Quaint, authentic and colorful: Bac Ha Weekly fair held on Sunday mornings. Between 7am and 9am, roads and mountain tracks are very lively. There, a peasant pulls his donkey who doesn’t want to move forward. Here, another holds a piglet at the end of a leash by pushing it with a bamboo whip. Others, wiser, prefer to carry the little pigs on the platform to avoid losing weight on the way to the fair. Some go by couple, the woman carrying on the back the stack of hoods that she braided, the man the jerry can of alcohol that he has distilled. They put on their best clothes. Turbans of all shapes, red, blue or black, cross simpler chests planted with fresh tea leaves or embellished with silver coins. The colorful H'mong women and girls have donned their finest skirts, all folded, swinging from the right to the left at every step, making grandmothers look like children. The tunics are finely embroidered and the aprons shimmering. The sellers offer basic necessities (groceries, books and school supplies, toiletries, haberdashery), relayed, according to rotations which differ, by the peasants who came to sell their production (vegetables, breeding, handicrafts). Finally women calculate the benefit of the day or compare the products, the girls are beautiful, men clink at the rice alcohol while discussing horses and land.
After lunch in Bac Ha, walk to visit hamlets around Bac Ha: Ban Pho 1 and Ban Pho 2, inhabited by ethnic H'mong variegated. Visit the abandoned house of Huang A Tuong, a former H'mong chief.
Dinner at Lao Cai. Then transfer to Lao Cai train station and take the night train Lao Cai - Ha Noi / train KING EXPRESS (or LIVITRANS EXPRESS or CHAPA EXPRESS) - Cabin with 4 berths for SUPERIOR / Departure 20h35. Night on board.
Meals included : breakfast, lunch, dinner.