During 3 months for staying in Ha Giang and teaching English for ethnic minority youngsters. I always spent 2 days at the weekend wandering around with the local people and my good friend who I met here.
Ha Giang, Viet Nam is known as the best place for visiting in Spring and Fall season with an amazing view of yellow fields and stone highlands. My sudden trips always started in a brain wave.
Instead of travelling to the North of Ha Giang, I changed the direction to the South of Hoang Su Phi, a beautiful town with original landscape, terraced fields, and issues of the day of ethnic minority commune.
The saddest thing in my trip was I did not go to the right time to see the golden fields of grain as the advertisement often shows off on the internet. But, now when looking back this memory, I feel how lucky I was when seeing the landscape in the winter. Trust me, every moment, every time always has its particular beauty. When there is comparasion in our mind, we cannot touch the real beauty as it is.
Phung Village is at an elevation of 1000 metres above the sea level, belongs to Hoang Su Phi town. With 2 bigger mountains (Tay Con Linh and Gia Long) , they shaped Phung Village as the lovely home in the jungle. The majority ethnic minority here is La Chi, they settled down here for a long time with the main career is a farmer and plant rice and corn. Driving motorbike is always my best choice to travel, it is not unsual for this trip. By renting a good one from citizen, I and my friend followed the signboard along the street instead of using google map. At noon, we finally got the way to arrive the top of the village, we did not know that we were in Phung Village because everything was very strange and deserted. We turned back and ahead few times just to identify a homestay that we have contacted before going out.
The first moment when I was still like a fish out of the water, in my thought, Phung Village has to be very crowded and heated with the plenty of houses close by.
At Chi Tai homestay, there was no guests booking that day, so the owner let us use all the facilities in the second floor. From the second floor, I could have an enlarge view from the top, see all the houses and terraced fields and cover the scene around.
Because the fields had been harversted, each sharp line of terrace fields hove in sight just like the line drawn on the map as we often see. La Chi ethnic minority has built their traditional home beside their terraced fields. It is their way of life that reminds me about the connection between human beings and nature.
The landscape picture combinated between terraced fields and houses in the end of crop might not bring a gentle feeling to watcher compared with the harvest time. However, it brought a strong sensation of being alive, from my perspective.
At noon, there was no restaurant or grocery store operation here. The owner also did not have any rice or material to cook lunch, the only thing we could use was instant noodles. The warmth from noodles helped us more awake from the freezing cold. We kept sitting on the balcony, watching the activities from the ground and integrating with the weather here.
Escaping from the nap, we quickly changed clothes and went for a walk around the village. In the late afternoon sun, I could see twirls of smoke from the distance burned by local people. God knew what they are doing at that moment, I wanted to ask them, unfortunately they did not understand what I was saying. Wow, the life in Phung village is not assimilated strongly as other communes in the highland, a fair comment from me. Phung village is covered on all sides by a huge range of mountains. There is only one school for children and teenagers, an infirmary for on curative health care and 2 – 3 small grocery stores. I have to agree that the living standard here are lack of from material to spiritual life, however, I did not feel that they live in utterly miserable at all.
To get more closer, we followed the footpath which leads us to the field. There were buffaloes standed on the fields, some of them were plouging the soil, the rest of it were chewing with a mouth full of straw. The main cattle in the ethnic minrority families here probably is buffalo. They are fed for field work especially in plough. They did not use or apply modern technologies such as mechanized plows to save time and labour in the field. They still keep the traditional method which is passed down over the centeries in family. La Chi community adores buffalo as their precious things
Houses in Phung Village have the familiar style. I did not know how the inside is but looking at from outside, it must be very cool in the summer and warm in the winter. They use cogon leaves to tile the house. After cutting down, they will dry the leaves in the sunlight till it changes the color and be actually dried. In front of the yard of each house, there was always a pile of rice straw, it is rolled to be in shape just in case they can withdraw easily to feed cattle. The main structure of houses in Phung Village is house on stilts. I did not know the history of this building, but it is a typical feature to regconize a minority commune in anywhere when I travel. The last knowledge I knew is that the empty space under the house is used for keeping cattle and place their stuff.
Well, I love the simple life in Phung village a lot. Though I arrived here in the winter when they had finished the ripe rice crop or the new crop have not started yet, I still have more things to discover. Meeting people, watching the life style in detail and finding out the traditional things in here are what I was doing at that time. For sure, to get the most of feeling, I will come back Phung village one more time in the ripe rice season starting in September.
Thank you for stopping by my blog and reading my journey ^^!
And If you guys have an idea to visit this commune in particular and Ha Giang in general, just say Hi to me, I am already here to go with you ^^.