in this region, and they are often looked after as if they were expensive purebred dogs.
We also saw more typical farmyard chickens, with the classic, full feathering we are used to seeing on farms, and with magnificent, glowing colors.
As to the expression “two cocks in the same yard seldom agree” – this seemed to work out fine here. When there is enough space, a lower-ranking rooster can move away if the dominant rooster becomes irritated. Conflicts usually arise when space is limited.
We continued our walk past the houses in the northern part of the town, and I really felt that it doesn’t get more authentic than this…
We even got to see a couple of water buffalos…
This walk got more enjoyable than I had feared. It didn’t seem as I would be able to add a proper mountain top to my resume during this trip, but worse things could happen…
Then it was time to return to the hotel…
Always at the rear, some of us felt Tang was the “bodyguard” for the group. He was quite vigilant! And if someone in the group just wanted to pop in to buy a soda, he was right there – checking that the price was correct and making sure no one was accidentally left behind.
Dinner
Back at the hotel, we relaxed in the garden until dinner time.
Then we gathered for dinner.
Earlier on our Vietnam trip, we had barbecue, and before we learned about the “hot pot,” some of us called it “boilercue.”
This is one of the most popular and social ways to dine in all of Vietnam, and it is an absolute favorite in the evening – especially in the cooler mountainous regions like Bắc Hà and Sa Pa.
The pot in the picture is divided into two (a so-called Yin-Yang pot). This allows for two different broth bases to simmer simultaneously – for example, a mild, herb-based, and nutritious broth on one side, and a tangier, stronger, or spicier broth on the other.
The hotel staff knew the order in which the ingredients should go into the pot and how long they should simmer there. The result would most likely not have been the same if we had been the ones in charge of the hot pot…
For dessert, we got flambéed banana! In Vietnamese, this festive dessert is often called Chuối đốt or Chuối flambé.
After dinner, we remained seated around the table. Aud had a portable speaker and wanted me to play some music. I knew exactly what the group needed to hear…
People were having a good time now. This was the first indulgence (besides shopping) we’d had on the trip, and the group seemed to feel the time had come to loosen up a little…
After a while, the bus driver came over, wanting to say something. This was the first time he had spoken to the group, and his English wasn’t the most fluent. But we took the hint: we had a long drive ahead the next day, and a driver needs a good night’s sleep. We wrapped things up and went to bed.
Trip statistics (total): 10,5km, 270 vertical meters, 4h:51m