7-16 Sapa

A shuttle mini-bus met us at the train station and within an hour we were winding up mountain roads. Sapa's city center is located on steep slopes overlooking a lush valley. When we first entered the valley, there was a valley floor completey covered in rice paddy fields. As we drove further, the 1 mile wide valley narrowed down to 1/3 mile and a swift moving stream/river meandered through the middle. High up near the valley's ridgeline, Sapa's city center is 'quaint' , seemingly forgotten until relatively recently, as the growing amount of shops catering to tourists suggest. It's only about 80*F/24*C here, so it's much cooler than Hanoi. The French transformed Sapa in the 1800's into a retreat from the heat of the coastal plains. The other draw to Sapa besides temperature and tranquility is the scenery: it's a man-made marvel of rice paddy terracing that stair-steps up from the riverbanks to high up the mountain slopes. Many of these terraced sections are over 1,000 years old. Maintenance is continuous, the manpower neccessary is substantial. It's visually stunning, though it came at a cost to the natural hillside forests and wildlife. This display of one of man's ancient accomplishments of manipulating the land and it's water resources into something as beautiful as it is productive gives you a good feeling.

We dropped off our big packs into storage, cleaned up, then packed an overnight bag. The plan was an organized trek through the hillside forest and rice paddies all day today and tomorrow. We had our choice of staying in a hotel in Sapa, or doing a "homestay" in a very small & basic family-run guesthouse among the rice paddies. Of course, we chose the homestay. Ourselves and six other tourists met in the hotel lobby to meet our tour guide, Ying. She was a cute & charming 25yr old local that spoke English very well. She was born & raised in a small village of less than 100 people and it is located along our trek today. Since the time we arrived at the hotel, a small gathering of women stood at the entrance and watched us like hawks. It reminded us of experiences Chris and I both had in Africa when 20-50 women would surround you, wanting to touch you and sell you their crafts. They were all wearing traditional Hmong clothing which is mainly black cloth with beautiful embroidery. As we passed through them, they followed close by and began the typical deceptively friendly lines of "what your name?" and "where are you from?". The discoverey they had a few small purses and embroidered items to sell was no surprise, but they put them away after we declined to buy anything at that moment. The crowd of ten women were aged 7-70 years old. Ying used to be one of these young girls whom dedicate nearly all their spare time outside of school and chores toward following the foreigners through the fields and jungle. They all were following us not to make a sale as much as the desire to learn English, just as Ying had done. English means communicating with westerners is possible, which gets them a chance at the big dollars within the local tourism industry.

Not only is there many different dialects of Vietnamese, but there are over 53 different ethnic groups in Vietnam-- much like the many different Native American tribes in the United States. Each has their own language, clothing, and customs. We walked through town and down windy roads. A dumptruck that had hit a soft shoulder and run off the road and tumbled 150 feet down a cliff was a sobering reminder of the dangers on the roads in Vietnam. Ying's description of all the tourists speeding around on motorcycles and getting killed was sobering, but the stories of some tourists still getting robbed and murdered were surprising. No matter where you are in the world, you have to remember that extreme poverty breeds extreme desperation. What I make in an hour back home, some here only make in a month. They all know it and it creates a lot of resentment, though many of them keep it to themselves. The ladies couldn't sell us anything despite their charming, so they started to their trickery of sandbagging us with small gifts, hoping to collect with a guilt-driven sale at the end of our trek. Within a minute of grabbing a long shoot of tall grass, an old woman approached me with a big smile, showing off her precious few remaining teeth. In her hand was a figurine of a horse she had skillfully crafted out of a blade of tall grass. Chris was jealous, but received one soon afterwards, along with all the other trekkers. 5 minutes later, they gave Chris and I heart shapes made from ferns and flowers. We were the only ones to get these, which made sense since we were the best looking of the bunch. These ladies were slick salesman and they were doing a good job of charming us. We had lunch down by the river at a small and very basic restaurant, then crossed a bridge to the other side. We walked a muddy and narrow path among the rice fields which was awesome. Up in the hills were a few gorgeous waterfalls cascading down rocky slopes.

By 5pm we were getting a bit worn out. We had to choose a homestay, so we settled on Ying's favorite: one of 3 or 4 in the area because of a pool table and close proximity to a good spot on the river to swim. Ying plays pool almost daily both at the homestay and at bars in town. We hadn't even arrived at the homestay and already Chris had wagered a beer and I wagered helping Ying make everyone dinner. We met some nice old ladies that ran the place and they were very friendly. The small house had 4 beds on the ground floor and there was a second floor dorm: 22 basic mattresses with mosquito nets in all. Other tour groups trickled in. A German family, followed by 8 Danish in their 50's. We hung our sweat-drenched clothes outside on the clothesline and headed towards the river to cool off.
Aside from some 10-12 tourists, there were a few local kids swimming, whom like all small kids in Vietnam do, didn't feel it neccessary to wear a bathing suit. We hung out for a while, jumping off the rocks with the kids, then headed back. Chris ended up losing to Ying at pool...barely. I narrowly beat her, but helped cook dinner anyways. We had egg rolls, noodles, vegtables, rice, and many other basic dishes made from scratch. The kitchen was the most basic I'd ever seen aside from your basic fire while on a camping trip. A concrete floor with one small counter, a small area with a 6" curb forming a basin for washing dishes, and a small campfire in the middle of the room. Everything but the rice was cooked in a wok over the fire, which was much tougher than you'd think. "Slaving over a hot stove" is sissy-talk. Slaving over hot coals in a smoke-filled room with no workable counter or chairs is as primitive as indoor cooking could possibly be.

Dinner went very well and we all ate a ton. It started getting wierd when the other tour guide (a 19yr old girl who looks like she's only 9) began barking orders to take rice whiskey shots with herself and Ying. We didn't know until later that she wasn't 9 years old, but 19, so the situation was a bit like a skit you'd expect to see on an episode of Saturday Night Live. Chris and I had been reciprocating the sassy talk most of the evening, but this new development was strange indeed. Four shots was all I could stomach, exposing me to a wave of insults such as 'ladyboy' and 'baby' from the young girl. We played 'spoons' for a while, which is a card game where it's a race of trading cards with other players until you get 4 of a kind. Once you get your 4 of a kind, you try to stealthly swipe a spoon off the table. At that point, it's a free-for-all for everyone else to grab a spoon, but there's one less spoon than there are players. The player without a spoon at the end has to drink. Of course, this is Asia, so 'spoons' here is actually 'chopsticks'. It was a unique, though fun evening.