We all woke from our 30 minute after lunch naps and everyone scattered to different destinations. Dad and younger sister headed to his dental office for afternoon patients. Brother headed off to basketball and to see his girlfriend. Mother went to neighbors to help them because someone was ill and they needed assistance. Huong and I had negotiated for a taxi to pick us up at 1:30pm and take us “up the mountain” for the afternoon. The taxi guy wanted 350,000 dong for the afternoon excursion ($18) but we kept talking to different guys and finally found a nice man who would take only 280,000 ($14).
We piled into his small taxi and headed out of Lang Son. As I said in my earlier post, Lang Son is located in the extreme north of Vietnam and the beginning of National Highway 1A – the main North-south route from the northern border of China –through Hanoi and all the way south to Ho Chi Minh city . Huge trucks roar across the border from China and barrel down this highway to Hanoi and points south.
We head northeast towards china and the imposing mountains that mark the “frontier zone”. One more bit of history. In 1979, the 600,000 Chinese soldiers invaded Vietnam near these tall mountains. A battle raged for five days and Lang Son town was pretty well trashed by about 200,000 of those soldiers. However, the Vietnamese are proud because they successfully defeated the Chinese army, which supposedly bid a hasty retreat. But the city had to rebuild and it now looks like a “new” town meaning that the buildings seem to be newly constructed and have little character.
Our drive took us out of the city and into the countryside. Suddenly I began to see many minority people who typically live in the rural countryside in very tough conditions. They are very poor and travel mostly on foot. You see them walking the roads everywhere.
As we headed towards Mẫu Sơn Mountain, about 20 miles northeast of Lạng Sơn the paved road became pretty marginal and started climbing. The vista was amazing! This little road wiggled its way up the mountains and our valiant taxi driver just kept smiling and smoking : (
At the top of this mountain (5,000 ft.) the view was amazing! And I was also surprised to find a group of old buildings that showed the influence of the French. These buildings were constructed in the late 1800’s by the French as a sort of spa or retreat from the heat and oppressive humidity of the area. As you can tell by the photos, the place is pretty run down…although Huong said a couple of the hotels were open. I did check out one room and it wasn’t too bad of a place. I was told you could stay for about $10 a night! Both Huong and I said we would like to do this sometime.
As we climbed around, I spotted a concrete building at the top of the mountain. It looked like a viewpoint. So up we huffed and puffed and as I climbed over the concrete wall I saw a large group of students enjoying a picnic in the building. You can imagine their surprise to see a “westerner” emerge from the bushes and poke her head over the wall!
They asked us to join them and we had a few snacks and laughed together about their seeing me suddenly appear!
Afterwards we all climbed down and took another group photo at their request!
Huong and I woke up our taxi driver and we hopped in for our ride back to town. We arrived around 6pm and ate another wonderful dinner at Huong’s home. Afterwards we visited her grandfather again and I was dropped off at my hotel for a good night’s sleep!
In the morning we did a final visit to a local Buddhist temple that was located in the side of a mountain. As we were heading back to Huong's house on her motorbike I suddenly heard "Gail", "Gail", "Gail"! Both Huong and I started looking around and wondering "what the heck". Suddenly I saw a familiar and smiling face appear from behind us!
This was one of my students from Hanoi! Small world....even when you are in the remote area of northern Vietnam!
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