Finally, I slept with a Man!

Our 77 year old host administers corn wine from a recycled water bottle

The cockerel obviously did not have clock. If it had had a clock it would have known that 3am was not the right time to announce the dawn. The man who shouted abuse at the cockerel probably did have a clock, but the cockerel didn’t speak Vietnamese either so it carried on crowing.

The guy in bed at the side of me said something, maybe in his sleep, but he spoke Dutch so I didn’t understand that either. I was sharing a bed with a man, this has come close to happening several times since I came to Vietnam. In one case it was planned that I would share a bed with two men but then that trip was cancelled. This bed was so wide that sharing it was never going to be a problem. We were sleeping in a typical Vietnamese “Nha Nghi” – a guest house. Being in a tourist centre this room was costing us £6 for the night. That’s £3 each. A Vietnamese family of five or six might share a bed like the one we were sleeping on. And we had separate quilts.

This was my last weekend away in Vietnam before going home to the UK for Christmas. A chance to visit the famous Bac Ha Sunday market for the second time and drink a few beers with friends. The adventure started with the Friday night trip from Hanoi to Lao Cai on the overnight train. I arrived at the wrong station to find everyone else waiting. A failed attempt to get onto the platform revealed we did not actually have tickets. We only had vouchers to be exchanged for tickets at the OTHER Hanoi railway station. We hot footed it to Station B (a good old fashioned communist inspired name), found the woman with the tickets and found our train assisted by one of the touts who hang around on the platform to show you where to go, even if you know where to go, and then expects a tip.

We were in our compartments with 10 minutes to spare. The journey was noisy, the train was old and the window would not shut letting in the cool night air as well as the sounds of the engine. The mattresses are thin but sleep came easily and after several false stops (this was the last train of the night and inter-hamlet rather than inter-city) we arrived in Lao Cai around 7.30am.

Rather than take three hours on a rickety public bus to Bac Ha we had reserved a private minibus and we were met by our ‘guide’ who didn’t actually speak English. He led us to the white van sitting outside the station. The sliding door was eventually heaved open and we looked in. Five of the seats were ok, covered in dust but ok. The seat back of two of the seats was bent forward in a position which looked like it might cause permanent spinal damage to the occupants. Neither of the two fold down seats had seat backs at all. We climbed in. One of the group leaned across to close the side window nearest the back of the bus. After a few moments of confusion it became clear there was no window. The guide smiled, the driver desperately tried to start the noisiest diesel engine I’ve heard in a while and we bounced off down the road. The cool morning air was in danger of inducing hypothermia so sign language was used to get the guide and driver to close their windows. That was achieved by the driver winding the handle until the window stopped moving then getting hold of the glass and pulling it up until he could jam in into the top of the frame. He did this with two hands whilst the guide held the steering wheel and the bus continued to career down the road.

Apart from the cold the trip was fairly uneventful, the road to Bac Ha has taken another hammering in the recent bad weather. Repairs following the floods in February were not complete when the heavy rains of September and October compounded the damage. The bus stalled in a bed of loose sand on a steep hill and we all held our breath until the driver managed to restart it and the van crawled out of the ruts. In the end our luxury bus took almost as long as the public bus and by the time we had driven once round Bac Ha trying to get the guide to understand where the hotel was there was just time to check in, find the electricity was off and go for lunch.

A couple of beers and a bowl of rice later we were ready for new adventures. The plate of chopped bananas which arrived instead of banana flower salad and a few other interesting interpretations of the menu meant that we had not exactly eaten excessively so an afternoon walk with a local school teacher who teaches English showing us the sights seemed about right.

We walked and talked for two or three kilometres when he suggested we should just drop into this house and meet one of the locals. Inside a small group of men broke up as we approached leaving a laughing guy in a leather jacket and woolly hat as the centre of attention. He welcomed us all and began to heap compliments on the women as we sat down. Bac Ha corn wine arrived in the usual deceptive plastic water bottle and shot glasses were put out for everyone. We drank our collective health and the glasses were full again by the time they hit the table. Toasting health with this stuff is a bit like saying smoking is bad for you whilst dragging on five lit cigarettes in each hand. Bac Ha corn wine is probably used as fuel in the Chinese space program.

We drank three… or was it four rounds before finally taking leave of our host who was still consuming the wine and assuring us of the health benefits, after all he was 77 years old. We staggered off up the hill. Our teacher guide said we would be back in town in 15 minutes. This was shortly after he said it was another 5 kilometres and only five minutes before he directed us into another house to meet another of his ‘helpers’. This time our host was a mere sixty something years old. Again the corn wine came out and health was toasted. This guy thought entertainment was in order as well so he brought out several ethnic minority instruments and performed music and dance between toasts. Then we had to join in. Several people headed for the toilet (on the right next to the pig sty). These ‘helpers’ are effectively retired locals of good status who act as voluntary truancy officers, persuading children to go to school and persuading parent farmers with too much work to do to let their young labourers leave the fields and go to lessons. The commitment is obvious and whilst I left both houses cursing corn wine I have the greatest amount of respect for those men, the life they live and the importance they see in the education of the next generation. It was dark when we arrived back in town.

A great meal in a local restaurant was accompanied by… complimentary Bac Ha corn wine but by now most people were past caring. Meal over we retired to a local Karaoke bar where, after the first song from our group, the few Vietnamese in the place left. We staggered back to the hotel about midnight for the third round of ‘hunt the room key’ (don’t ask) and retired to bed for three hours sleep before the ruddy rooster decided it was dawn.

Sunday in Bac Ha is the big day of the week. Hundreds of people come in from the minority villages around the province for one of the biggest and most colourful markets in North Vietnam. You can sit outside the cafes having breakfast and watching vendors and buyers arriving, all dressed in the traditional costumes of their people and carrying or leading their offerings. Here a woman in a bright outfit carrying a shopping bag with two ducks, their heads sticking out and looking round, there a small boy pulls on the cord through the nose a reluctant one tonne buffalo on its way to be sold. Many products don’t even make it to market. As I sat and drank coffee on the steps of our hotel the owner stopped a man going past with a bag on his shoulder. The bag was dumped on the pavement. It squealed loudly. The seller opened the bag to show the hotel owner the pig inside. They agreed a price and the bag disappeared into the back of the hotel. The seller with his money and smile on his face, headed towards the market now going as a buyer.

I met the rest of the group for breakfast and then we went our separate ways into the market which covers a large area. I bought a few Christmas presents but spent most of my time watching the transactions between the local peoples. Two men sat on their heels in a quiet corner playing pipes made of bamboo with a ceramic horn on the end. A third man sat in front of them, his face screwed up in total concentration as he tried to decide which was the better instrument.

The man in the hat listens intently to the two 'clarinets'

In the bottom of the market by the river is a ‘food court’ – rows of small stalls with rectangular seating areas under low blue tarpaulins where the internal organs of many different animals are boiled, carved and mixed with rice noodles to form many different breakfast soups. Sometimes it’s the feet or the jaw which provides the delicacies. You don’t see any Europeans eating here (me included). Around the edges of the market, where the roads are tarmac rather than mud, are all the stalls selling handmade fabrics, clothes, wall hangings and many other items which are attractive to tourists. These are the stall where a few words of English are spoken and where most of the tourists try their hand at barter. I was not very successful, the young girl I was pitted against was just too cute to disappoint. She was smiling from ear to ear when I left with my purchases.

This time I did not try to buy a buffalo, or a horse or a pig. Instead I settled for bags and cushion covers. Then I made my way back to the small bar outside the market where the group was gradually reassembling as enthusiasm for shopping (or money) ran out. We drank beer at 10.30 in the morning and watched as the bulk of the tourist busses arrived from Sapa with the day shoppers. We lunched in the same restaurant (there’s not much choice) walked in the hills for an hour or so and then collected our things as the luxury bus coughed and wheezed up to the front of the hotel. A slightly faster and warmer trip back to Lao Cai was followed by another ticket collecting saga and a bowl of Pho in a local café before we climbed on the early train back to Hanoi. Once again it was easy to sleep and the journey passed in forgotten dreams before the guard banged on the door and shouted “Ha Noi”. It was around 5am on Monday morning as I pushed through the taxi drivers and walked home in the dark. Once away from the station the streets were quiet, only the noodle soup vendors were in evidence busily preparing breakfast for their clients. By 5.30am Monday morning I was back in bed for a couple of hours sleep before work.