Off the beaten track

This weekend was quite an adventure. With a dream team of five people from four different countries, we headed into unkown land, off the beaten track. When the locals from Hanoi asked where we were going, they had to look it up on map.

Hanoi is great. It's a bustling city that only sleeps between 01:00-05:00. The noise, the crowds and lately also the pollution can really make you long for trees, and some peace and quiet.

So last week I looked on Google maps and zoomed in on a big green spot not too far away from Hanoi. I keept zooming in, until I found signs of civilization. A few "homestays" popped up on the map. With a little help from google translate and my local neighbour, I managed to book one night for five people in a homestay in a village called Ban Coi, in Xuan Son National Park.

Saturday morning we all met with our backpacks and were picked up by our driver, Mr T, who took us to Xuan Son about 3,5 hours from Hanoi. When we came into the national park, the roads were narrow, dusty, partly paved and with the most spectacular scenery I have seen so far in Vietnam! Rice fields, tea plantations, mountains, rivers and valleys - Xuan Son is beautiful.
Mr T had to turn back to take another road once, because the road simply disapeared into a river.

When we fianlly arrived at the homestay, a local home cooked meal waited for us.

On our first afternoon we hiked to a cave near by, Hang Coi, and explored the narrow passages and big openings in the cave. Later we walked back through the village, where we saw the locals harvest the rice fields, children palying volleyball and chicken ang geese running around on the small farms. We headed for the local "swim hole" to cool down after a day in the sun.

In the evening we had dinner cooked at the homestay. I liked most of the food but some if I would describe as "interesting". Sometimes it was difficult to know what we were eating. But we all recognized a chicken foot in the soup.

On Sunday we hiked to the "Waterfall in the sky", a 5-6 km hike in total. The path took us along a river, up a mountain side, down again, along the river and to a beautiful waterfall where we put our warm beers in the cold water and went for a swim. When we got back up, the beer was cold!

I think we all agreed that the weekend had been fantastic, and definitely above my expectations. Tourism is not big in the national park, yet. We got a lot of smiles and "hellos" from the locals who we passed on our hikes and got to see glimpses of their daily farming lives in the middle of the national park.

Vietnam really has a variety of experiences to offer!

Thanks for an amazing weekend (and the pictures) guys  <3

Our homestay

Waterfall in sky

Buffalos!