Northern Vietnam Cao B}Ng

Cao B}ng is magical. Financially poor but culturally rich, the region remains the archetypal undiscovered gem for travelers, with genuinely kind inhabitants, decent food, and scenery so spectacular that it seems unreal. Cao B}ng town, the capital of the province, acts as an ideal base from which to venture out into the picturesque countryside. A cave of epic size, the largest waterfall in Vietnam, and markets galore have yet to appear on the tourist radar—frequently making foreign travelers the main attraction wherever they may venture. Along the Bng Giang River, boys fish with bamboo poles or herd water buffalo while talkative women sell lychee fruit, work in the fields, or wash clothes in the river. Though the nine different ethnic minorities who live in the province differ in many ways, they all share an unusual enthusiastic energy that makes the region feel homey and vaguely familiar. In heavy rain you might be handed an umbrella, and at an impassable road, you’ll undoubtedly be offered a cigarette. Hard to reach but even harder to leave, this idyllic corner of Vietnam is not to be missed.

The bus station is across the river, 50m north of the bridge. Buses go to Hà Nÿi (8 hr.; 6:30am, 7pm; direct 80,000, via Thài Nguyˆn 60,000) and Lång S£n (5:30am; 50,000). It is also possible to get to Ba B€ National Park by taking the Hà Nÿi bus to Nà Phãc (2hr.; 50,000-60,000) and then taking a motorcycle taxi the rest of the way (1hr.; 85,000). Minibuses and provincial buses leave from Cao B}ng’s bus station sporadically throughout the day, including afternoon trips to Hà Nÿi. The schedule changes frequently, so it’s best to check beforehand to confirm times. Motorcycle taxis will take you anywhere in Cao B}ng for 3000-6000.

Orientation

Like most raging urban volcanoes, Cao B}ng town extends into the surrounding area, pushing up against hills and hopping over streams. The major north-south artery is Kim ®ng, which runs on the western side of the Bng Giang River. Most of the action is centered in the northwestern side of town, around the intersection of Kim ®ng and the Bng Giang Bridge, where the food market is located. The river provides the best directions in town—standing at the foot of the bridge, with your back to the river, north is to the right and south to the left.

Practical Information

Like every other town in Vietnam, Cao B}ng features a goods market in addition to standard local services. This one is housed in the enormous white building one block south of the bridge on Kim ®ng (open daily 6am-6pm). Don’t miss those glamorous “Dior” and “Chanel” sunglasses you’ve been craving.

• Tourist Office: In one of the offices through the yellow gate on S® Nhà, accessible either from Nguy[n Du or from the southern side of the goods market. Very little English spoken—just like the rest of town.
• Currency Exchange: One block north of the bridge, turn left for the Bank for Foreign Investment and Development, 49 Xuñn Tr™£ng (☎852 163). ATM inside. Open daily 7am-4:30pm.
• Police: Behind the goods market. Walk west on àm Quang Tr™ng 1 block and turn left onto Hoàng Nh™. The station will be on the right side of the street.
• Emergency: ☎115. Police: ☎113.
• Pharmacies: Scattered all throughout the city; 2 are located on Nguy[n Du, south of the market off Kim ®ng (☎855 069 and 852 338). Open daily 5am-7pm.
• Hospital: 3km south of town on Hwy. 4A.
• International Telephone: Available at the post office for 13,000 per min. or at the small calling center, 39 Ch Xanh (☎841 147), just north of the bridge by the entrance to the food market.
• Internet Access: Located all over town for 3000 per hr. Look for signs with “Internet,” “chat,” or “yahoo” written on them. One reliable place is Cao B}ng Network Club, 378 Hoàng Vn Thƒ (☎858 044). Walking north of the bridge, take your first left onto Xuñn Tr™£ng and then your first right. Fast connection. Open daily 7am-10:30pm.
• Post Office: On Hoàng ình Giong, which intersects Kim ®ng just south of the bridge. The post office is 2 blocks down the street, diagonally across from the H· Chí Minh statue. Open daily 7am-5pm.

Accommodations

Generally, hotels in Cao B}ng are both attractive and expensive. Bargaining takes some effort, but is nonetheless a worthwhile endeavor given the high asking prices. The longer you’re staying, the more bargaining leverage you have. But animal lovers beware: the theme of choice in most hotel lobbies seem to be “wilderness”—or something else that includes many, many stuffed deer and birds.

• Hoàng Anh Hotel, 131 Kim ®ng (☎858 969). The best deal in town; get more B}ng for your buck. Sleepy lobby with nice owners and pleasant rooms, and a view of either the street or the neighbor’s brick wall—one is only slightly better than the other. Doubles 130,000, although bargaining can work wonders here.
• Thàn Loan Hotel, 131 V™£n Cam (☎857 026), 100m north of the bridge. A step above the rest, with spacious rooms, high ceilings, and burgundy wooden furniture. The 4th and 5th floors get great light. Simple breakfast included. Enthusiastic and professional staff. All rooms US$15; prices go down slightly for extended stays.
• Bng Giang Hotel (☎853 431), right in the center of town on Kim ®ng. A big and impersonal establishment run by the state, with large rooms and leather couches. It’s hard to bargain, but it can be fun singing karaoke or getting a massage with government officials. Breakfast included. Rooms US$15.
• Hoáng Long Hotel, 42 Ph® Thñu (☎852 477), next to the wares market along the riverbank. All rooms are similarly sized, regardless of the number of beds crammed in them. Several of the rooms have huge windows directly over the river and include all the normal goodies (A/C, TV, etc.). Perhaps not the best deal for doubles, but a bargain for larger groups. Doubles, triples, and quads 160,000-200,000.
• Bâc Lâm Hotel, 25 Ph® Hoàng Nh™ (☎852 697). Walk 2 blocks west off Kim ®ng on Nguy[n Du, which is just south of the goods market. Pass 2 pharmacies and take a left. Clean, bright rooms with canopied beds, which also serve to keep out mosquitoes from the river. Massage offered downstairs. Doubles 170,000.
• Hotel H™£ng Th£m, 91 Kim ®ng (☎856 128). A lively atmosphere, consisting of Cao B}ng’s citizens munching on mangosteens in the lobby. The receptionist speaks some basic English. Immaculate (if overpriced) rooms 200,000.
• Nguyˆt Nga Hotel, 43 Kim ®ng (☎856 455), directly across the river from the Bng Giang Hotel. Clean but crowded. Rooms with A/C, fridge, and a “satellite” TV that only gets 3 channels. You won’t be watching it anyway, with all the time you’ll be spending on daytrips. All rooms 170,000.
• Thanh Trung Hotel, 116 Ph® Cü (☎857 797), all the way down Nguy[n Du street where it terminates at Ph® Cü. Elegant exterior, simple interior. Rooms have A/C, private bath, bed, and little else. A short and pleasant walk from the center of town, Thanh Trung is for those who crave a calmer, more suburban environment. Doubles 160,000.

Food

Restaurants in Cao B}ng—though limited in number—offer reasonably good food. Those on a tight budget might choose to capitalize on the endless ph and cháo (rice porridge) options throughout the city, or frequent the food stands that set up every evening in front of the food market and on Kim ®ng (open daily 5am-6pm). Whatever you choose, be sure to eat early; most of Cao B}ng heads home around 8pm. The town is also the place to get snacks for daytrips. The fruit options are endless—awesome-looking dragon fruit, plums, lychee, and rambutan are all juicy and sweet snacks. Loaves of bread and meat are also packable picnic items.

• Viˆt Béo, 7 L• T™ Trßng (☎850 087). A 10min. walk north of the bridge, past the Thàn Loan Hotel. Follow the perimeter of the stadium’s gate and the restaurant is on your left. Not the place for animal-rights activists. In the first room is a large metal tank; net your sea animal of choice and bring it to the back room to be prepared. Prices are high, but the fish is cooked to perfection and comes on a hot plate with various garnishes. Most fish around 120,000 per kg. Shrimp 250,000 per kg. Sea turtle 460,000 per kg. For the less adventurous, steak and chicken are available for around 40,000. Open daily 6am-11pm.
• Ph® Núi, 3-10 Nà Cån (☎850 878), across the river, a 10min. walk south of the bridge. Lengthy menu includes crab (95,000 per kg) and beef (25,000). The tiki-torch atmosphere, with fruit hanging from the ceiling, somehow manages to make this place even more charming. Open daily 9am-8pm.
• Hp Tr™òng Restaurant, 8 Bng Giang (☎854 788), a 5min. walk north of the bridge along the riverbank. This place specializes in those meats you’ve been dying to try, including cat (40,000) and snake (95,000 per kg; must be bought whole). For those who like to know what they’re eating, Hp Tr™òng also has veggie fried rice and beef (15,000 each) that are superior to most places in town—any dish, it seems, is better with garlic and ginger. Open daily 9am-10pm.
• Bng Giang Restaurant (☎853 431), located (of all places) in the Bng Giang Hotel. Reminiscent of your high school cafeteria, except with superior food. The bò bít tˆt (beef; 40,000) is particularly tender. Has an English menu. Open daily 5am-7pm.
• H™£ng Sen Restaurant (☎852 338), south of the bridge, just off Kim ®ng opposite Nguy[n Du. A table by the kitchen is stacked with various meats, veggies, fish, and shrimp. If you haven’t tried bò lá l#t (beef wrapped in betel leaves and grilled) this is just the place. Just point and pay—a full meal should cost around 20,000. The food is hit-or-miss—look around to see what everyone else is having. Open daily 11am-8pm.

Sights

Cao B}ng is known for the attractions spread throughout the province, but if time allows, there are a few places around town worthy of exploration. There are two picturesque Chinese temples nearby. At the southern end of Kim ®ng, the road branches; take ®ng Khˆ and walk 10min. Just beyond an Internet cafe, there is a set of mossy stone steps leading to a small, secluded temple. Closer to the city’s center, on Nguy[n Du by the Thanh Trung Hotel, there is a larger and more active temple, with the smell of incense wafting through the air at all hours.

Want to walk off the ph you ate for lunch? Head across the river, take your first right down Pác Bó and walk several hundred meters until the first phone booth. Turn left into the alley and up to the war memorial. The entrance to this subtly phallic marble monument is closed indefinitely, but the views from the hill are worth the trip. If you want to walk off breakfast as well, head back to Pác Bó and continue one block to the river, where there is a lovely path heading south out of Cao B}ng. Along the route sits a bastion built by the French in 1940.

Daytrips From Cao B}Ng

Pulsing waterfalls, breathtaking caves, soothing lakes, and lively villages provide much more than a day’s worth of sight-seeing, and the condition of some roads after a rainstorm might extend your visit longer than you expect. Sights are most easily accessible by xe ®m, which generally run 225,000-300,000 for a full day. Wherever you choose to go, water, sunscreen, snacks, and a camera are essential.

 Thng Hen Lake

Thng Hen Lake is a 1hr. ride from Cao B}ng. Most of the road is paved, but nearing the end it narrows and fades out somewhat. The trip costs 125,000 round-trip by motorbike and an exorbitant 400,000 by SUV. It is also possible to make the trip using minibuses headed for Trá Lính—just jump off when you see a sign pointing left in the direction of the lake. Sometimes motorbike taxis wait inside a small pool hall at the junction and can take you the rest of the way for 20,000. If not, the walk is just over an hour. It is possible to sleep in the large wooden house closest to the lake for 30,000 per night. You’d be in good company—H· Chí Minh himself once slept there.

Past the Bng Giang Bridge, the creekside road to Thng Hen Lake goes over beautiful Mã Phƒc Pass. Above the pass, a small road with a bamboo gate branches off the main highway. Thng Hen is a 15min. drive down this road.

The lake is calm—no artificial sounds, no unsightly telephone poles, and no pushy vendors. While there are more impressive sights in the province, no other tourist spot so fluently captures the sacred quiet of Cao B}ng’s countryside. A small animal path snakes along the left side of the lake and then continues up into a pass between two mountains. Climbing towards the clouds for another 5km leads to a seven-family H’m®ng village. Their isolated location receives few visitors, and they are usually overjoyed to see a new face.

While you’re at the lake, test out your balance on the lake’s rafts. The fisherman who hang out around Thng Hen charge 15,000 to use the larger bamboo rafts, and nothing at all for the older rafts, which are on their last log—they consist of four bamboo trunks tied loosely together and are usually halfway submerged in the water. Also, check out the market at Trà Lình on your way to or from the lake.

 Bán GiC Waterfall And Ng™òm Ngao Cave

A motorbike costs roughly 250,000 for the full-day trip. SUVs can be hired from most hotels for around 600,000. Making the trip by public transportation is challenging but more affordable. Minibuses leave from the center of Cao B}ng for Trúng Khán (one-way 50,000). From there it’s possible to hire a motorbike to make the round-trip journey 25km farther to the falls (round-trip 70,000).

Bán Gi#c Waterfall and its faithful companion, Ng™òm Ngao Cave, are a 3hr. drive northwest of Cao B}ng. The road, most of which is paved, climbs past Montagnard towns and villages—mostly Nüng and Tày—before opening into even more vast and beautiful territory. The landscape is something out of a storybook—green mountains and sheer cliffs jut straight out of grasslands, casting shadows over scarecrows wearing conical hats and rivers with shoulder-deep water buffalo. Twenty-five kilometers past the markets of Trùng Khánh, the road splits; a sign directs you right toward the cave, failing to mention that the waterfall is to the left.

Bán Gi#c, which is fed by the Quay Xuan river, is the largest waterfall in Vietnam and acts as an implicit boundary with China. The approach from the parking lot is gorgeous—the road weaves through rice paddies and crosses floating bamboo bridges (which charge a frustrating 2000) before arriving at the base of the trembling falls. The curtain of mist coming from the falls dampens your skin from afar, providing a pleasant cool-down to picnickers on the shore. For 20,000, you can get a closer look by taking a boat up to the imaginary boundary in the middle of the Quay Xuan; check out the intense Chinese tourist infrastructure on the other bank.

An even better view entails a steep and sometimes slippery walk to the left of the main waterfall. Arriving at a small cave filled with incense, veer right toward the rickety bamboo bridge just above the rushing falls. The bridge connects to dry land, level with the waterfall. The noise created by the sheer force of the waterfall —let alone the views of the river below—is breathtaking.

The nearby Ng™òm Ngao Cave is a castle amongst caves. The 5000 fee is almost laughable when compared with this sight’s overwhelming beauty. A 10min. walk through corn fields, avoiding the water buffalo that block the marked path, leads to a small opening in a rock face. Inside, the cave is an elaborate and dizzying system of tunnels—to get through, one must pass under arches, climb slopes, and dodge columns. The tight squeezes open up into enormous rooms with naturally sparkling stalactites, resembling everything from giant chicken’s feet to cacti and waterfalls. The sound of rushing water—its origin a mystery—is all around. The tourist-free 2414 square meters of cave makes this perhaps the best sight in the region. Tour guides can be nice, but interior lighting makes them unnecessary.

The route back to Cao B}ng passes through the town of Phúc Sen. There, in a field just beyond town, men forge dao (knives) and liˆm (small, wing-tipped machetes). Each knife is the product of several men’s efforts. Standing together with mallets in hand, they pound out frightfully sharp and attractive blades. The huts are easy to miss, so listen for the rhythm of metal beating on metal. At the end of the day, it may be worthwhile to stop back by Ngúòm Ngao Lake for a quick dip. It’s a short jog to the left off Highway 206.

Pác Bó Cave

Pác Bó is a 2hr. drive north of Cao B}ng. There is currently no public transportation to the site; a motorcycle taxi costs around 200,000 and an SUV will make the 154km round-trip journey for 400,000. The trip to the cave is incredible—stilt houses dot the valleys, and bright yellow corn is laid out along the roadside to roast in the midday sun.

On February 8th, 1941, H· Chí Minh returned to his beloved country after decades abroad and began living in Pác Bó Cave, a hideout beside the Chinese border. From there, he planned the Vietnamese resistance against the French and began training his troops while allegedly living a life of extreme austerity, using a wooden board as a bed and subsisting on vegetables and bamboo. The wooden bed still sits in the cave, and people climb the small rope deterrents to absorb some of the leader-turned-hero’s energy. Below the cave is a roped-off piece of stone where the leader is said to have done his best thinking. Between strategizing and writing poetry, he named a nearby creek after Lenin and a mountain after Marx. If you want to find out more, the museum in Pác Bó provides visitors with pictures and paintings of the beloved Uncle Ho as well as articles of his clothing. Regardless of your take on the man and his story, you can’t help but admire his taste in hideout spots—the landscape is beautiful.

Heading back to Cao B}ng, stop at the attractive Kim ·ng Memorial; it’s only a brief walk from the main road. Kim ·ng was a courier in the war against the French; he is said to have died when he was 14 in a successful attempt to distract French troops while his Vietnamese compatriots escaped. The sight is now used for award ceremonies honoring teenagers.

Montagnard Markets

The confluence of ethnic minorities in the Cao B}ng province makes markets a special treat. At daybreak, everyone heads to the marketplace. Some arrive on motorbikes with baskets of animals strapped to their sides; others make the journey by bus or buffalo; most arrive on foot. Markets are not only a chance to buy and sell goods, but also to exchange information and socialize. Below is a list of some of the best markets in the area; be advised that market days run according to the lunar calendar . Doing a whirlwind tour of the markets is a nice way to spend the morning (6am to noon), but the better option is to visit one town or another en route to a sight. Buy a duck, a traditional indigo shirt, or black sticky rice stuffed with mung beans. Better yet, do what many of the older local women do—take a seat and just watch the action. Trà Lình, near Thng Hen Lake (see above), has the highest concentration of ethnic minorities, and overall, it’s the most fun. Check it out on your way to the lake for one heck of a good day.

Tr<n H™ng Åo Forest

Tr<n H™ng åo Forest is 1hr. from Nguyˆn Bình on an isolated road. There is no public transportation there; a motorcycle taxi will make the trip from Cao B}ng for 160,000, including a stop in Nguyˆn Bình. The forest is a Vietnamese historical sight and photography is not permitted. Minibuses also run from the center of Cao B}ng to Nguyˆn Bình. They leave as early as 5am and charge 30,000 each way. The journey is 5hr. round-trip.

Tr<n H™ng åo Forest is located in the Nguyˆn Bình province and offers a refreshing escape from the summer’s sauna-like weather—and little else. The Vietnamese Liberation Propaganda Unit originated in this isolated spot in 1944. The trail in the forest is well-maintained but short; 10min. from the parking lot is an attractive monument enclosed in a well-kept garden. The path leads to a more scenic memorial, up 500 slippery steps to an exposed summit. The view from the top is great.

Given the numerous sights in Cao B}ng province, sacrificing a full day for Tr<n H™ng åo Forest is hardly worthwhile. The only real way to justify the trip is to combine it with a stop at Nguyˆn Bình market, which is on the 3rd, 8th, 13th, 18th, 23rd, and 28th of every lunar month. From 6am to noon on market days, the local Montagnard women, dressed in ornate traditional garb, congregate in town to sell and trade various goods. While in Nguyˆn Bình, visit the tiny cemetery perched atop the hill. To get there, take the street branching left through town, pass the government building and turn right up the second dirt path (beyond the small ladder). Once on the path, a right and then a left will bring you to a tiny set of switchbacks leading to the cemetery, which has awesome views of Nguyˆn Bình valley.