«From today I don’t call it a Trekking Trip anymore, from today I call it a Photography Trip,» starts David the day, teasing our group that doesn’t stop stopping for photos. Each smile, each shyness, each colourful scarf, each rice puddle – in short, every single moment and object is perpetuated through all 12 cameras of the group. Each of us slows down the whole group at different moments with our urge to take a photo. Or rather with our hope that taking pictures helps all this beauty stay with us forever.
If you think that during a simple 2-weeks trip one cannot go deeper and closer to the locals, than we already did yesterday, then today proves the opposite. Today we rely almost entirely on our feet – hiking shoes, walking sticks and, more importantly, the amazement about places where we hardly see any tourists, taking us through 15 kilometers of someone’s hard work. Work for them, art for us. Walking is undeniably the best way of slow tourism, the best path to actually seeing, experiencing and understanding.
For today, Mu Cang Chai region has signed a contract with the Great Weatherman – the raindrop melodies cradle me the whole night, while the morning is pleasantly covered with clouds, still not cold nor warm, until the sun comes to open the impressionist art studio for us in the afternoon.
Scene of the daily life: the rice planting | Mr Linh's Adventures
Our way takes us up and down the hills, passing traditional Flower H’mong villages, passing lots of people at work. Crazy how the change of the valley shifts the rice growing calendar – in one valley we see a huge amount of rice seedlings, while in the next one adult rice plants are already being inserted to their new and final habitat. We are lucky to see rice field soil prepared by water buffaloes - today when the whole society uses machines!
And don’t we finally get bored? to see the same traditional clothes, people doing the same activities on the same rice terraces?
Close to the end of the walking day, we are «stuck» again at one of those beautiful rice terrace views, when I suddenly hear the almost unsatisfied voice of Morena (a globe-trotter and «freethinker» like me), saying:
«I take 5 pictures of the same thing, but none of them are the same!»
And then, half an hour later, just before getting back to our homestay: «That’s still a different green, we haven’t had yet!»
Her dissatisfaction is more like desperation. Today we are possibly all taken by this desperation, this same feeling of not getting enough of it. As if you drank and drank and drank, but you were still thirsty.
The new impressionists ;-) | Mr Linh's Adventures
We are like the 19th century impressionists, trying to catch every colour and every change of light on the canvas, with the only difference that our canvas is the camera. And we hardly reach any other colours than green, because already the green ones – here, in this region of Vietnam, there are hundreds! And we are insatiable, knowing how many lights we’ll miss as the hiking time is limited by a day.
Today it’s also this phase of the journey, where our love for the local colours and customs makes us want to be a bit like them, to have something from them as a memory, just like we want to have memories from our loved ones. Today the local bracelets appear around our wrists, some heads get protected and decorated by these amazing Flower H’mong women scarves and the bravest ones even dress up in their jackets.
And on the shadow side, during lunch break, I hear my Italian friends say that they miss Italian food, its variety, and the everyday change of meal. «Here, every time it’s the same choice, the same rice, the same omelet, even if it’s delicious.» I have hard times to put myself in their shoes – not because I didn’t know what Italian food is like, not because I didn’t have nothing to miss in my own Estonian cuisine, but just because it’s been such a long time I’ve learnt to just be where I am and adapt – probably in 1998, when I first lived in France. Otherwise I wouldn’t have survived.
Slowly tame new flavors | Mr Linh's Adventures
So it’s this ambiguous day where the new world starts becoming dear and missing some home habits and customs starts to raise its head. But none of it can cast shadow over the changing colours and lights of this impressionists’ paradise…
What are your keywords for this day?
«Colours and lights.» «Dignity of these people.»«Their simplicity.» «Hard work. Fatigue. But still smiling.»
«Colours! But I mean all the colours, also human colours – their faces, so smiling, so shiny, so beautiful – these are colours too!»
I don’t know if the impressionists ever realized that a human face is also a changing light and colour.
How would Claude Monet immortalize the colours and lights of those faces on his canvas?