Subterranean erosion is also responsible for the area’s isolated valleys, which make traversing the landscape such an arduous up-and-down affair. And because rainwater sinks deep into the earth, a large part of the plateau is technically desert, rendering even more remarkable the hardy people who carve their lives on this barely arable land. On soaring shafts of stone, cultivated corn billows between rocks. Homesteads are perilously fastened to the slopes. Bursts of red and green flash near mountain peaks where brightly clothed women move about, tending to their crops.

Distant explosions of road-clearing dynamite mingled with the whistles of Hmong woodwinds played by young goatherds. As we passed a mud-walled house, we heard chanting and the clanging of a gong. Using gestures, we asked Sua if we could approach. With a comatose expression, she indicated that someone had recently died there, and we assumed that a shaman was purifying the house. We couldn’t help but wonder if it was the same dead person we’d seen the night before.

NEAR the tiny town of Sa Phin, 10 miles west of Dong Van, the landscape settles down slightly. According to Mr. Anh, who drove us to the area after we had rested from Sua’s tour, the comparatively gentle, turtle-shell shape of one hill there was deemed auspicious by a fortune teller who, some 100 years ago, was enlisted by a Hmong warlord to divine the most auspicious place to construct his palace.

“The fortune teller told the king, ‘If you build your house here, you will reign forever,’ ” Mr. Anh said.


The warlord was Vuong Chinh Duc, who, near the turn of the 20th century, helped provide the French a steady supply of opium, a key product in the colonial economy. Despite the fortune teller’s predictions, the Vuong clan’s power has been largely dissolved, but the palace has been preserved as a handsome museum.

We crept through the hushed palace, with its ornate teak furniture and luxurious tub that had been used for bathing in goat milk. In a corner of the royal lair, an intricately carved platform was identified as the Vuongs’ opium-smoking bed. Echoing throughout the palace was the inestimable importance of opium, which was produced legally in Vietnam until 1993. The residence had storage space for opium, and pillars had been chiseled with the shapes of globular poppy buds.

The next morning we set out early on the last leg of our exploration of Ha Giang: the 14-mile journey from Dong Van to the town of Meo Vac, a drive that some say is the most splendid in the country. Built beginning in 1959, the slender road linking the two towns clings to the side of a massive gorge and is not for the weak of stomach.

Mr. Anh steered his truck slowly as we gaped at the views. The Nho Que River, 2,600 feet down at the bottom of the gorge, was little more than an ochre thread. The road rose up and dipped, twisted and soared. At the Ma Pi Leng pass, a plaque commemorated workers who died building the road, noting that the cutting of the pass took 11 months. Hmong and Tay families zipped by us on motorbikes, unfazed by the dizzying drop-off beside them.

In Meo Vac, a town of roughly the same size and vintage as Dong Van, Mr. Anh told us about the local annual “love market” that is held near there each March, when ethnic minorities from all over the area flock here in search of romantic partners. Circling back, we passed through Lung Phin, where another market is held every six days in accordance with the lunar calendar and thousands of people representing every tribe in the region congregate in a burst of rural commerce. Mr. Anh regaled us with images of the frenetic exchange of horse saddles, dried mushrooms, gingered sausages, water buffalo, cardamom pods, plastic shoes, bright ribbons and embroidery thread, all traded along with gossip from the hilltops and accompanied by bowls of horse meat soup and shots of corn whiskey.


“Next time you come here, you must make sure to see it,” Mr. Anh said.

We nodded, flush with fantasies of returning someday. For now, the town was still, with just a few old men smoking bamboo pipes and children running in the street. We gazed back at them, and the road unspooling behind us, and embarked on the long descent to the bottom of the rocky plateau.

Source: http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/travel/31vietnam-ha-giang.html?pagewanted=1