Northern Tour 2014 04

The night before, when having dinner, we were "adopted" by some of the locals who kept on toasting us with rice wine, and of course each toast had to be returned- it didn't take long before we lost track over whose turn it was and to whom should be toasted. Of course, one of the troubles with rice wine is  you don't feel as if you are getting drunk until you do- and then it's too late, way too late. I still thought I would be fairly safe because I left the restaurant early, well earlyish. Alarm set for 4:00 am, yes that's correct; don't ever think you can dismiss the alarm and have another 5 minutes..... Still, I didn't keep the group waiting too long after 05:00.

We set off to Chợ Phố Cáo (Phố Cáo Market), which confusingly is held every six days, located high in the mountains almost within spitting distance of the Việt Nam China border.  As I walked around the market I came across a guy travelled the northern markets selling and repairing second-hand mobiles. After finishing a repair he settled down to reward himself with a long bong (home grown tobacco, and I mean tobacco- which is what a lot of people smoke), after he finished he offered one to me; how could I refuse? It didn't knock me around, but I'm not in a hurry to have another.

After we left the market we came across flowering buckwheat fields at Thôn Lũng Cẩm Trên (Lung Cam cultural village), in Sủng Là Valley, shortly after we arrived a Vietnamese television crew came along and grabbed Adam Martin from out group for an interview (Adam in his day job is the APT South East Asia tour co-ordinator, based in Ho Chi Minh City). We were invited into one of the Moung houses, more rice wine, and then some models arrived...

From Thôn Lũng Cẩm Trên we travelled the short distance to Đồng Văn where later in the afternoon we had another photo session with a local model. Even if I do say so, some of the photos I took this day are among some of the best of the entire trip.