Sample Chapter
8.
The H’re people of Nưoc Bo Village
(Originally Published February 8, 2021)
It never fails—or maybe it always fails. I can’t decide which. But whenever I think the adventure must surely be over, that we’ve reached the outer edge of the unexpected, something unfolds that proves me wrong. Again.
Diem had casually mentioned that afternoon we’d be going somewhere with her brother Luan and a neighbor. I assumed it would be something typical: a short motorbike ride, maybe a roadside café for a drink, or a visit to someone’s house for a round of rice wine and grilled pork. What I didn’t expect was to disappear for hours into the deep, breathing lungs of the An Lao mountains.
We climbed aboard two motorbikes—Diem and I with Luan and our neighbor, who works for the local forestry division. I hadn’t been told where we were going, and at first, I didn’t ask. The road stretched ahead like it always did—narrow, winding, half-eaten by jungle, and wholly unconcerned with explaining itself.
We left behind the low hum of An Lao and entered a world thick with mystery. The air cooled noticeably as the jungle rose up on either side of the road. Every twist brought a new mosaic of deep greens, the occasional shock of a red blossom, or the glint of a terraced field barely clinging to a steep hillside. There were no traffic signs, no phone reception. It was just us and the road. And the road, frankly, wasn’t saying much.
The deeper we rode, the more the scenery became less a backdrop and more a presence—ancient, indifferent, and alive. Somewhere along the way, we passed forestry crews tending controlled burns on a steep ridge. Blackened trunks and the scent of scorched earth reminded us that even beauty like this must be managed. Timber remains a critical part of the economy out here, but so is the fear of losing too much of what cannot be regrown. Balance, as always in Vietnam, is an art form born of necessity.
After close to an hour of switchbacks, waterfalls, and green silence, we arrived at what passed for civilization—a few clustered houses, some terraced rice fields, and one dusty crossroad. We had reached the remote mountain village of Nưoc Bo.
Our neighbor’s forestry post sat just beyond the village, perched on a small hill overlooking the scatter of rooftops below. The building was classic post-war Vietnamese design—reinforced concrete, wooden shutters, tin roof, built more for function than form. It stood firm, as if it had no illusions about weathering time or jungle. From the porch, you could see the fields wrap around the mountain like green bandages, stitched in place by footpaths and stone walls.
We took a seat and shared a snack of green mangoes and baby jackfruit, dipped into a pungent fermented anchovy paste that Diem produced from her bag like a magician revealing a trick. The mangoes were lip-puckering, the dip unapologetically assertive, and the mountain air made it all strangely perfect.
Refreshed, we made our way into the village proper. We stopped at a home that doubled as a tavern—a word I use generously. It was more like someone’s covered patio with a few short tables, some ancient plastic chairs, and a crate full of warm beers. Behind the tavern, chained to a post, was a small monkey. He eyed us with an unsettling mix of curiosity and resignation. I felt sorry for him, but I understood—up here, pets are often closer to novelties than companions. Moments later, a woman walked by cradling another monkey like a newborn. It was surreal, otherworldly. Children darted through the village barefoot, followed by feral dogs and a breeze thick with woodsmoke and memory.
We were somewhere beyond the edge of even rural Vietnam. This place felt apart. Cut off. Beyond geography. Beyond time.
The people here are the H’re—locally referred to as ngưoi Hrê—one of Vietnam’s fifty-four officially recognized ethnic minorities. The H’re are descendants of the ancient Mon-Khmer peoples, cousins to the Khmer of Cambodia, and their roots stretch deep into these mountains. Their language, a derivative of Khmer, is filled with tones and inflections that sound like water running over stones—gentle, persistent, unknowable.
For thousands of years, they have cultivated rice on these steep slopes, coaxing food from the mountain with little more than their hands, time, and inherited wisdom. Their villages cluster along the valleys of Quang Ngai and Binh Dinh, though few outsiders ever bother to look for them. The road, after all, ends here.
The H’re practice a blend of animist beliefs and Buddhism, and their spiritual world is deeply tied to the forest, rivers, and land they inhabit. Every tree and hill has a spirit, every illness a reason, and every celebration a rhythm that dates back before the birth of Vietnam as a nation.
We had unknowingly come to the frontier—not of geography, but of understanding. The rest of Vietnam, even its most rural towns, still pulse with the influence of the lowlands: markets, mopeds, temples with loudspeakers. Here, the pulse was different. Slower. Rooted.
It’s easy, in places like Nưoc Bo, to forget that somewhere out there, cities buzz and politics churn. Up here, life is about weather and harvest, about firewood and family. And though progress will find its way eventually—as it always does—it hasn’t arrived yet. Not fully. And standing there, under the hanging vines and rusted tin, I couldn’t decide if I wanted it to.
The beer was warm. The monkey stared. The kids kept laughing. And the mountains—those quiet, wise old mountains—just watched.
Life in the more livable, more visible parts of Vietnam—places like Da Nang, Saigon, or even the river towns of the delta—has undergone a kaleidoscopic transformation over the past century. Colonialism, wars, reunification, economic liberalization, globalization—all have left their fingerprints on daily life. Convenience stores buzz with LED lights. Skyscrapers loom. Students attend coding academies in coffee shops that drip artisanal lattes.
But here, in this quiet mountain hamlet near Nưoc Bo, nestled deep within the folds of Binh Dinh’s remote highlands, time drips slowly. Change comes, but it arrives barefoot.
Electricity, for instance, is a relatively new tenant in the village. Now, satellite dishes perch like alien artifacts on bamboo rooftops, catching fragments of the outside world. But even with power, the cell service barely limps along. My mobile router, normally a trusty tether to the outside world, gave up before we even crested the final ridge into town. Diem’s Viettel service managed to cling to a single flickering bar, a ghost of connectivity. It was, strangely enough, the first time I had felt truly cut off in Vietnam. And to be honest, it felt like a gift.
Nưoc Bo is largely self-sufficient. Rice fields climb the hills in terraces that glint emerald under the mountain sun. These fields, shaped by generations of calloused hands, provide more than just sustenance—they are history made edible. Woven into this agrarian rhythm is the cottage craft of loom-based textile production. Once thriving, the art of weaving has declined in recent decades, as cheap, mass-produced cloth floods even the remote corners of the country. Still, in Nưoc Bo, you’ll find homes where the rhythmic clack of a loom still echoes, a steady heartbeat in the slow tempo of mountain life.
Religion here is not something easily defined. The H’re people practice a blend of ancient animist traditions and the lingering traces of Hindu spiritualism—remnants likely inherited from their Khmer ancestry. There are no pagodas, no Sunday congregations, no sermons. Instead, worship is a thing lived daily: offerings to river spirits, reverence for sacred stones, whispered prayers into the jungle canopy. The divine is in the land, the trees, the rain.
This was especially evident as Tet approached.
In most Vietnamese towns and cities, Tet—the Lunar New Year—is a season of red banners, lion dances, fireworks, and feasts. In Nưoc Bo, the celebration takes on a decidedly more visceral tone. Here, it is the buffalo that takes center stage. An indispensable beast of burden, the water buffalo pulls the plow, hauls firewood, and provides milk. But once a year, just before the turning of the calendar, one buffalo is chosen—not for work, but for sacrifice.
The villagers erect a symbolic tree in the center of town, constructed from bamboo and crowned with a carved phoenix. The chosen buffalo is tied to this tree. Then, in a ritual that is equal parts spiritual offering and practical necessity, the village’s young men strike the animal with spears. It’s not done in cruelty, but in ceremony—a sacrificial appeal to the rice spirits for a bountiful harvest. Once slain, the buffalo’s blood is used to paint the participants. The animal is then butchered, cooked, and the meat distributed to the village.
It’s difficult to digest, in every sense of the word. But such rituals are far older than cities or nations. They’re born of survival, of scarcity, of respect for what must be taken and shared. For many in the village, this may be their only substantial protein for the entire year. Beyond the Tet sacrifice, villagers subsist on what the rice fields give up—fish, crabs, snails, frogs, and field mice. Yes, mice.
As raw as it was, we hadn’t come to witness this ancient rite. We were here for something equally traditional, but a bit more palatable: Rưou Can.
Rưou Can is a fermented beverage made from glutinous rice and infused with mountain herbs and roots. It’s rustic. Earthy. Beloved. The drink is indigenous to Vietnam’s highland minorities, and while it varies slightly by region, its spirit (in every sense) is the same—a drink to be shared, communally, joyously, one cane straw at a time.
We left the tavern and followed a winding path to a modest concrete house tucked beneath a thatch of banana trees. The woman who greeted us was small and sprightly, with eyes that danced like mountain rivers. Her kitchen was a working brewery. Giant plastic tubs brimmed with bubbling rice mash, and the air was rich with fermentation—a heady mix of yeast, rice, and a whisper of the jungle.
She had several jars already aging—each sealed with banana leaves and tied with string. The beverage wasn’t bottled. It was ladled. It was living. She sold us two large clay jars, each filled to the brim and sealed tight. The straws—cut from a slender local cane—came bundled like kindling. We thanked her, paid in cash, and loaded the goods onto our motorbikes. I held one jar between my knees on the ride back, Diem cradled the other. Together, we looked like smugglers of some ancient mountain elixir.
The sun slipped behind the mountains as we made our way back down the winding road to An Lao. The air was cooling fast, and shadows stretched long across the terraced hillsides. My legs were cramped, my butt numb from the hours on the hard bike seat, but I didn’t care. The ache was the kind that only good stories leave behind.
What started as a casual afternoon errand had turned into a journey—into history, into ritual, into the very soul of the highlands. It’s one thing to read about indigenous tribes or traditional brewing methods. It’s another thing entirely to sip sour-sweet rice wine in the twilight while jungle trees sigh overhead, and feral kids laugh behind taverns.
Tet was coming. The mountains were waking up. And in my arms, I held a clay jar filled with the flavor of the land and the echo of something far older than I could yet name.