Mai Chau - A Peaceful Retreat in the Hills

This weekend I visited the small town of Mai Chau, southwest of Hanoi. A series of rickety buses staffed by unscrupulous ticket-takers, a transfer in the bus yard of the small dusty town of Hoa Binh, and a ride over a mammoth mountain pass got me there. Somehow it took 5 hours to cover the 85 or so miles from Hanoi. But in keeping with the well-known Krigel-Switzky theory of travelling, which states that the more of a pain in the ass a place is to get to, the more rewarding it's likely to be, this place was truly amazing. And really it's not that hard to get there for a weekend trip from Hanoi (an easier way would be to sign up for a group tour.)

The town of Mai Chau, which is quite small itself, is on a spur road off of the 'main' highway. But from the 'modern' town, you can walk a few hundred yards to a series of small villages inhabited by the White Thai hilltribes. The villages are set among the verdant rice fields and surrounded by high hills, and they maintain a very traditional atmosphere. The houses are all traditional stilt houses, which have split bamboo floors, natural ventilation (no glass windows, just openings with wood shutters), and thatch or tile roofs. I stayed in one of these houses with a friendly family and a great view over the rice fields - they have one such house for themselves and another for guests.

The White Thai also keep up a lot of their cultural traditions: they are weavers, and on the ground floor under most stilt houses you can see people spinning thread or sitting at the loom (my host is pictured on the left). And they put on traditional song and dance performances, which somehow manage to avoid being hokey and feel very intimate and friendly. The music's not bad either, and you can always hear a drum or a gong echoing through the village. I was also struck by the variety of livestock running around: buffalo, cows, chickens, ducks, and pigs, all wandering around freely and intermingling.

And that's about it. There's not much to do there, except take walks through the rice fields, or ride a bike down the valley. No internet, cell phones, air-conditioning, or TV - OK, actually they do have satellite television, though I did my best not to watch it. I was also struck by the lack of advertising and signs, and it made me aware of how prevalent it is in other parts of the country. It feels very far away from urban Vietnam with its incessant motorbikes and honking. In fact, it's not far from Laos, maybe 20 miles as the crow flies.

It's remarkable that such a beautiful, traditional place so close to Hanoi hasn't become overrun with tourists, or become a hippie backpacker mecca. In fact, they integrate a small amount of tourism (I saw a handful of other visitors - both Vietnamese and foreign - while I was there) without succumbing to the overdevelopment or loss of traditional lifestyles and landscape that often accompanies it. I hope it stays that way.