Tourists always choose Mu Cang Chai Township in the northern mountainous area of Viet Nam as a destination for home-stays.
Returning to Ha Noi last week from a three-day trip to Mu Cang Chai Township, Che Suoi Giang, a professional phuot (back-pack traveller on a motorcycle) said his six-member group had been touring the mountain sides and they were excited by the experiences of staying two days with people from the ethnic minorities.
Agreeing with Che Suoi Giang, I remembered our group trip a month ago. Five adults and two children reached the beautiful township in the evening. We were amazed to see terraced rice fields on the route as we prepared to go mountaineering through the beautiful township.
Terraced rice fields of Mu Cang Chai have been ranked as national relics by the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2007.We rented a pine timber stilt house in a Thai village, 1km from Mu Cang Chai Township. The clean two-storeyed house was built for home-stay tourism, so it was very comfortable. We stayed overnight on the second-floor which had bedrooms measuring 1.5mx1.5m and a living room equipped with a TV, a tea table, and two rest-rooms.
At present, the Thai village has five families who are in the business of home-stay services. Located at the centre of a peaceful valley surrounded by a pine tree forest and terraced rice fields, it is home to the Thai ethnic minority people who have a long-standing and diversified traditional culture.
Po Mu timber stilt houses in Thai villages are usually two-storeyed with a balcony.
The first floor is used for dining. We had dinner together and ate baked pondfish, baked leaf-wrapped pork, bamboo shoots, freshwater crab soup and salted eggplant.