Back in 2010, I went on a longer journey to Asia. The first month in China was rather exhausting. Being a bit inexperienced, it was hard to find anything interesting outside of those huge cities - Xi'an, Guangzhou, Kunming - they all seemed to be the same: huge, crowded, polluted, without sufficient transport. That's all quite different today.

My first day in Vietnam, on the other hand, made a huge difference. I was invited by the Hmong tribes to join them on their farm and had a more authentic experience than in all over China before.

In July, I took a bus from Kunming to the border in Lào Cai. Early in the morning, I arrived, crossed the bridge and literally had too much time on my hands.

That's why the random man on his motorbike appeared just in the right moment. He offered me a ride to Sa Pa, the famous little town in the mountains of Northern Vietnam, surrounded by the most beautiful rice terraces.

For the first time on this trip, I went somewhere without any plan. No accomodation booked, no idea where to go. All I knew about Sa Pa was that it's a hiker's paradise and the rice terraces were stunning.

Even the value of the currency I hadn't really understood yet. By showing two fingers the driver asked for 20,000 Dong (1 USD at the time) - or so I thought. On arrival, it turned out that I had missed a zero and the price was more like 200.000 Dong, what, to be fair, made much more sense.

I must have just ignored the fact that such a long ride couldn't be only 1 USD worth (the bus ticket back was actually 50 Cents, so not completely out of question).

I did start to argue though, since my budget was pretty low. From my perspective, the little fight wasn't really a fight, but rather a slightly heated discussion. In the Vietnamese context, our argument seemed to have been quite a big deal. Some Hmong women came over to settle our conflict and then suggested me to join them to their farm.

Before my journey to Sa Pa, I had never ever heard about the Hmong people. It's one of the ethnic minorities of Vietnam, together with Khmer, Thais, the Malay culture of the Cham and many more. In China they are known as Miao, yet many Miao villages like Xijiang have been turned into Disneyland attractions for Han Chinese tourists.

Following the Hmong to their farm, was certainly a journey into the unknown, a real discovery of knowledge, which I haven't had before. The Hmong women claimed that the walk to the farm woud be short and just around the corner. After ten kilometers up and down, through rivers and across rocks, we finally arrived. It took us about three hours to reach their house.

This unexpected hike with full baggage was a bit of a surprise - and extremely beautiful. I couldn't have had a better view onto the picturesque rice terraces, rising up high into the skies. Clouds would pass by in front of our eyes and little kids would ride on water buffalos, leading them to the next pond.

After a month in Chinese megalopolises, this scenary was purely magical; a real fairy tale land, which I had the chance to discover. While walking, the women told me, that it's part of their daily routine to hike to Sa Pa or to other settlements nearby. In Sa Pa they would sell their farming products, in other villages they buy tofu, rice and rice wine.

When we arrived at the farm, all men were out in the nature; on their business trips organizing bamboo and other goods. The main means of transport would be their motorbikes, which they, dressed in tight vests and long black coats, drive across the muddy roads between the tropical greenery.

The women, on the other hand, wore thick dresses, woolen leg gaiters, headbands and a large umbrella in their hand. Yes, the rain here was heavy at times. I chose to come in summer and walked directly into the rainy season. All this wetness eventually made my shoes get moldy and I ended up switching to flip flops for the rest of the trip, almost like the Hmong women around me.

At the farm, they offered me to stay for a few nights. I was given access to their cold shower and a package of washing powder to use on my skin. Well, when in Rome, I thought, and tried to rub it in - don't tell my dermatologist!

After the shower, I was invited for drinks and dinner. The Hmong cooked some deliciously spiced tofu and shared their rice with me. I had a little walk through the yard thereafter and noticed the TV dish in the court. Life is pretty simple, but the Vietnamese government apparently insisted on providing its national media channels, not to say state propaganda.

Vietnamese language was also taught in the schools here. The kids would have to walk almost the same three hours that we hiked from Sa Pa to get to the school down in the valley. The next day we went there, passed by the pretty rice terraces and a few other interesting plants.

Before we started to hike, I asked the Hmong, how they earn their money. The farm owner didnt answer verbally and dragged a big bag of something into the living room, placing it in front of me. Suddenly, I realized that it was a massive heap of dried weed. I opened my hands in surprise and noticed, how they just placed bit by bit into my palms.

Eventually, I asked them, how would I even be able to transport it in my bare hands. They quickly provided a plastic bag and I put it into my luggage. In the end, I wouldn't really have the chance to smoke it. Traveling through Vietnam, I even forgot that it was there and on the last day, I left it to the Cham people in the South before crossing the border to Cambodia.

I did try a lot though at the farm. The weed here would be mostly smoked from bamboo bongs, carefully crafted by the local men. Since they were on their business trip, I couldn't ask them to make me one. Later, I would be given a piece by the neighbours for a price of something like 3 USD. I lost it almost the same day at the bus stop in Lào Cai. Otherwise, it would have been the perfect, most unique souvenir possible.

After a few draws from the grass mixture, I noticed that there was one man at home. He just kept on sitting around the fire, popping one dried cherry after another into his mouth and preparing the bong to smoke. He turned out to be the eldest of the family, whose job it apparently was, to just rest and get high.

I joined him in his ambition and, after some smoking, I also got interested in those dried cherries, that would lie to parch above the fire. When I tried to throw the second one into my mouth, the man held me back, saying something in Hmong that I interpreted as: This is too much for you. Honestly, I couldn't feel much of an effect, but it must have been something that changes your consciousness and perception.

After this experience, of course, I wanted to know, where all of those herbs are coming from. On the way to the valley, they showed me the plantation and explained their process of harvesting and distributing it to Western tourists in Sa Pa. I'm not really sure, if the government is very fond of it. But from what I have understood, Vietnam doesn't really touch the minority groups here and let them just make a living with their natural products.

It turned out that it grows almost everywhere. There are some plantations, the Hmong are cultivating, but you can also spot the leaves just along the muddy paths. I found one plant pretty quickly and couldn't hold back posing with it for a picture and hid it away as we reached the valley. That's exactly the place where we would find small shops and the school for the kids. There seemed to be some encouragement for the Hmong to embrace their culture, but also to learn Vietnamese.

This knowledge would actually give them an option to move to the bigger cities and, if they wanted to, do something else. After all, the country life of the Hmong didn't seem to be as romantic and easy as it might seem to travelers. Apart from the long hikes each day, the women had to take care of the farm animals and the fire.

Every morning they woke up early. First duty, which I noticed half sleeping, is to put more wood into the fire. On this farm, the flame should never turn off, so I saw them dragging a massive trunk of wood into the fire at 5 a. m. to the crowing sound of the rooster.

In the end, I mostly saw the female side of the Hmong society, even though I did sit around with the grandfather of the house and the men from the neighbouring farm for some time. They also kept on dressing me up, until I finally agreed to buy one of the self-made vests from them - also to reimburst them a bit for their expenses.

After a few nights, I eventually left the place, bag stuffed with weed and a pretty cool bamboo pipe and leaving my moldy shoes behind. With flip flops on the wet, muddy paths, it was quite a challenge to reach the road after an hour or two. From there someone would drive me to Sa Pa on his motorbike, I would take that 50 cents bus down to Lào Cai and eventually get myself into the buzzling street food and beer corner culture of Hanoi.

Compared to that month in China before, Sa Pa was a great adventure, where I didn't have any expectations and everything would just unfold spontaneously with me being stunned by the extent of nature's beauty and my cultural exploration. Those are, in my opinion, the best moments on a journey: Discovering the unknown, being completely unprepared.