Ba Be Lake and travelling onwards (13-17 Feb)
Trip Start
Jan 01, 2008
1
14
86
Trip End
Dec 29, 2008
Ba Be,
Vietnam
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Ba Be is Vietnam's largest natural lake and is at the centre of an extensive National Park. The park and the surrounding area is limestone country, so lakes, waterfalls, caves and unusual rock formations abound. The whole area is richly forested and home to many ethnic minority communities. The scenery was stunning even in the cold and damp weather and we spent the whole day exploring the vast lake (8kms long) on a longtail boat, seeing no other tourists at all.
The following day, a local took us on a guided walk - we had a choice of 28 km or 7km and we chose the 7km route. This was practically an uphill climb all the way and was really hard work, but once again the scenery was amazing and we saw some very remote village homes at the height of the walk.
We stayed in a local homestay, where all the meals were cooked by the family and were some of the best food we tried in the whole of Vietnam. The homestay was built of wood on stilts and all the rooms were upstairs - including the open fire in the kitchen (for cooking) on. The family were really nice and the host kept giving us Rice Wine (with a vial of Bear Bile in it) to help us keep warm. The guide told us this is to fortify men !
Afterwards, we had along drive back to Hanoi Airport for a flight to Da Nang for an overnight stop
