20 July: Cho Ra

Up at 06h00, we finished up and walked to a local's house next door to where we were staying. He would take us to Ba Be National Park with his boat. When we arrived we were shown to a table where he poured tea for the both of us while he finished his cigarette. Afterwards we walked down the streets to the river just below the market, where his boat was moored.

We jumped aboard and were shown to our seats, the only ones on the boat, small plastic blue chairs :-) His wife pushed the boat away with a 4m long bamboo pole and we started down river. Everywhere there were woman and children lowering nets into the water and then retracting them with a rope, its difficult to explain but they attach bamboo poles to the points of a square net and a rope holding everything together is used to lower and lift the net to and fro from the water. Sometimes we saw them catching fish, but mostly they were empty and lowered again for another 5 minute wait.

The trip down the river was something to experience, there was evidence that a flood had passed with trees torn down, river banks eroded and plastics stuck to high branches. The mountains would close in on the valley sometimes becoming sheer cliffs with only a river eroding them further. The cliffs were so high one would sometimes have to look completely vertically to see the end. Along the river banks were farms with cattle, water buffalo, ducks, chickens and the occasional maize plantation, strangely we saw no rice paddies along the way.

Gaining access to Ba Be National Park, you enter it through a mountain, where the river had carved a huge cavern through it, called Puong cave. Emerging on the other side the mountains appear more majestic and colossal, some towering more than 1554m in height. A few farms exist in the national park, all owned by the minority people found in this area. As we floated down river we made a u-turn into another river, the change in colour of the two rivers was amazing, the one we had been traveling on was brown in colour due to the silt deposits, while the new branch had a clear green colour. We continued with the river 200m, before it opened up into Ba Be Lake, the huge water mass was all green and see through, 8km in length, with a width of 400m and maximum depth of 35m.

We continued slowly into the lake, passing bays and coves scattered at every corner, until we came to an island connected to the mainland with a floating bridge. At the island we stopped and were pointed up to the Pagoda, An Ma, we have no knowledge as to its history. All we did was to climb the steps to the top of the hill/mountain and walk through it, before returning to the boat. Back aboard we traveled further into the lake, reaching an island where we turned around and headed back to where we had entered. The Ba Be Lake is in fact 3 lakes combined into one by the mountain ranges.

Having exited where we entered we continued down with the brown mass of a river to a small sleepy village on the side. We were shown into someones home, where they offered to sell us lunch, at that stage it was only 10h30 and we had already had breakfast so we declined. We drank tea with them, before being led to Dau Dang waterfall, about 1 ½ km away. Along the way we met up with a group of Asian tourists, who literally grabbed hold of me so we would pose in a photo with them. I put my arm over his shoulders, Leanne standing next to us and soon the whole group were there posing for the photo. All smiles we continued and reached a raging river being forced to pass through a small opening between two rocks, the waterfall wasn't the highest I had ever seen, in fact it was barely 5m high, however the water mass being forced through was quite a site to see.

After having a photo taken we headed back to the boat, our day had come to an end, except not exactly, it was now 11h30 and we still had a 4 hour trip back up the river. When I say painstakingly slow, I really mean it, we could have walked faster. It took us no more than 1 ½ hours to travel down stream, but returning was more than three times as long!

We arrived just after 15h30 at the market, other than just heading to the hotel we wanted to find some fruit for lunch. Unfortunately there were no mango's or pineapples, but at least there were ramputans and these we bought after finding the best price, although not so reasonable at the fourth vendor. We headed home buying some water along the way.

For dinner we headed out to the same restaurant as the previous evening, not only that but we opted on the same meals, pork mince, vegetables, rice and spring rolls. They had been so tasty the night before, we wanted nothing else. Tonight was the same, divine. We got some information on how to get to Sapa, before returning to pack and sleep.