The first travel day is short: on a new and excellent road, you'll drive to Mai Chau in just over three hours. Here, you'll be a guest of the local Tay people, staying in a traditional stilt house. In the afternoon, you'll have opportunity for an extensive walk through the valley where Mai Chau is situated.
Not only will the mountain landscape, waterfalls, and rivers with their precarious monkey bridges fascinate you, but also everyday life: a scooter loaded with live pigs, children riding water buffaloes along the roadside, and chickens darting just in front of the car's wheels. You will arrive in Son La in the late afternoon.
You discuss the program for this day with your tour guide. To get away from the tourist crowd a long trekking is probably the best option.
In the early morning, you'll visit the Saturday market in Can Cau, an exceptionally colorful market frequented by people from the Flower H'mong minority. Oxen, pigs, dogs, and corn wine - with an alcohol percentage of over fifty percent - are the main commodities. In addition to the local population, the market is also popular among Chinese traders. In the afternoon, you'll have plenty of opportunities to explore the surroundings. A few kilometers from your hotel is the village of Ban Pho, where you can see how corn wine is made - and you'll almost certainly have to toast with the distillers - and how cast iron agricultural tools are crafted.
Via an endlessly winding road, you'll travel to the northernmost town of Vietnam: Dong Van. The further njorth you go, the more "normal" Vietnam seems to fade away, and you'll mostly see people wearing their traditional, extremely colorful clothing. And it's not only you who will be amazed; this also applies to the residents of Ha Giang, who rarely see foreigners. The journey from Dong Van to Meo Vac is one you'll never forget: along a steep abyss several hundred meters deep, the road leads through a spectacular mountain landscape, offering a stunning view over China on your left.
Via a mostly rough and difficult road, you'll travel Southeast towards Ba Be, known for its national park and the lake of the same name. You'll spend the night in a traditional stilt house in one of the remote villages by the water.
In the morning, you'll have the opportunity to visit the relatively unknown but stunning Hua Ma Cave. Then, you'll travel to Cao Bang.
Around noon you will board a junk boat and visit Titop Beach and the Sung Sot Cave. You will have a cooking class and learn how to make nem (Vietnamese spring rolls). After dinner, there is an opportunity to go squid fishing. You will spend the night on board.
