Food alert! I am good with rice noodles, and chicken broth, and fairly benign chicken parts for my breakfast. But I am not OK with a huge round basket full of animal parts. Presentation was one quarter of a large basket platter offering pig intestines, next quarter included clobbered chicken parts with skin, tendons, fat, and the bones. The third quarter consisted of pork fat with a tiny bit of meat, and the fourth quarter was a rectangle of God knows what translated as “meatloaf.” However, he sticky rice was delicious with a bit of fish sauce and ground peanuts topped with strange stringy looking greens. I am dreaming of hamburgers, yogurt, raspberries, peanut butter, bread, cheese, and cold water.

Up at 5 AM and on the road by 5:30. Our destination was an hour and a half away to a Saturday market. Upon arrival we ate our rice noodle soup with about 70 people in what felt like an auditorium. Sitting next to me was a mother and her son, who shyly gave us a smile, he then went back to slurping his soup. After breakfast we headed into the market which was more diverse than the local food market we experienced the evening before. This market not only Hmong people selling goods, but red and black Dao selling.The way to identify the red and black Dao is by the woman’s head dress. Some older women had black teeth, that having been a sign of beauty. They stained their teeth with beetle nuts. I bought several different pieces of cloth to add to my collection as the various cloths were embroidered with beautiful designs.

After the fabulous lunch I described above, we got back on the bus and headed for a national park where a winding path took us a mountain to a most stupendous view. On the way up, we came upon young girls resting by motorbikes. As we photographed them, an older woman and a young girl came climbing up a steep hill beside us, bringing enormous bags of potatoes on their backs. The girls were 15 and had to quit school to work in the fields because the families needed them to make money. It is sad to see these girls cannot follow a dreams.

After leaving this park, we went to a bridge where the local people were drying corn. The corn lay on tarps on the cement payment in the boiling hot son. Small pathways made way for motorbikes carrying huge bags, up to 8 at a time, to a central area. Meanwhile small children napped in the shade of small straw covered huts, and children played in the river, catching frogs or floating with the current. The valley floor of rice fields gave way to towering mountains in the distance. A twelve hour day, but worth every minute of it