Vietnam - The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia on a Budget - page 860

them into making you a picnic lunch for your hike. The
restaurant fills with day-trippers on Sundays, with an
enormous selection o f Vie tnamese food and set menus for
115,000VND. Double $20
Sao Mai Hotel Restaurant A more sophisticated menu
than most places in town, serving decent European and
Vietnamese dishes at reasonable prices (mains around
80,000VND, rice and noodle dishes 40,000VND). Daily
11.30am-10pm.

INTO LAOS: TAY TRANG
A relatively straightforward border
crossing operates at Tay Trang (daily
7am-7pm), 31km from Dien Bien Phu.
Local buses depart from the bus station in
Dien Bien Phu (daily 5.30am; 8hr;
100,000VND; buy ticket the day before) to
the town of Muang Khoua on the Laos
side, from where you can catch a boat
down the Nam Ou River to Muang Ngoi
or Nong Khiaw. Several daily buses depart
from Muang Khoua for elsewhere in the
region; for onward travel to Luang
Prabang, take a bus to Oudomxai and
from there a bus to Luang Prabang.
One-month Lao visas are available on
arrival for $40-50; you'll need two
passport photos. If you need to stay in
Dien Bien Phu, the Viet Hoang Hotel
opposite the bus station (67 Tran Dang
Ninh; T 020 3735046; 200,000VND) will do
in a pinch.

MAI CHAU
he minority villages of the fertile Mai
Chau Valley , inhabited mainly by White
hai people, related to tribes in hailand,
Laos and China, are close enough to
Hanoi (150km) to make this a popular
destination, particularly at weekends. he
valley is still largely unspoilt, a peaceful
scene of rice fields and jagged mountains.
MAI CHAU is the valley's main village, a
friendly, quiet place that suddenly bursts
into life for its Sunday market (7am-
3pm), when minority people - who,
unlike in Sa Pa, have largely forsaken
their traditional dress (though the
women still produce beautifully-
embroidered clothing) - trek in. Polite
bargaining is the norm here, rather than
the hard sell. You can overnight in Mai
Chau, but it's more interesting to head
for the outlying villages.
he most accessible village in the Mai
Chau Valley is BAN LAC , a White hai
settlement where you can buy hand-
woven textiles, watch performances of
traditional dancing and sleep overnight in
a stilt house; expect to pay around
160,000VND per person per night, plus
breakfast. here is a good trek between
Ban Lac and the Hmong Xa Linh village ,
18km away; an overnight stay in a village
en route is the norm, as it's quite a tough
trek for one day, with 600m elevation.
ARRIVAL AND INFORMATION
By bus You can either come to the Mai Chau Valley on an
organized tour from Hanoi or take a bus from Hanoi's My Dinh
bus station (several between 8am and 2pm; 3hr 45min); a fee
of 5000VND may be required to enter the village.
Accommodation Stilt house accommodation (split-level
thatched-roof houses with bamboo floors, electricity and
Western toilets) is easy to find and needn't be booked
in advance.

11

The central
provinces
Vietnam's narrow waist comprises a string
of provinces squeezed between the long,
sandy coastline and the formidable
barrier of the Truong Son Mountains,
which mark the border between Vietnam
and Laos. he most heavily bombed
during the war, this is also one of the
most beautiful parts of Vietnam. he
Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park is as
yet an unspoilt part of the country, with
the world's largest cave, lush green
countryside, friendly village life and
dramatic karst its main attractions. In
1954, Vietnam was divided at the
Seventeenth Parallel, only 100km or so
south of here, where the Demilitarized
Zone ( DMZ ) marked the border between
North and South Vietnam until
reunification in 1975. he desolate
battlefields of the DMZ and the
extraordinary complex of residential
tunnels at nearby Vinh Moc are a poignant
memorial to those who fought here on
both sides, and to the civilians who lost
their lives in the bitter conflict. Further
south lies the city of Hue , its central role