A Vietnamese hut on stilts? It’s the height of luxury...
WHAT about the insects?’ I asked anxiously. ‘Fumigated!’ came the reply. ‘And the loo?’ ‘Perfumed, for the three weeks!’ I was on my way to the remote north of Vietnam, 200 miles from Hanoi, where staying in the homes of locals is one of the few options for lodging, and I was apprehensive. But Loan Foster, owner of bespoke travel company Journeys To The East, is not one to do things by half.
‘An advance guard of staff has already arrived,’ she assured me, ‘along with food, wine, and an espresso machine.’
The journey took us through the fertile Lo Valley, past plantations of rice and corn, terraces of tea, orchards of pear and kumquat, and pigs strapped precariously on to motorcycles. As the road gradually narrowed and the mountains grew larger, we reached a village bathed in a sea of red and yellow Vietnamese flags.
This was Ha Thanh, and our temporary home was a large wooden house on stilts. We were greeted by our smiling hosts, while Loan’s ‘staff’ from Hanoi, camouflaged in the local costume of the Tay, proffered glasses of champagne and delicious spring rolls, before ushering us up the traditional nine steps to our living quarters.
I had not expected this. The humble hut, open-sided beneath its thatch of 8,000 palm fronds, had been transformed into a temple of Zen, with Chinese lanterns and discreet bamboo furniture situated around a central fireplace. It was spotless. Two beds, caparisoned in tribal silks, were set in alcoves curtained off from each other.
In one corner stood a decorative pile of rice stalks; in the opposite corner, the ancestral shrine, tended by Grandma Uan – the octogenarian matriarch with gnarled feet and fabulous legs, who padded about silent as a ghost.
The view was heavenly: distant limestone mountains framed the surrounding rice paddies, stalks bent under the weight of the grain and shimmering in the breeze.
After a hot shower (silk dressing gowns provided), we went for a walk in the village, past houses with ponds of burbling catfish, stalls for oxen, and sties for what we call black Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs – but here are merely pigs.
An old lady – a fearsome knife in her belt – herded water buffalo down a path. Elsewhere, three generations of women sat stripping, splitting and weaving bamboo to make into baskets – while three generations of men looked on.
Once, these men might have been fighters: in the 1940s, Ha Giang province was a hotbed of revolution, the stronghold of Ho Chi Minh in his battle against the French. It is hard to imagine all that now.
I woke the next morning to the sound of crowing cocks and the neighbour’s pig screaming to be fed. We would continue our journey north, visiting colourful markets, vast caves and little villages, on the way to our next lodging – the former lair of an opium lord in Meo Vac.
But that magical hut on stilts still haunts my dreams – along with the image of Grandma Uan rising at dawn to usher her quacking ducks through the village to water.