A NIGHT WITH THE BLACK HMONG

I set off for Vietnam in 2015. I'd fallen in love with Vietnamese cuisine years earlier, and so it was only a matter of time before I decided to travel to this country. Vietnam is such a long country, stretching from north to south, that you have plenty of options for where to go. From the flat southern part with the Mekong basin, through various islands and beaches, the historic towns of Hue and Hoi An, and the rocky Halong Bay, all the way to the mountainous region in the north that borders China. And it's this very region I'll tell you a little about today.

The starting point for this region is the town of Sapa, which you can reach very easily, since both trains and buses run here from Hanoi. Or, to be more precise, they go to Lào Cai, and from there you still have a short bus ride to Sapa itself. The town is geared up for the influx of tourists, and so you'll find plenty of hotels here, as well as restaurants and little shops. You'll also often come across local markets, where ethnic minorities from the surrounding areas sell their wares. It took me about an hour to find a hotel at a price that didn't leave me feeling like someone was robbing me, but in the end I managed it, and now I needed to arrange some kind of trek into the surrounding mountains for the next day. These treks are offered by loads of agencies, or by the hotels directly. They aren't very flexible about it, though, so the offer was limited to a two-day trek with an overnight stay in a homestay. After visiting about the tenth agency, I gave in to their terms, said goodbye to a longer trek, and booked a guide for a two-day trip the following day.

We walked in a small group of six people. Along with us were just a French and a Malaysian couple (they were only doing the one-day trip). After a little while, our group swelled by about four saleswomen hawking local souvenirs. They simply walked along with us, tried to chat with us in broken English, but mainly to sell us something. They lasted a few kilometres and then there was peace. That is, until we stopped somewhere to eat, at which point yet more saleswomen would emerge from somewhere and constantly offer things. The French couple decided they would persuade the woman who was our guide – she belonged to the local Black Hmong minority – not to take us to a tourist homestay for the night (which is really just a little hotel that may look like a local dwelling but is fully adapted to tourists' needs, so you have hot water in the shower and, of course, wifi), but to take us to her own home instead. The guide wasn't keen at all, so we joined in the persuading. She still somehow couldn't believe that we'd rather go somewhere with only cold water and no internet. In the end she agreed to call her aunt to ask whether we could stay with her.

It worked, and the aunt agreed. I don't know how thrilled her children were with us – they had to move up to the attic while we were handed their little beds – but everyone welcomed us very warmly into their modest home. The guide was the only one who spoke a little English (since she was from an ethnic minority, she didn't even speak Vietnamese; she spoke only the Black Hmong dialect and the broken English she'd learned from tourists), and so she tried to translate everything. It was wonderful to see how the locals live. Everything is plain and modest, cooking is done over a fire, and there's only cold water. But even in a place like this, everyone already has a mobile phone, satellite television, and some sort of motorbike so they don't have to trudge up and down the hills on foot. We joined in preparing dinner – that is, we were allowed to clean the vegetables. Then the lady of the house took over, handling herself over the open fire like a true head chef.

How little a person really needs, and how in today's world we chase after things we don't actually need at all. Those are exactly the thoughts that come to you in places like this. Even with a bare minimum, we were treated to an absolutely royal feast, and after dinner we had a good long laugh with the man of the house, who tried to teach himself a few English words from us in front of the house under a sky full of stars. Every now and then an ancient dog would get up – it otherwise lay all day somewhere round the corner on the dusty ground – and sneeze. This raised an interesting cloud of dust, through which it would take two or three steps and then lie back down. Our guide claimed it was older than she was. But that would mean the dog would have to be about 25 years old. Well, who knows – maybe they have long-lived dogs here.

I woke up fairly early, and the sight of the sunrise over the rice fields was unreal. After a hearty breakfast, we said goodbye to our hostess and set off on a further several-hour trek through the surrounding hills. Looking back, those two days were probably the greatest experience of my whole time in Vietnam, and I'm truly sorry we didn't stay longer. Hopefully I'll soon manage to make my way back to this region and experience more places like it. The original ethnic groups are slowly vanishing, and people long for the conveniences of modern times. It won't be long before experiences like this simply disappear. So I ought to hurry up and catch a few more of them.

In Sapa, arrange at least a three-day trek, or ask around for a guide and make an arrangement directly with them.

Turn down the tourist homestays and sleep with the locals.

: Rent some kind of vehicle or motorbike in Sapa and head deeper into the mountains.

Buy something from the locals too – that way you support the vanishing minorities and the making of their traditional products.

Today I don't have much to write about photographic gear… except perhaps that, besides what you take with you on the trek, you should pack a small tripod and a polarising filter too, because sometimes the horizon is veiled in haze, so a filter helps at least a little.