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Published: December 2nd 2007
Beautiful contours
Rice terraces using every piece of spare landThe overnight train to SaPa was outstanding. Our cabin 2 sets of small bunk beds in it, Darrell and I occupying the top 2 beds, and another 2 Korean men taking the bottom 2. We slept like babies the whole night. Well, except for the one guy who let his cell phone ring for ages and then practically yelled into the speaker in the middle of the night!
We were woken up at 5AM by one of the train staff clicking a clicker and calling out something inaudible. All was going well, until the passenger that had been on his phone last night starting asking us for a light for his smoke… we both told him no. In our 2X3m room, at 5AM we were not in the mood to be inhaling second hand smoke! He did find a light though, and when he lit his cigarette, Darrell asked him (relatively forcefully) to leave the cabin, which he did, only to go and spit in the hallway! Crazy days!
Aside from that, we did actually have an awesome night. The cabin was cozy, the beds comfortable and the gentle sway of the train as we chugged along put
The Train
Getting on at the station in Hanoi us to sleep almost as soon as we got horizontal!
We were picked up from the train station in Lo Cai by our tour agency, and piled into a mini van with a few other tourists for the hour and a half trip into SaPa. The road was small and windy with deep valleys on the left, and well, a deep cut in the mountain on the right! The edges of the road were all frayed and the big leafy trees on either side would sometimes meet in the middle. Every couple of km would see us through a small town with small open shops and tiny houses.
Mostly, when we weren’t surrounded by the houses or trees, we saw the rice terraces climbing all the mountains, as far as we could see!
We were dropped off at our hotel where we were served a mediocre breakfast and told that our guide would be with us in about 2 and a half hours. We decided to pass the time by going for a walk and exploring our surroundings a bit.
We walked the narrow, hotel and souvenir shop infested, and before long we found ourselves in a
Not a bad way to travel
If you're going to be travelling for 6 hrs... big market piled high with pomegranates, apples, pears… just about anything you could think of! Next door to the fruit market was the meat market, with plucked chickens on their backs, their legs in the air and the butchers chopping up carcasses and packing the meat on tables covered with cardboard. Upstairs was the craft market with brightly coloured blankets, bags, shirts, skirts, hats, and cushion covers as well as silver earrings and bracelets made by all the locals (some of the cheaper jewelry on sale made locally in China!).
All along our walk kids from the villages would run up to us and ask, “You, whats your name? Where you from? Ah, America. (NO, South Africa), Ah, OK. How old are you? Buy something from me. Maybe later?” in any order.
We met our guide back at the hotel. She quickly had to drop something at home for her baby and then would be back for us…
We were finally on our way! To get conversation started, we asked about her baby. Her baby was 3 years old. She was 15 when her parents arranged her marriage, pregnant a few months later and 16 when her
So colourful!
Black Hmong women selling cloths baby was born. This type of arrangement is not all uncommon in her village. Some of the girls are even married as young as 11 or 12 years old!
She lead us through the markets we’d seen earlier and then into the rice terraces. On the road we met a German couple, Karl Heinz and Martina. We got along really well and chatted for quite a bit - until I realized our guide and Darrell were leaving me behind!
The rice terraces were over whelming! None of the photographs we took actually do them justice! Everywhere we looked were these huge, bright green tiers of rice paddies, each step about 1m high and about 2m wide. Dotted amongst the tiers were small wooden farm houses and long concrete schools built by the government. It was truly spectacular!
Our walk to the first village we visited took us down some steep slopes, rocky paths, over rivers and up steep hills... and while we skidded and slipped all over the place, our guides (wearing worn through plastic shoes) seemed to have no problem at all! One of the women who'd started following us even had an infant on her
SaPa marketplace
A few local Red Dzao ladies trying to sell us their handicraft back!
Auper starving, we stopped for lunch in a pretty rustic restaurant with a balcony over a river. It was stunning! Our guide, Soam, brought our lunch, 2 rolls, cucumber, cheese, tomato, bacon, and some chopped up fruit, to us.
On our way our of the restaurant we were swamped by a whole bunch of villagers waiting at the exit to sell us stuff!
The villages were all relatively similar, with small wooden houses, a few buffalo, pigs or goats minding their own business in the rice paddies every here and there, and grubby little kids and old women trying to sell you stuff. The whole area was completely overwhelming and by the end of the day's hike, we were still trying to take it all in
We arrived at our home stay around mid afternoon, and joined again by Martina and Heinz, and another 2 German guys. About 30min after putting our bags down and our feet up, we were whisked away by some of the village kids to show us their favourite games (throwing rocks at a target, catching mud fish with their bare hands and folding grass into horses... amazing!) by the river.
The town butchery
You want it they've got it. Just help them to hold it still while they slaughter it. This did of course come at a price... as soon as we were back, they pulled out their crafts and started asking us to buy from them. 😊 they were very cute and seeing as they had invested a lot of time into making sure we had a good time, we bought a few things from them.
Our supper was pork and beef stew (not at all what the locals would normally eat. Meat is really expensive for them, so they usually eat pancakes, rice and a few veges.) with rice and vegetables... and then...
HAPPY WATER! The eccentric old lady of the house brought out this 2L coke bottle filled with a rice wine! In no time we all had tots in front of us and were shouting "Chuk Sei que -
good luck- won jum van jung -
finish 100%!<(MISSING)/i> - Mo Hi buy Yoh! -1,2,3, Go!"
Half way throught the merriment, the old lady's brother arrived and wanted us to start with again with him 😊 He wanted to learn all of our native "hello"s (Thank you; dankie (Afrikaans/South Africa); danken (German) and Cho Bai (SaPa) ) the evening was soon dissolved into a variety of "hello"s, A few girls from the Black Hmong tribe in the town square
The women of these tribes are always dressed in their tradional hand-made clothing. "mo hi buy yoh's!" and a whole lot of laughing!
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