In the mountains of Sapa with the minorities
For
a change, we take the night train to travel from Hanoi to Sapa,
our last destination in
Vietnam. We pay a little more for our
privacy and take a
cabin for 2. The train looks much older than
on the picture on the Internet but it's a class act. You get a
red rose on your bed, beers, coke, water and apples in your room
and hot tea as we depart. This is the first time I sleep in a
train! The trip is 8 1/2 hours long. I call it the shake and
bake experience. Not that it is very warm but it shakes! We
still manage to sleep a little. I enjoyed the experience
although you can't see anything outside. We had a tour arranged,
so we have someone awaiting for us with a sign with our names
when we arrive at 5AM. But it's also easy to take a bus
from the
bus station of Lao Cai to Sapa. It's a short 45 minute drive in
the mountains to our
hotel in Sapa. I will always remember the
warm welcome...there's a group of 5 or 6 Black H'mon girls
dressed in their typical clothing running behind our van to
welcome us. Our first introduction to the salesmanship in Sapa !
They ask for our names and remember it when we get out of our
hotel a few hours later. Do they all get the same marketing
course? They are likable and chatty and you want to talk to
them, but if you do, they won't let you go easily without a
sale! "Buy from me"! I dont know how many time we heard that
sentence in the 2 days we were in Sapa. And they all ask the
same questions to build a relationship: What is your name? Where
do you come from? How old are you?? How many children do you
have? And they go back to: You buy from me? In the States, they
would be sued for harassment. But many are so cute...
Anyway, we had a lovely time in Sapa and in the surrounding
hill-tribe villages. It's a beautiful, dramatic and mountainous
region in the northwest of Vietnam. So different from the large
cities of Saigon and
Hanoi. Ideal for hiking although a little
muddy in April. We had a local minority guide with us for 2 days
and that was very pleasant and interesting. No group. More
flexibility. And we learned a lot from him. At the end of the
second day, he was calling Bill his "adoptive father". He picked
us up after a very good breakfast and we walked with him to our
first village outside Sapa:
Cat Cat (named Cascade by the
French, but with the Vietnamese pronounciation, the name became
Cat Cat). It's a nice hike down but you do have to come back up
in the afternoon. Good exercise.
The next day, we had a longer trek and walked through 3 villages. Luckily, the sky cleared up after an hour or so and the views
were magnificent. I can only imagine how beautiful it is later
in the summer when the rice is up. In the first village we
crossed (forgot the name), we only saw children, dogs and cocks
fighting. It's common to leave the young children to not so
older sisters while the parents are working in the fields. We
walked on the road, then on pathways and finally through the
field, doing our best not to fall in this slippery ground,
sometimes through the mud. We crossed a river where they are
building a small dam to produce electricity for the booming
villages around Sapa. Electricity is a new concept in these
villages, with many houses in the mountains still not connected.
The second village, was the H'Mon village of Sin Chai where we
had lunch, followed by the nearby Giay village of Ta Van. All
these villages have different customs, languages and clothing.
They usually don't marry outside their tribes. When the young
Black H'Mong women get married, they shave their hair and
eyebrows. They are the one wearing the red turban on their heads
and black clothing. You can recognize the married women from
another tribe by the very large earings they wear. At this time
of the year, most of them wear the same things on their feet:
rubber boots!.
