Mai Chau

Sugar cane juice anyone? Aw honey, youre sweet enough.
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(16 photos in this one so check em all out!)

It is STINKING hot even though we’re climbing high into the mountains on our way to stay as guests in a White Tai village. Something illogical (perhaps our wonderfully eccentric guide?) tells us to stop for fresh pressed sugarcane, which we do and it’s lovely, though very sweet and not particularly thirst quenching.

He smiles, revealing long yellow teeth, and raises his eyebrows...

Eat your heart out, Exxon
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Our village, Pom Coong, is adjacent to Mai Chau, and is part of the area’s attempt at eco tourism. We can’t believe that most would prefer our experience – eating food cooked over an open flame and sleeping on a one-inch mattress beneath a mosquito net and a struggling fan – to an air-conditioned high rise hotel with eggs and bacon or (fill in the cultural culinary preference) for breakfast. It’s hard work to garner a half-authentic experience and, I admit, harder at 52 than it was at 26 years old. While the ensuing 7-mile trek is through villages that are fake in that everyone is hawking scarves, bags, baskets, crossbows and pillow covers, these ethnic minorities are struggling to preserve a culture that hasn’t quite been quashed, as distinct from recreated pilgrim villages or others that hearken back to a time that is gone forever and was never perhaps quite as it is re-enacted.

If you think youve got it bad, try working in a brick kiln in 104 deg. heat.
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The houses are built on stilts designed originally to prevent the consumption of humans by (wild) animals and now fashioned so that the animals to be consumed by humans can live below. This seems a strange arrangement in that both heat and smells surely rise. But never mind. Much of the support – stairs, walls, stilts -- is provided by teak and the rest is bamboo – used as poles to form the roof beams, sliced thinly to provide the raised, slatted floor, and used leafily as thatch. Bamboo, we notice later, is used in the fields to pipe water from paddy to paddy or from house to ditch. This brings to mind my helping to repair such a pipe in the hills out of Chiang Mai twenty-six years ago. I wonder how those villages are doing today after decades of hordes of tourists traipsing through, just like us.

If you were a grain of rice, wouldnt you like to grow up here?
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Our trek takes us past patchy grass fields set up for soccer and volley ball but currently housing water buffalo, slurpy mud streaked across their backs from a recent mud wallow. We pick our way through and around rice paddies divided into family plots by narrow, raised grass-covered walkways that are hand-mown (as in, picked by hand) to feed the pigs. Tiny abodes are built on stilts over catfish ponds and everywhere, kids gaze wide-eyed at our elephantine bodies, then look away and look back and smile, sometimes mouthing a half-silent xin chao (hello).

Its hotter upstairs but at least the animals are only mosquito sized.
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Tonight we’re treated to a traditional music and dance performance, staged by our cooks and hosts. The dances tell stories – of butterflies in the Spring, of meeting your sweetie in the market, of collecting grass and leaves in the paddy fields to feed the pigs and water buffalo. The charming amateur dances (except we do pay them) are accompanied by an orchestra – drum, gongs and piano accordion -- and teir most attentive audience is a threesome of dancers in training, all under the age of four. The show concludes with a rousing rendition of a favorite Uncle Ho standard, to which we’re all invited to dance along, Hava Nagila style, before settling down to a stone jar of rice wine, sealed with a membrane through which pop a dozen bamboo “straws.” Pump the straw rapidly up and down with your thumb over the end, trade thumb for mouth, suck and collapse onto your one inch thick mattress. It’s a surefire way to get a good night’s sleep.

Stuck between the dancers and the beer, the little ones learn the ropes.
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First thing in the morning, we have a date with the local traditional healer. This is not a part of any tour and has been specially arranged for Andy, given his interest in alternative healing. This man is 75 years old but looks 175 with sparse grey wiry hair and a sparser beard. His wife, whose mouth displays a life of devout betel nut worship, sits on a cushion by the door. Our gracious and accommodating host begins by pouring hot water from a thermos into one of four tiny teacups, then transfers it to the next and dries the first with a filthy towel. He repeats this process with all four cups, takes tea from a Lipton’s tin, produces a brew and we all toast each other’s health. He then retrieves a bottle of home made mulberry wine which must be shared with patients before consultation. Again, the ritual of washing and drying is repeated with a series of shot glasses. We toast once – and once again – amid clinks of glasses and chirrups of laughter. Perhaps the idea is to fog the brain for what’s to come?

Trade thumb for mouth, suck and collapse.
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We step outside to his pharmacy, where he shows us the manually operated slicer (like the one for deli ham) that he uses to cut the various barks he collects on foraging expeditions in the jungle. Twigs and slices of various roots and wood are stored in big plastic jars or buckets – all labeled and all “very special” according to our guide’s translation. This medicine man specializes in kidney and heart diseases. The framed certificates, presented by the Communist Party, attest to his esteemed position as does the framed portrait of the army officer, compete with the same long hair. The photo shows this gentle healer and, at the same time, the “face of the enemy” presented to us all those years ago. Our guide has introduced us as Australians, as he says the older generation is not so partial to the French or the Americans, but seem to forget Australia’s involvement in “the American war.” Funny about that … so do the Americans. Oh well, it’s nice to see it cuts both ways!

We were so honored to be welcomed into the home of the medicine couple.
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He shows us how he shaves deer horn to help cure childhood fevers and we get to taste, chew and spit out remedies for everything from bad lungs to weak tendons. Then we repair indoors again for another round of tea and the piece de resistance – a jar stuffed full of whole blackbirds … feathers, heads, beaks, bums and all. They’re soaking in rice wine and it’s our job to toast again. We reel! How can we do this? Andy is vegetarian. But this sweet trickster is our host. We smell it. It’s slightly sour but not as unpleasant as one expects. He smiles, revealing long yellow teeth, and raises his eyebrows. His rheumy eyes drill through us. We can’t refuse. Okay, a teeny tiny bit only. But no. The shot glasses are filled and we must chug. I think about Survivor, the reality show in which contestants must eat all manner of crunchy insects for their chance at a million dollars. Heck, we can do this for nothing. And now, I shut my eyes and see those birds and taste them, though all we really tasted was rice wine. Our guide tells us later that the healer, seeing us chug the birds, was ready to go upstairs and retrieve the revered snake wine, the greatest honor, until he was discouraged. Never mind. The birds alone guarantee us a night of such vigorous and frequent sec (sic) that we should inform our Hanoi hotel to strengthen our bed. Now isn’t that appropriate, given that our 23^rd anniversary was just two nights ago!