A Southeast Asian journey while uni is out. Part Three: Vietnam Trekking

Quynh Son province lies northeast of Hanoi, near the Chinese border, and at this time of year it is cloyingly hot and sticky. This was our chosen trek location.
Over the next three days we walked as if just out of a swimming pool. The sweat careened down our legs in rivulets, our shorts and shirts were soaked through, hats were saturated and could be wrung out beneath the merciless sun.

All around us lay a landscape of karst. So phenomenal and beautiful that it took your thoughts back to the Jurassic era. Two to three hundred metre high karst towers looked like soldiers in formation, steep stairways into the hot, humid and tropical sky.

Between them ran narrow valleys where homes had been built, the motorbike had found its way and rice paddies were ploughed in regular annual rhythms.

Buffalos and cows melded into these valley landscapes, chickens, piglets, geese and quacking ducks give signs of placid and functioning farm lifestyles lived like this for hundreds of years.

We threaded our way over the shoulder of a hill, meandering along a vehicular track and having to cajole and plead the girls into continuing.
Unexpectedly we arrived at our first homestay as thunder cracked in the distance. Backpacks were dropped, exclamations of relief and reflections of self worth brought lively conversation to the cool space in and around the wooden walls of the traditional Vietnamese home.

Sourec: www.huetouristvietnam.com

Sourec: www.weridevietnam.com

Set on two levels, the lower level of the traditional house design is storage, animal shelter and a form of natural air conditioning. The upper level is twenty to thirty metres squared with the right and left side slightly elevated. Traditionally the men and the women sleep on woven mats on either side.
The wide swathe through the middle has at one end a shrine dedicated to the ancestors and loaded with offerings. Never should your back be turned to it.  On the other end, a cooking place beyond doors that close where fires were lit and something already frying.
Shutter like doors along both sides of the house meant that the entire house could be opened up to airflow.

Modernity and its vast availability meant that South East Asians can afford to live simple but comfortable lives. Fans dotted the ceiling, comfortable mattresses gave solace to aching backs and while the go thunder brought rain, we were dry, cool and happy with our a lot.
Come dusk, our hosts served a meal fit for queens (and I'd like to note that I've never had a more princess-like group of students than these); spring rolls stuffed with duck, tofu in a rich tomato sauce, chicken noodles, morning glory greens, vine leaves wrapped around beef.

Our host family were of the Tai tribe, a minority group that considers themselves more Chinese than Vietnamese. Both had smiles that spoke of timeless tales, no English and a beautiful young granddaughter.  Through our guide, we learnt that the man was a renowned musician and craftsman of locally traditional instruments.

They gave us a warming rendition, the Instrument Maker's wife first. She sang of unrequited love, plucking at a stringed instrument to which we had no name. Soon though, her fingers became unsure and her voice faltered.
"Oh dear!" it was translated to us
"I am old now and have forgotten the words."
The granddaughter rustled in a box behind a curtain and appeared with a tattered book full of handwritten songlines and a pair of glasses.

The Instrument Maker's wife perched the glasses on her slim face and her song began again. Soon though he Instrument Maker himself took over and played alongside his granddaughter who jingled the bells.
The next two days brought more incredible landscapes, tangled jungle vines stretching between forest trees that dug their roots in deep so as to grow upright on 70 degree slopes. That luminous green that is so indicative of the South East Asian landscape filled every crevice. Caves could be seen tucked away into hillsides, vertical karst cliffs stretched to the heavens, optimal habitat for raptors.

But where were the bird calls, the hoots of mangabeys in the three teired canopies, the banded civets, the white cheeked gibbons, the langurs, the leaf monkeys, the pangolins and the more than three hundred bird species that should be there?
Climate related PTSD, eco-anxiety and depression as a result of perceptions of unmanageable environmental damage, are very real psychological illnesses. Despair and stress act to erode mental health through unrelenting day-by-day visions into the future of impending disaster, feelings of powerlessness, fear, anger and exhaustion envelop some more than others. Every conservationist needs to be able to create an emotional barrier between reality and their important work.
The exquisite landscape that we trekked through was, in all aspects dysfunctional, empty, a disrupted ecosystem with lush colonising species masking the human destruction. These karst kingdoms were collapsed natural systems, the people in their valleys living like the caged birds of Hanoi ... on borrowed time.

Tips for Erasmus students:

• Homestays are a wonderful way to travel but there are other ways if you are not able to get a summer job that pays you to travel. 
• Try the website couchsurfing.com  warmshowers.com   
• Travel and work to earn board and lodging through workaway.com 
• Travel through professional house sitting. 

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