Another 10-hour sleep, another banana/lime/honey crepe breakfast, another warm morning (if it ain’t broke…) and time for one last short stroll to another tiny hillside Dzao village. Today our happy little party of five is joined by Vanessa, Vince and their H’Mong guide Pen who works with Sapa Sisters, an awesome female-owned trekking company. The Sisters are indeed doing it for themselves.
Soon we’re speeding back to Sapa where we say farewell to Jo and David and Vince and Vanessa and Pen and Elise and then down the winding, foggy mountain road to Lao Cai (someone pukes in the seat behind the driver) and onto the night train bound for dear old Hanoi. Farewell, mountain ladies… I’m a city girl at heart!
After an incredible 10-hour sleep, we’re greeted with a sunny mountain morning and banana/lime/honey crepes. “Do you want to do the challenging walk or the easy walk?” Elise asks. “Challenging!” we bellow in unison, remembering yesterday’s moderately-paced amble. After thanking the home stay family, we’re ready to go. A fresh quartet of genial female entrepreneurs is waiting for us just up the trail, beyond the water buffalo. We’re trying to make it clear that we won’t be buying anything today but just at that very moment, the trail becomes incredibly narrow, incredibly steep and incredibly muddy. Once again, the grandmotherly one of the bunch gives me a smile, holds out her hand and off we go. Thanks to the superhumanly strong, sure-footed Ji and a sturdy stick, I make it across the mud bog, up the mountain, through the bamboo forest, out the other side to the waterfall and down the rocky hill. Never have I been happier to pay for a service rendered.
Parting ways with my guardian grandma, we cross the Red River again and head up the other side. The trail winds through rice paddies, fields, tiny villages and right through people’s yards on occasion. Houses are modest; the children are solemn. Bamboo is used for everything: walls, fences, telephone poles, irrigation systems. We stop for lunch in the Zao village of Giang Te Chai where the ladies are ferocious with their bright red head dresses and shaved eyebrows and the whole town has kind of a menacing wild west vibe. I’d read somewhere that the Zao are particularly unkeen on having their photo taking as they believe cameras are soul-stealers. Keep walkin’, stranger!
Elise and I talk about our lives. Her brothers attend high school but the family doesn’t have enough money to send the girls. University is out of the question. Women marry young from among men of their own ethnic group, have two or three children (for her parents generation, it was more like 8 or 10) and that’s life. She had a boyfriend but his family was very poor and had no land so Elise’s parents ix-nayed the match. A fortune teller looked at Elise’s teeth and told her she’d marry someone far, far away. When I tell her I think she’s really smart and knows all kinds of interesting, important things, she laughs a laugh that means Lady, you are nuts!
16 km and my dogs are definitely barking by the time we reach the home stay at Su Pan. The Dzao and Tay salesladies come around but give up on us almost immediately because we’re too tired to do much more than pull off our boots and stare into space. We’re joined at the home stay by Vanessa (French) and Vince (American) who work as dive guides at a luxury island resort in Indonesia and are nearing the end of a month-long holiday in Vietnam. As dinner cooks over the open fireplace in the kitchen, we play with the kittens and tell travelin’ tales… No happy water tonight; none needed.
Sapa, mythical Sapa. Since we first came to Vietnam, people have been talking about Sapa. “Oh you have to go! It’s beautiful! But very cold!” “The mountains are stunning! But very cold this time of year!” “The food is amazing! But the weather will be cold!” “The hill tribe people are incredible… but the weather? Brrrrrrrr!” So we jam every stitch of vaguely warm clothing we have into our day packs and get ready for another grand adventure. First an 8-hour overnight train ride from Hanoi to Lao Cai, very close to the Chinese border to the north. Then an hour-long, 35 km bus ride southwest on windy, hilly roads (someone behind the driver pukes) to Sapa Town. A former French colonial military foothold, missionary station and holiday spot, Sapa has received renewed attention from international “eco-tourists” over the past two decades thanks to its proximity to trekking trails and the villages of some of Vietnam’s most colorful ethnic minorities.
The bus drops us off at a friendly little family-run hotel and after a quick tasty breakfast while the dawn breaks outside, it’s time to explore a bit before meeting our guide. In the misty morning, Sapa reminds me of any number of generic ski villages: pubs advertising ales and mulled wine, shops selling boots and puffy jackets, signs for accommodations/spas/special tours. There are also a few things you won’t find at Whistler or Mammoth, namely a market selling Cobra-Eating-A-Scorpion wine and a butcher hawking dog by the pound. But it is “The Montagnards” who make the biggest and most immediate impression. Women, old ladies and girls with vibrant head scarves and beautiful woven baskets on their backs literally swarm every bus that burps its load of dazed-looking tourists into the street and immediately latch on to each group or couple while repeating one endless mantra: You buy from me! You buy from me! You buy from me!
“No, thanks” rarely works; these ladies with the winning smiles are tenacious! And trying to fob them off with a vague “Maybe later…” only results in a demand to pinkie-swear you’ll make a date to meet in the afternoon or the following day. After 45 minutes of this, we’re miraculously trinket free but also completely exhausted. Time to trek!
Our guide is Elise, 18 years old with a sweet smile, a long dark ponytail, a bright blue backpack and lovely embroidered indigo clothing. Elise is from the H’Mong tribe and has been leading tours in the area for the past year and a half. Our trek-mates are Jo (English) and David (Lithuanian), a friendly, uber-fit looking couple who nearing the end of a five weeks in Southeast Asia. Off we go!
Friends had told us that the “trekking” was more like a walk around the park and at first it does resemble a kindergarten field trip as we amble along beside the road, taking our place at the end of a long string of other tourists accompanied by guides and various hangers-on (You buy from me!). Then we turn off the road, the sun breaks through the clouds, the air warms up and we get our first glimpse of the mountains and their breathtaking pattern of terraced rice paddies: absolutely glorious.
Elise points out baby pigs, shows us how to extract color from indigo leaves and fills us in on the rice-growing season (most tourists come in late summer, when the paddies are a lush, bright green). We’ve left the other tourists behind and there are just four ladies walking along with, all very friendly and relaxed… A grandmotherly type chats me up. She makes me a little horse out of bamboo. “Where are you from?” “What’s your name?” “How many babies do you have?” We assume they’re carrying our lunch in those big baskets. But after we cross a swaying suspension bridge and Elise stops at a restaurant in the H’Mong Village of Lao Chai, the gig is up. You buy from me! We’ve been sucked in! What can we do? We shell out, paying too much for generic handicrafts that we don’t want or need that may or may not have been made in the area, that may or may not ease some of the local economic hardship of one of Vietnam’s poorest regions, that may or may not assuage that ever-present tourist guilt that hangs heavy in the air in places like this. Sigh.
After lunch, Elise lets a new crop of ladies know that we definitely aren’t in a buying mood and we spend the next couple of hours passing through tiny villages where women are smoking sausages, making incense, weaving, washing clothes, and building roads. Except for whizzing along the dirt paths on motorbikes, men are virtually nowhere to be seen.
At three o’clock, the mist begins to descend from the mountains and we arrive at the Dzay village of Ta Van. One of the local rules is No Kissing In Public! Our home stay is a huge wooden house with mattresses and mosquito nets around the inside perimeter with a place in the middle for eating and watching TV. After a delicious meal, the “happy water” comes out but the family makes it plain they’d rather stay in the kitchen and play cards or watch Vietnamese soap operas than hang with the foreigners. Time to call it a night!
In honor of the last official day of class, Paolo gets a haircut from one of the sidewalk barbers who do a brisk trade at Vuon Hoa Hang Dau Park. Then it’s off to DocLab for some very heartfelt written critiques about the Sound We See: Hanoi project and a very spirited group critique about Saturday’s screening. I never cease to be impressed by how engaged this group is, how seriously they take their work as young filmmakers and how generous they are in giving their fellow students ample time to express feelings and opinions. In a culture where family members and even friends may not be supportive of radical individual creative expression, DocLab provides a safe and well-equipped place to experiment and meet like-minded souls. This is important stuff and it’s been a real joy to be part of this family for the past month. But enough serious stuff… it’s time to party! Linh’s family hosts the entire class for a fantastic evening of food, drink, stories and songs. We celebrate well into the wee hours and wink at the moon on the way home… Oh, Hanoi, you’re too too good to us…
It’s Sunday and a good day for a 15km bike ride outside Hanoi to the Red River Delta town of Bat Trang, northern Vietnam’s most famous “craft village.” The people of Bat Trang have been making bowls, vases and teacups for emperors and commoners alike for the past 600+ years… Everywhere you look there’s a pile of clay, a stack of bisqueware, a puddle of glaze and a rustic kiln; everyone has that entrepreneurial “don’t mess with me, I gotta a lot of work to do” look about them. Although most of the stuff is pretty high up the decorative/touristy meter (lucky pig, anyone?), we did score some super freaky little white skeletons at one of the more obscure stalls and some really tasty corn cakes and coconut cakes from the street snack ladies in front of the main market. Oh, and met a herd of water buffalo face to face on the road home!
