Duncan in Vietnam

Arriving back on Wednesday morning from an African Safari, Scunthorpe Camera Club’s competition secretary, Duncan Hill, managed to keep awake long enough to enthral fellow club members with tales of his earlier visit to North Vietnam. Duncan wanted to photograph people in their native environments who had not been influenced by Western culture.

Duncan and his wife flew to Hanoi to start their search then went by night train to Lanhai on the Chinese border. Here they found the people very welcoming but a little surprised at seeing westerners. The 25km journey from Lowcai to Sapa took one and a half hours on a rickety coach over dirt track roads. Here Duncan started his photography by going in close and photographing the exotic red tassles on the headgear of all the ladies. It seemed that their everyday wear was also the national dress of the DAO people.

The land cultivated around Sapa was very steep but had been terraced to grow the rice and other crops with the aid of oxen doing the ploughing in the muddy terraces. The dresses and trousers of the people were a very metallic blue caused by the fabric being dyed and beaten many times but contrasting with the red headdress worn by the ladies they looked quite stylish. The footwear worn by virtually everyone, men and women, was a beige plastic type sandal.

Mothers carried babies in a sling on their backs – they were all fast asleep and seemed quite comfortable. There were no hairdressing salons or barbers shops – it was a street trade! Duncan photographed a man having his hair cut in the open air with all the tools of the trade hanging from the barber’s chair.

Sugar cane is a main crop in this area and children walked around sucking a piece of cane as our children would an ice-lolly. The sugar cane bark is sliced off and the core looks like balsa wood with liquid in it. The core is very chewy so they sucked out the syrup and spat out the fibre.

Duncan and Kathy were followed everywhere by swarms of street traders – all trying to sell similar home made blankets. Eventually they bought a small blanket in the hope the traders would leave them alone. It didn’t work!

It was not unusual to see as many as six people – with all their shopping - riding on one small motor bike which seemed to be the only mode of transport. The LAO people wore all black clothing and painted their teeth black too, but the braid decorating the clothing was very colourful. Here the children were eating lollipops bought with the proceeds of selling friendship bracelets to the visitors to their area.

Different tribes seemed to inter-mingle quite well but were easily identified by their unique tribal clothing. Outside the Kodak Express Shop Duncan was able to photograph groups of students who were waiting for their own photographs to be printed. Some of the girls in these groups had very large white and red sashes made into a huge bow on the back of their dresses but all seemed to be wearing the same type of plastic sandals.

In one area on their travels, Duncan and Kathy saw oxen ploughing the terraces which were only about six feet wide so it must have been difficult turning the oxen round. Most of the oxen “drivers” wore pith helmets too. In the Lichow area, every spare bit of soil is cultivated, even amongst the rocky hillsides and here the Flower A Mol ladies still wear their traditional dress when working in the fields and it was the ladies who were carrying huge bundles of wood across the river to sell.

Lichow has very few western visitors but the tour group were invited into peoples houses to have green tea. On one occasion, the car in which they were travelling up a very steep hill became rather poorly so they continued on to the village on foot. They were dismayed to see the car suddenly turned round and the driver taking it back down the hill. It was obvious no alternative transport was coming, so they set off to walk back down the hill, much to Kathy’s disgust, but eventually another car came for them so they didn’t have to walk the last 10km back to their base.

Duncan had taken photographs of girls having their very long hair “cleaned” by their mothers, and later into their trip, they saw ladies with very bouffant hairstyles. Everyone smiled at them and Duncan said they had found everyone always seemed to have smiles on their faces. The Black-Thai people all wore hats and also face-masks as the pollution was very high. Here the ladies wore beautiful white blouses fastened with butterfly type patterned clasps that looked very attractive.

Everyone in the room was enthralled by the stories and photographs but unfortunately President Janet had to ask Duncan to finish his talk another time, as it was time for the club to vacate the room. However, everyone really enjoyed listening and looking at Duncan’s slides.

Janet thanked Duncan for a most interesting evening and said she was sure everyone would like to hear more of his travels in the next programme.