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Sarah says:

we have just experienced something truly amazing and exactly one of the reasons we’re traveling in the first place. Since tourism in Vietnam is fairly new, there are only a few “must-see” tourist attractions and anyone who comes here as a tourist does all of them. The thing is, though, as we’re discovering, because Vietnam isn’t yet an easy or typical tourist destination, it doesn’t attract the typical tourist and it doesn’t provide the typical attactions - or so we’ve seen yet. The tourists we’re meeting are all *amazing* tourists, people who’ve been around the world 2 or 3 times, couples cycling through southern Vietnam with small children, 71 year old men with hip-replacements out climbing Vietnamese mountains. It’s been inspiring to meet the people we’ve met so far and we’ve loved every second.

So - Sapa. Sapa is a small mountain town in N. Vietnam renouned for its beauty of lush green rice terraces. Everyone goes. Including us. We booked a “typical” package which includes an over-night train north, a night in a hotel and a one-night homestay with a local village family. What we experienced was, so far, one of the highlights of all my travels. The whole thing was an adventure, starting with the over-night train when our cabin mates were 2 heavy drinking boys, one Aussie, one miserable Brit who’d just lost his wallet (oh yeah, that sucks) and they were both out to drown themselves in ice cold Tiger beer which came around on a cart every 40 minutes. Perfect timing. When in Rome, right? David and I joined in and it turned out to be a pretty fun train ride up - the Aussie turning out to be a big, lovable bear of a guy and we spent 6 hours taking the total piss out of the miserable Brit. Arriving at like 6am, we then took an hour long bus ride to the town of Sapa where we met our private guide, Huy, a 28 year old soft-spoken local man.

We had been warned that Sapa was cold - it’s the only place in all of Vietnam that ever sees snow and it was, as assured, very cold. We could have stood the 30F temps - we do have some layers with us in preparation for Nepal and we were wearing ALL of them - but we were not quite prepared for the buildings in this town to be completely without any heat. That’s right. It’s 30 outside, 30 inside. It was the strangest thing to see my breath while eating dinner in a gorgeous dining room. None of this matters - what I really want to impress upon aren’t the hotels or the town or anything like that. I really want to talk about the people. Sapa is a congregation of 5 tribes, people who migrated from China about 300-400 years ago. They are gorgeous people and they dress in beautiful, colorful wool skirts and head scarves. We spent the next 2 days getting to know these tribes and their lives. Everything we’ve seen of Vietnam so far has been one contradiction after another and we found them here as well. These tribes live off the land, farming all their food and livestock - they’ve been dependent on this land for hundreds of years and most of them still live they way they always have. However, everywhere you walk there is trash. We can’t figure out why they disprespect their land so much as to throw plastic bottles and candy wrappers in their water and along their terraces? Another point that was hard to resist: the children. Some of them go to school but some families have learned that their kids are very cute and can make the family money if they go out and sell “handicrafts” instead of going to school. The kids are BEAUTIFUL and their selling tactics cunning. They will follow you, sing to you, and they’ve learned excellent English from tourist. They ask you what’s your name and then tell you how pretty your name is. They’ll ask you how old you are and then say that you look so young. They ask if you have brothers or sisters and if you have babies. Every conversation ends with “you buy something from me?” and they’ll follow you and follow you for miles. It works.

On our 2nd day in Sapa we headed out with Huy for a 10km hike to a village where we’d stay for the night. In summer the scenery is amazing but in winter, it was foggy, cold and the trail was muddy. At the place where you leave the paved road and begin meandering through terraces, there was a hut selling water and about 50 children there all selling bamboo walking sticks. Small, beautiful children in tattered clothes, toeless sandles worn thin and often too big for them and dirty faces. and they all want to sell you a walking stick. So - we each bought one and we headed to the trail. The girls then pick a tourist to follow. It’s only the girls - boys in this society don’t work. They play. Girls make the family money. So you can see the girls spying out who they’ll follow and sure enough, we got our girl. Her name was Lang and she was stunning. She followed behind me asking the usual questions. I learned she was 10 and that her teacher was sick that day so she didn’t have to be in school. Along the way she made me things out of flowers - a crown for my head, a heart to put atop my walking stick. She was always there with a smile and would ask if we were OK. David took a picture of her and, normally the kids love to see their digital picture but not Lang. Huy said that she probably knew she was beautiful so she didn’t need to see the picture. When we stopped for lunch, the children weren’t allowed into where the tourists were eating. I watched Lang - she was out there waiting for us. The other children were surounding tourists like flies, “you buy something from me? you buy something from me?” Lang just waited for her sure sale. We ended up buying an embroidered pillow case from her that her mother made. I felt OK about buying it since she said she’ normally be in school. I wouldn’t want my money to be an incentive for this child to be kept from school. Along with selling, another reason the local children like the follow the trekking tourists is for the glorious chance to see a tourist fall in the incredible mud. The trails we were all on were steep and muddy like I’ve never seen before. The kids make it look soooo easy. We tourists all look like big, clumsy stumbling idiots and one falls every minute. They LOVE it!!! you can hear them cheering before you can see them. I’ll have you know, David and I did great. I never fell thanks to the strong hand of Huy. David had one minor fall on a particulary ridiculous area but he had the grace of a dancer I’m sure he’ll love me saying that.

Late afternoon we arrived at our homestay. In America I can only imagine that we would have been put up in a faux, replica of a village house but it would surely have heat and running water. Oh no - not here. It was the real deal and it was amazing. This family had 3 generations living in a spotless, contrete floor house with a squat-toilet outhouse, a buddhist alter in the living room and light by one light-bulb in one room of the house - the kitchen. The “kitchen” was actually one side of house partitioned off from the rest, a bit of the concrete floor cut out to serve as a sink, and an open fire pit in the middle of the room. From this, the husband and wife prepared for us and a German couple also staying here, the most delicious 8 course meal. beautiful, beautiful food. We think the grandfather, in his cute little baret, was maybe drunk on rice wine the whole night. His smile never left his face and he sat with us the whole night even though he didn’t speak a word of English. The girls selling their crafts followed us to the house and stood outside, patiently waiting for one of us to come out. Sometimes, they’d push the front door open and peek inside and we’d hear their faint, “you buy something from me?”. We started to joke that they were like the zombies from Shawn of thd Dead - they could smell us. The family all slept in one room off the kitchen and two lofts were set up upstairs for tourists. In the summer there are many tourists so they had 5 mattresses set up in each of two lofts. Fortunately for us and the Germans, that meant that each couple had access to 5 blankets David and I piled these 5 blankets on top of us but we don’t think they were normal blankets - they were more like iron drapes. we must have had about 3 tons on top of us but it was so warm and toasty!! by the middle of the night i didn’t even mind that i could see my breath if i peeked out from beneath them.

In the morning, we were presented with heaping plates of crepes and bananas, hot coffee - amazing. but just like the night before, the selling girls knew when we were awake. they were outside by 8am just waiting. we knew they were out there while we were eating breakfast - like we were being descended upon.

we had our guide express our thanks and took a group photo. they thanked us back and wished us safe and healthy travels and off we went. we spent the day hiking back to Sapa, we bid farewell to the cold town and to the girls relentlessly trying to sell us embroidered purses and charms and made our way back the night train. And as a stroke of luck, we were paired once again with the lovable Aussie and miserable Brit. But this time, we all just went straight to sleep.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2007 at 3:36 am and is filed under Global Travels, Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.