Picture Posting Colin Brydon

The Road to Lũng Cú

The road to Lũng Cú has spectacular views all along its length - this is my favourite The most northerly tip of Vietnam is landlocked, but nevertheless, just like Land's End, it acts as a magnate for tourists. The road from near the Đồng Văn Palace to Vietnam's apex at Lũng Cú village is completely absorbing with its mixture of a vast countryside, and the daily routines of local people. Most of the spectacle found in the views comes from the karst landscape. The area has now been designated the 'DVKP Geopark' for this reason Terraces, valley and karsts The site of a new house above the valley The clay soil, dug from beside the house, is pounded into a wooden former Traditional houses in this area are built from the clay soil on which they sit. A level patch is cleared and a wooden mould about two metres long and 40 centimetres square is filled with the soil dug from the hill beside the house. This is pounded, the mould moved on, and the process repeated until the desired height is reached when beams are placed to hold a thatched roof. Women wear the familiar conical hats, less common is the male equivalent, these domed hats. They are of a similar loose weave, allowing some air to circulate The former or mould is filled, the clay pounded, and the former moved along. The seams of the blocks so created are then filled. The whole process taking a few tens of minutes per block A man, with the traditional back basket, and black toggled jacket seen everywhere in the northern part of Vietnam, turns apprehensively on hearing the Jeep Three women returning with wood they have been gathering for fires, not at all apprehensive at the sight of us Shoes come undone everywhere It was a warm day, but still the pace of life makes it absolutely normal to just sit for a while Most transportation of goods in these parts was like this: bundles on women's backs And although there is no role division, as in India, it is mostly women who do the carrying. Here a man and a woman have no burdens While paved roads are valued by locals, freeing them from the slithering mud that otherwise dominates Vietnamese tracks, they bring many heavy vehicles for which the carriageways were not constructed resulting in the road collapsing altogether. 'Improvements' may bring money but also fresh problems. While on the road it is obviously a bundle is being transported, on the hillsides it is sometimes hard to distinguish such bundles from the vegetation, as is the case where these appear at first as two 'bushes' The burdens are, as always, impressive... Some, such as this schoolboy, are unburdened ...although as the smiles show these bundles are not in fact so heavy These distant and wild places have always offered surprises at the very activity and density of the population, this is now rather sadly being supplemented by interpretation boards, gift shops and a denser stream of tourists inevitably detached from and looking in on local life. Valley in Ma Lé commune, the location of the Tia Sáng caves Interpretation boards, like this one about the Tia Sáng caves, are very new features of the landscape Notice board with its endearing Vietnamese English At the north end of the road the country all around is in China At the southern end of the road, this eyebrow of a hill guards the valley to Lũng Cú The next page is about the most northerly tip of Vietnam, at Lũng Cú village where an enormous flag - 54 square metres of it - marks the apex of Vietnam with China on three sides.

Connections...

The last page visited Kirkcudbright High Street A page on the Mã Pì Lèng Pass some 30 kilometres from the Đồng Văn Palace A page on the palace near Đồng Văn town Or go to the page
which was added one year ago.

Saturday 7th January 2017
While travelling these pages are produced using a Microsoft system.
Colour consistency and quality is sadly much diminished until my return to my Mac.