Mộc Châu highlands

A blue H'mong woman
She is shy when we take a photo of her.
We present these H'mong people candy
and plums.

April 30 and May Day were our national holiday, plus weekend, so we had a long holiday this year. Myself and two Vietnamese girls rented a 4 seater car with driver and traveled 192km to Mộc Châu highlands in north west Vietnam. Mộc Châu is a district in Sơn La province and this place is off the beaten track. It's also home of some ethnic minority groups such as the Thai, H'mong, Muong etc. At altitude 1050m, Mộc Châu has cool climate and it's good for diary farming and tea plantations. Mộc Châu milk is a famous brand name in Vietnam, along with Vinamilk.

April 30, 2010 - We left Hanoi at 7:30am and traveled along the National Highway No. 6. When we were going up mountains, at one section, it was so foggy that the visible distance was only a few meters and our car had to follow the white painted line. It took us 4 and a half hours to get to Mộc Châu from Hanoi with two stops on the way. Even though it was a national holiday and every tourist site in Vietnam was crowded, it was pretty quiet in Mộc Châu and we didn't see any tourists at the sites. The only thing we found was that the big hotels in the town were fully booked in advance. In the afternoon we planned to see Dải Yếm waterfall, but the locals said it was dry there and no water as this time was the end of the dry season.

Two H'mong boys in Mộc Châu
We saw a group of H'mong people having
lunch by the road. These boys are the sons
of a man there. They were eating rice with
water and enjoying their simple food.

We decided to visit a couple of villages (Bản Búa and Bản Áng 2) where the Thai ethnic minority people are living. While walking around Bản Áng 2 village to take photos of stilt houses, we were invited to come in a local house and a Thai woman even climbed up a plum tree at her garden to pick plums for us. We sat down to drink tea on wooden floor of her house and talked to her. We wanted to pay for the plums but she refused. I especially like the view from corridor of her house. From there we could see mountains, other stilt houses, gardens and fields. There was a traditional dance show in the evening (perhaps some festival), however it was raining, so we couldn't go back to this village.

May Day 2010 - We went to the tea plantation hills which are located some kms from the town. It was a day off work, so we didn't see any farmers at the site. We climbed up the hills then went down to other fields. The sun was just shining at 10am before we left for the diary farming area. We passed by some milking cows and walked to grass fields. These cows are owned by local households and they milk twice per day, at 5am and 4pm. The cow milk is then sold to Mộc Châu Milk Factory. A cow costs VND 20-25 million (US$1,000 - 1,300) and a liter of milk can be sold at VND 10,000 (50 US cents).