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Ba Be National Park
A very old four wheel drive land rover picked us up outside Little Hanoi at 8am. And we met our guide Ting and a lady from the office who had never done the trip called Twee. Together we called them 'Tweeting'. We had a seven hour drive ahead of us! As we left the city and headed north the scenery slowly changed from the bustling city to steep mountain passes sparsely populated. We entered the Ba Be national park which is the area around three lakes that all merge to almost create the impression of one long lake. We where staying in a family home stay at one of the traditional villages in the park. The house was a traditional stilt house with bamboo flooring.
After dropping our bags off our guide took us on a walk along the bank of the lakes to the boat pier area. The first pier was closed so we walked a bit further rot ho second. He rented us a boat to take us to Widow's Island. Legend has it that once the lake was farmland and in the middle was a village called Nam Mau. One day, the Nam Mau residents found a buffalo wandering in the nearby forest. They caught it, butchered it and shared the meat. However, they didn't share any with a certain lonely old widow. Unfortunately for the villagers, this wasn't just any old buffalo. It belonged to the river ghost. When the buffalo failed to return home, the ghost went to the village disguised as a beggar. He asked the villagers for something to eat, but they refused to share their buffalo and ran the poor beggar off. Only the widow was kind to him and gave him some food and a place to stay for the night. That night the beggar told the widow to take some rice husks and sprinkle them on the ground around her house. Later in the evening, it started to rain, and then a flood came. The villagers all drowned, and the flood washed away their homes and farms, thus creating the Ba Be Lakes. Only the widow's house remained on a small patch of land, which is now Widow Island.
From the island we went for a swim in the crystal clear water jumping off the overhanging trees on the island before returning for dinner at the house. The next day after breakfast we packed up and set off down the lakes in a small boat to see the waterfalls at the end of the furthest lake. We then meet up our driver for the long drive back to Hanoi.
Just after we set off the next tropical storm managed to hit us bringing very heavy rain making the mountain roads tricky to drive. The rains passed and we pulled in for some lunch at a river side restaurant in a small village. After lunch the land rover would to not enter gear properly so the driver went in search of a garage to take a look. After a couple of hours we where back on the road but did not get far when we hit a massive traffic jam and after a discussion with the locals had to take a detour around. It felt as if we would never make it back to Hanoi and catch the bus to Nimh Binh and we only just made it back to catch the night bus.
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