IN FRONT OF THE CAT CAT WATERFALL.
THIS IS THE VIEW FROM THE 7th FLOOR RESTAURANT OF MY HOTEL, THE THICK CLOUD HANGS OVER IT AND IT FEELS LIKE YOU ARE FLOATING IN THE SKY. ON A CLEAR DAY THE VIEW INTO THE VALLEY WOULD BE BREATHTAKING.
LOOKING DOWN FROM SAPA INTO THE VALLEY(I borrowed this photo from the Internet as the sun never really came out during my stay and the cloud cover in Sapa was thick... I wanted to show a picture of what things would look like here if the sky was clear!)
RICE TERRACES CARVED DOWN THE SLOPE OF THE MOUNTAINS AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE.
RICE TERRACES, NO RICE NOW. ONLY ONE HARVEST A YEAR HERE DUE TO THE WEATHER. MOST PLACES HAVE 4.
I showed up in the morning at 6am from my night train. I don't know what it is about train stations in developing countries but they are all, without fail, complete and total shit shows...on a scale of 1 to India the one in Hanoi was a solid 7...total chaos, disorganization and a crush of people...the hotel sent someone with me to get me to my train and thank god because even he had a bitch of a time finding the ticket place and getting me to the right train. I was standing there having post-traumatic India train station flashbacks. When I arrived in Lao Cai I was picked up easily enough, thankfully, and driven to my hotel on a mini-bus. I knew it would be colder here...I was ready for that, but i was optimistically hoping for 10-15C....I wasn't prepared for 5C. It was cold! The entire place was shrouded in a thick moist cloud and even wearing everything I owned (that included pajama's under my pants) I was not comfortable at all. None of the stores, restaurants or hotels here have central heating or even electric heaters due to the low supply and price of electricity. You could see your breath in the hotel room! I had a vivid flashback to last Christmas Eve day in Calgary when my furnace broke while it was -20C outside and it was 8C inside my house for 12 hours! They do have electric blankets on the beds and lots of hot water for showering BUT with frequent power outages it makes all those things unusable and unreliable...the power was out in my hotel(and half the town) from 830am to 7pm the first day and from 10am to 4pm the second day. Everyone light fires inside the buildings in these metal bowls and huddles around them...I'd be curious to see the carbon monoxide levels in some of the places as there is no venting. SO anyways, before my trek (that left at 930am) I ventured into the market in search of appropriate clothing and to my delight found multiple stores selling North Face Jackets...all knock-offs I'm sure, probably from China... but are they ever GOOD knockoffs...seriously, tags and all and really good quality. You would never tell they were any different than the ones selling at a store in Canada for $350. So for $34 I bought the coolest ever "North Face" lime green puffy down jacket, thermal long underwear and mittens! I even went back the next day and bought two other jackets, they were just SO cheap and look as good as the real thing(now I just have to somehow cram them into my luggage!). So I was warm and ready to go exploring. My new outfit consisted of: running shoes(thankfully waterproof I discovered after some misfortune transversing a rice paddy)2 pairs of socks, thermal long underwear, my cargo pants, tank top, t-shirt, 3/4length t-shirt, long-sleeved t-shirt, black hoodie sweatshirt, my black real North Face jacket I brought from home, my new green puffy down-filled jacket, a scarf, a toque(over which all 3 hoods were pulled up) and fleece mittens! I was a sight.
AFTER 3 HOURS OF HARD HIKING WE STOPPED FOR LUNCH AND ALL STARTED FREEZING BECAUSE WE WERE SO SWEATY AND WET. THIS IS ME HUDDLING AT THE TABLE.
BLACK H'MONG TRIBE AT A TET CELEBRATION. GAMES AND RACES FOR THE CHILDREN.
LOTS OF H'MONG PEOPLE STANDING ON THE RICE TERRACES TO GET A BETTER LOOK AT THE COMPETITIONS BELOW. ALL DRESSED UP IN NEW CLOTHES LOOKING THEIR SUNDAY BEST.
I FEEL LIKE CHICKEN TONIGHT, LIKE CHICKEN TONIGHT...
VILLAGER'S HUT
BLACK H'MONG TRIBE MEMBERS HEADING INTO SAPA TOWN FOR THE CELEBRATION.
RED ZAO TRIBAL WOMEN- NOTICE THEY SHAVE THEIR HEAD AND EYEBROWS ONCE MARRIED.
Sapa is an incredibly picturesque place! Some of the most breathtaking scenery I have ever seen...worth the cold weather! It lays in the mountainous area of far northwest Vietnam right under the Chinese border. The Hoang Lien Son mountains and the eastern border of the Himalayas surrounds it. It is a small quiet mountain town and home to a great diversity of ethnic minority people...over 30 Vietnamese hill ethnic tribes live in the area. It also boasts Vietnam's (and Indochina's) largest peak, Mount Fanispan, at 3143 meters. Since the land is mostly mountainous the people worked the land into really cool looking steep sloping rice terraces fed by the lower rivers and waterfalls piped up by bamboo. Water buffalo are seen all over grazing, when they are not working at plowing, and there are lots of pigs(followed closely by many cute piglets) and goats wondering about. The only way to get here is by a 9 hour night train from Hanoi to a town called Lao Cai (or a bus if you were feeling particularly masochistic)and then you have to take an hour long bus 38km up the twisty mountain road into Sapa. It's a very small town that can be walked across in 30 minutes and the picturesque terrain make it a fantastic place to go trekking, seeing the beautiful scenery and visiting the different hill tribes. The town sits on top of the mountains and the villages are below in the valley. The town of Sapa is often covered in a thick cloud but once you start to walk into the valley the visibility is excellent. Sometimes the cloud sits in the valley and the town of Sapa is clear. Weather can change quickly here and all the locals carry umbrellas at all times.
STREETS OF SAPA TOWN
The first day I went on a 7 hour, 13Km trek down into the valley to visit two different villages. The two most prominent tribes here are the Black H'mong and the Red Zao. The girl who was our guide was a Black H'mong tribe member. They are called Black H'mong because the clothes/costume they wear is dyed black by using locally grown indigo...all of their hands are perpetually black from the dye that rubs off on them from the clothes and a lot, especially kids, have black faces where they must touch themselves with their hands. All the tribes wear a traditional dress everyday, like a uniform, and each tribe is different. They all have their own language but communicate with each other speaking Vietnamese. Another interesting thing about the tribal people here is that they are all incredibly short! I felt like a giant among them. The women mostly came up to my armpit or chin, at the most, and I was taller then 90% of the men. They looked like small children until you saw the age in their faces. I wonder if it isn't some form of dwarfism...they were all just sooo tiny. In general all of the tribes here really value boys...the boys go to school and inherit all the family's land. The girls never go to school. They cook, clean, sew and work the crops. Our little guide was 19 years old. They have large family's and she was 8 of 11 siblings. She was married when she was 15 and had never spent a day in school. She can not read or write. She learned English by talking to tourists and is extremely, impressively fluent and very charismatic. I wonder how far she could have gone in life with the same opportunities I had. The trek we did was a tough hike. A group of 5 H'mong ladies started following us out from town and no one was quite sure why, as they didn't seem to be selling anything, they just stayed close and asked the odd question practicing their English.....but the reason for their presence was soon discovered. The hike included about a 2 hours steep descent from the top of the mountain where Sapa lies into the valley...through steep rice paddy's and down streams and slick muddy paths. The little H'mong ladies in their sensible rubber boots and excellent balance held onto you the whole way and were literally instrumental in us arriving at the bottom only marginally covered by dirt...then of course they want you to buy something from them! But you just really needed and appreciated their help coming down that everyone bought a trinket. After lunch we hiked through two villages, until about 3pm, when we were picked up by bus and driven back up the mountain into Sapa. I was covered in mud and my shoes were filthy....unfortunately, no power in the hotel still so there was no hot water and no shower. I decided to embrace my level of generally grossness and hung out at a pub, that had a big fireplace, with a couple of Australians from the trek and two German girls we met there drinking hot spiced wine and baileys and coffee by the fire before heading off to an English pub to order dinner. We got back to the hotel at around 7:30pm and it thankfully had power again so I fired up that electric blanket. I wanted a bath so bad but the water wasn't heated yet so went to bed without. In the morning, the power was still going strong so I had a hot bath and washed my hair for the first time in 2 days and have never felt so good....the bath water was a scary black color when I was done! I bandaged the blisters on my toes, did my best job washing mud of my runners, socks and pant legs and went out to trek number 2! This trek was down to Cat Cat village. It was a way easier 3 hour trek and was all on stone steps leading down the mountain, wooden swinging bridges and a nice waterfall at the bottom(no mud! yeah!) On the way up the mountain, to head back to Sapa, we came across a big "end of Tet" celebration for the Black H'mong people and stayed for a while to people watch! Everyone was here in their best clothes and looked fantastic. There were games for the kids: like the huge bamboo pole that had candy hanging at the top for anyone who could climb it...all the boys fight to get to the top! There were races, archery competitions and strength games. Everyone was chewing on sugar cane (probably the reason for their rotten teeth). When me and my guide were walking out of the celebration we heard a girl screaming...blood curdling screams.. and turn to find this teenage girl being dragged down the stone road by a group of men. She was kicking and fighting but the men were stronger and were literally dragging her down the road as she yelled and fought. I asked my guide what was happening and the guide told me that she was being forced to marry. She said in the Black H'mong tribe marriage by kidnapping is common. The boy likes a girl so he watches her and waits for her to be alone or in a small group then kidnaps her with the help of his family and friends. She is then forced to live with him in his family home and a messenger will be sent a few days later to inform her mother that she is married now. She said it is impossible to escape as the boys family watch you very closely at all times and you can never be alone. She said the girls always try to stay in big groups so that they can protect each other. I feel so bad for that girl, I have never heard anyone scream like that. She was probably 14 or 15 years old.
After lunch I just hung out in town (on the side of town with power...ha ha) and found a cafe with really nice chocolate cake, lattes and free wifi to write my blog and check my email etc. I had dinner at the hotel(they had a great restaurant) and left on mini-bus back into Lao Cai for a night train back to Hanoi. I arrived in Hanoi this morning at 430am! Thankfully, lots of cabs were waiting to take me back to the hotel. The hotel staff brought me coffee and fruit while I waited for someone to check out to get a room as they were full. I just got my room now at 8:30am which wasn't too bad of a wait.
First order of business today: Laundry. I need get everything washed.
Second order of business: Shower followed closely by food.
Third order of business: See the sights that should finally be open after a long "closed for Tet" week.
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