ba be lake
by mikka
It was totally worth driving over rocks and mud for two days to get to Ba Be lake, because Ba Be lake is gorgeous and now vies with Mai Chau for my favorite place in all of Vietnam. We stayed there for three nights, never doing much, though we got to go swimming in the lake...
... and explored a really creepy big cave...
... saw a lot of buffalo...
... and went for a lot of motorbike rides around the surrounding country side, including this one, where we met a very confused and/or suicidal duckling who steadfastly refused to get out of the road. We spent some time amusing all the locals by trying to herd it out of harm's way, but it was resolutely not moving. Well, we tried.
It was extra hard to leave Ba Be because we were staying in an awesome homestay, run by a guy named Duy Tho (look for his name on the sign if you find yourself in Ba Be). The rooms were nice and the food was amazing and Duy Tho himself is a bit of a legend. He had no other guests one night, and then a group of eleven on another, which meant both of those nights we got to eat with him and his family, drinking shots of rice wine (which Iain loves and I can barely get down, and which Duy Tho is pretty generous with) and playing cards - Iain managed to explain his favorite game in Vietnamese and we played all night, it was great fun.
I think the most fun I had during our return to Vietnam was at Ba Be - it totally made up for two days of miserable driving, and was a much nicer way to spend our 3 year anniversary (which had fallen on the first day of the bad roads).
