Dollars to Dong-Bahts

Plant Exploration in Northern Vietnam and Northern Thailand
8/9/2005-9/2/2005

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Thursday 8/18/2005

From here, it was off to the downtown market to stock up on fruit for snacks. Downtown is fascinating, both for the items for sale, but also for the fascinating people. We left the bustling market with everything from grapes to bananas, to lychees...and of course, durian. If you haven't tried durian, it's a rather messy fruit with a smell that makes rotten gingko fruit seem appetizing. Hayes took an immediate liking to the durian. Like the rambutans, the lychees also looked like human eyeballs but were quite tasty. Come to think of it, after a week here, many things that we wouldn't dare to eat back home had actually become quite tasty.

From our hotel in Ha Giang, we wanted to head northward toward the China border. This option seemed the best to get us into some higher elevation areas. To get there, Uoc informed us that we must first get a permit from the Vietnamese Army, since this is a sensitive area because of the 1979 border conflict with the Chinese. It took a couple of hours and $40 USD, but armed with our permits, we headed north. After passing a washed out section of road leaving Ha Giang, the rest of the road was in surprisingly good shape. As we suspected, there was no need to have a permit, other than to give the military some revenue and something to do.

About 10km outside of Ha Giang, our eyes were attracted to a population of elephant ears that seemed quite unusual. After tromping through the small vegetable garden that separated us from the elephant ears growing at the base of the cliff, we were able to clearly see Alocasia macrorhizos, Colocasia gigantea, and what seemed like bi-generic intermediates between the two. This was very exciting, since the only documented occurrence of natural hybrids between the two genera is from Nepal. I truly doubt there has been much cataloging of aroids in this region.

The elevation at the colocasia stop was still below 1000', so we reboarded the van and continued higher. As we finally began to rise over 2000', agriculture still dominated, but the native vegetation changed to more woody material and fewer elephant ears. The richest stop on the way to the top of the pass was a small forested area at 2600' elevation that we noticed on the right as we rounded a steep curve. We disembarked and climbed the nearby thickly vegetated hills where we discovered a treasure trove of cool plants including a 6' tall aspidistra, a 4' tall x 6' wide tree-like liriope, a 3' tall white-fruited disporopsis, numerous begonias and ferns, along with several clumps of Amorphophallus tonkinensis.

Continuing higher, we stopped in a Cunninghamia konishii forest at 3200' feet to find a different array of interesting plants, including a nicely patterned Begonia hemsleyana and a stunning giant begonia species with red-haired stems and leaves nearly 2' long. One of my favorite finds at this stop was a 3' tall Labiatae that I think is a colquihinia. The upright stalks on this shade grower were adorned with phlomis-like flower whorls of creamy white. The robust 5' tall hedychium with 15" flower heads of white filagree-type flowers was also dazzling, but we have no idea what species this might be.

While we hunted through the forest, there was a group of local girls on the adjacent peak that kept calling 'hello' and 'what is your name'...obviously phrases that they learned in school. Soon they broke into song and serenaded us with beautiful Vietnamese music until we returned to the van, followed by the girls as they ventured down from their mountainous perch to find out more about their visitors.

After a couple of hours in the field, we hopped back in the van and headed to the top of the pass and just down the other side to the town of Quan Ba. It was getting late, so our choice of a lunch restaurant was limited. I can't say that we were particularly thrilled to find our fresh meat choices still alive and neatly wrapped and waiting by the entrance. The restaurant was empty, except for the owners who were glued to the television watching an old Vincent Price movie. When the movie ended, they graciously switched over to CNN for their visitors. We peeled off our leeches from the morning stops and then enjoyed a delicious lunch.

After lunch, we returned to the summit to check out the area around the radio tower at 3800' elevation. We were scouting the area around the top, when Wade yelled that he had found podophyllum. Indeed, he had descended into a deep valley and found several clumps of Podophyllum pleianthum. All around this area were amazing plants, including a stunning remusatia with dark purple-back leaves. The ferns here were also amazing, from silver leaf ferns to two different species of tree ferns. We spent a couple of hours here, but could have easily made a full day of this stop.

As we headed back down the mountain toward the hotel, we made a couple of curcuma stops, one for a 4' tall green leaf form with huge bulbs and a second for a 4' tall species with red striped leaves. No matter where we stopped, we were scrutinized by kids in the area who stared at us and chanted hello. Even as we sat in the van, they pressed their noses to the vans and just stared at us. We finally returned to our hotel for an evening of processing and dinner at a nearby restaurant. At dinner, we discussed tomorrow's agenda, a trip south from Ha Giang, then east to Ba Ba Lake. I was surprised to see that Uoc's map showed a nice large road for the 140 km journey. My map that I had purchased just before the trip didn't even show the road.

Friday 8/19/2005

For a short distance, the road was nice and paved, but things degraded rapidly from there. Before we knew it we were sliding through heavily rutted wet red clay roads and fording overflowing streams. We quickly realized why the road was not on my maps. After reaching several intersections in the winding and bumpy dirt road with no directional signs, we would stop and ask the locals for help. Interestingly and frustratingly, most had conflicting answers. After several hours, we reached a point where we found the bridge across the river that we needed to take had not been built yet...a serious travel problem. This is after we were told earlier by others along our route that the bridge was finished. From here, all that was possible was to backtrack and then take a smaller dirt road south, heading away from our destination. Frustrated, tired, and sore, we were finally directed to a small road back from which we could reach the main road just south of where we entered this maze earlier in the day.

Since we were only around 500' elevation, we choose to not make many stops despite the numerous huge roadside patches of Amorphophallus paeonifolius. The one plant that did finally bring us to a screeching halt was a clump of crinkled-leaf Alocasia macrorhizos that we saw growing along the road. The owner of the house nearby was generous enough to let us dig a few pieces. Amazingly, we saw this same form growing in a few other spots further along a 1km stretch of this back road.

When we finally arrived back at the main road, daylight was nearly shot, so we headed south to the town of Tuyen Quang for the night. After checking out 3 different hotels, Uoc finally settled on the Ha Thuyen Hotel, and we stopped for the night. This was certainly our nicest hotel in Vietnam. Ironically, this was our worst day of the entire trip for finding plants, but so far, the only one on which it did not rain.