Tribasia Blog

We started walking in the lovely surroundings of Bac Ha following a mud path at random. By-passing hills, we came across traditional Flower Hmongs hamlets along the way and.... their cuddly dogs -not really! People say that humans know instinctively what to do in dangerous situations and this is sooo true. When approached by one, two, three or even a gang of barking dogs showing their big crown of fangs, you quickly learn that pretending to throw a stone at them and having a stick at hand is a life saver!

The Flower Hmong, contrarily to their dogs, are a peaceful community and although they have no or very little command of English, many greet us with a cheery "Hello!" and wave at us when we walked passed their houses.

Traditional Hmong houses' walls were made of compacted loose straw coated with a clay slip and wooden posts. Nowadays, the clay is coated with cement and paint or for the richest, even replaced by bricks. Varnished wood is sometimes used for wall surfaces, maybe to give them that final mountain touch. Corrugated iron has long replaced thatched grass for roofing as it is more solid and requires less upkeeping at such altitudes.

In terms of livelihood, the beautiful landscape of golden green and brown ochre terraced fields spreading across the hills is testimony to the work of these local minorities. Flower Hmong are farmers and rely heavily on cash crops such as corn and more infamously, opium. Following a crackdown from the central authorities and also incentives, Flower Hmong have tried to vary their sources of income but it has not always been a smooth transition and they remain wary of outside incursions. Rice terraces are also a common sight, although not as much as one might think as less income can be derived from it and more and more Hmong turn to higher-yielding crops.

After walking for 5 kms, we came across a village and its school. We got invited by the teacher to come in the classroom and witness what seemed to be a singing lesson. It was great to see how much energy thhe children were putting in it: singing a chorus with their hearts out! Poverty means that schooling does not go much beyond 'primary' years here and a lot of the educational material is financed by NGOs or international organisations. For instance, the Unicef logo is highly visible on the rare schoolbags that we saw.

With the help of villagers, we escaped a couple of rabid dogs unscathed and took a rugged path back to Bac Ha town where we could enjoy the view in peace -without a bark or a growl, what a relief!