SAPA LESSONS

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OK, folks – the theme of this post is, “We don’t have a clue.” It’s liable to turn into a sermon, so I apologize, but we learned so much recently about how people in other lands live (even after our trip to India) that I can’t resist writing. We’ve met so many people on this trip who believe that they’re surviving pretty well, living lives that are truly poverty-stricken according to American standards. Even though we’ve seen so much on our previous trips, this trip has been a good continuing lesson for us on our essential cluelessness about the real lives of most of the world’s people.

We left Hanoi after one night and traveled northwest into another “ethnic minority” area, centered on the town of Sapa. After our time in the Central Highlands, we looked forward to meeting these interesting people again, though the people of this area are (as in the US) of different tribal organizations. Among them are the Hmong, famous for their support of the US forces during the war. Many lived in this area – or in Laos-- and were abandoned by our forces after placing themselves in danger for us, while many moved to the US, and live in Wisconsin, Minnesota and California. (Go watch the Clint Eastwood movie, “Gran Torino”.) Other tribal groups are defined by outsiders according to their distinctive clothing: the black Hmong, the red Dzao, the rainbow Hmong …

Sapa itself has been so overrun with tourists, mainly French and Germans, that it’s like Colonial Williamsburg: you can see how differently people live, but you have to dodge cameras and understand that much of the action is staged for your education.

We took day trips out of Sapa with a young woman, Ha Ta. She’s of the T’ai tribe/group and until she was married (to a Vietnamese man), she lived a very traditional tribal life. She is one of 12 children of traditional parents and grew up hungry. As she tells it, they frequently had to piece out their scarce rice crop with cassava (regarded as animal feed in other areas of the country) and “corn soup”. Again, corn is animal feed, but her mother boiled it and although she said it was “impossible to swallow”, they “had to swallow”, because that’s all there was to eat. As they sat around the family table, she said they hated whoever sat next to the rice pot because that person always kept a little extra for him- or herself. She defied her father and completed high school, secretly taking the university entrance examination. When she passed it, she began her studies, but had to settle for a “college” – two year – degree. By the way, she speaks the BEST English of any of our guides – and I wonder how she managed to do that. At that time, she promised to return to her village and be a “good daughter”, but found her father had promised her (at age 20) to a 47-year-old man. Again defying tradition, she talked a male friend into marriage, asking him to save her life and telling him that they could always divorce later if things didn’t work out. He agreed, against his Vietnamese parents’ wishes. On her part, she agreed to give up her traditional wardrobe and hairstyle and had a child (preferably a boy) to satisfy his mother. That plan backfired, as she needed a caesarian section to bear their daughter, now three. They’d saved enough for a motorbike, but had to sell it to pay for the operation. They were again saving, this time just for a TV. (Our tip put them over the top and she bought it just after she dropped us off at the railroad station on our way back to Hanoi.) Earlier, she’d worked at a restaurant for $20 a month; now she’s a guide for $45 a month. When she’s not guiding, she uses baskets with the over-the-shoulder pole to sell peanuts and pineapple, hoping to make about $4 if she can sell her entire 10 kilos (22 pounds) of pineapple. If there’s nothing else to do, she collects plastic bottles and aluminum cans to recycle for 15 cents a kilo. Think about how many plastic bottles it takes to get to 2.2 pounds!

March 2 was our 21^st wedding anniversary, and we told Ha. The next day, we found that she’d informed ANZ, the company that arranged our trip to Sapa, and ANZ sent flowers, fruit and local handwork to us at the hotel! How nice. I’d started feeling like an old lady because I ran out of breath climbing stairs and hills, until Tom got winded too and checked to find that Sapa is at 5000 feet, the highest town in Vietnam. I felt better when I learned that.

Then, after many trips, I got the poops from something I ate. I really would not post about this, but we had an adventure dealing with it. We had a 6-hour car trip planned, so were able to cancel and use the car to drive to Lao Cai, a larger city about an hour away on mountain roads, where the railroad station (and better doctors) were. On the way, we were stopped and the driver fined in a classic shakedown move. Turns out the tourist drivers are often the targets of the local police who charge about $15 each year for “protection”. The Lao Cai police catch them on the road, but the Sapa police are bold enough to go to each driver’s house yearly to demand their payment. Although Ha told me to “look sick” so we could get away without a fine, our driver was forced to hand over 3 million dong. (Ha had Tom take a photo of the payoff, which he did, even though he said later that he was wondering if they’d take his iPhone too. We made it to Lao Cai without further incident and got to medical office number one, where you go to get sent to the right medical establishment. Ha didn’t want us to go to a public hospital (good move), so we went to a private hospital, where I was examined and given Bactrim and envelopes of rehydration salts and kaopectate powder. It worked, by the way. The fun began when Ha negotiated treatment and payment, because the hospital was for Vietnamese, not foreigners. We instantly became Ha’s parents, who had adopted her at age two and had taken her to the US. She had “returned” to Vietnam to live, and we were visiting her. OK, that worked. She found they’d charged to examine Tom too, fixed that, fought off the doctor’s demand for a barrage of tests, and bargained the price of the medicine down to her idea of a reasonable level before paying. I walked over while she was talking to them and she told me, “Go sit down – don’t watch.” Total cost: $35, including the $15 fine, which of course we paid back to the driver. We had no wait for treatment, though that was at least partially because Ha held on to me as though I were frail and just walked us up to the front of the line.

That night, I slept and Tom had dinner with Ha, who continued her innovative ways by suggesting to him that I might like pizza for dinner. No, he didn’t think so, he said. She then moved over next to him at the table and said that Sandy REALLY did want a pizza – which her daughter also happened to like. OH! He figured that one out quickly and agreed that I would, after all, like a pizza.

On Sunday, we went to the once-a-week market in the village of Bac Ha, in the Flower Hmong area. These people wear the most beautiful handmade traditional costumes routinely, and the market is where most of the business of the area is conducted. People may travel overnight on foot to get to the market – and return home – and depend on it to buy and sell what’s needed for life. It’s also the place where young men and women meet, where you go to get a bowl of horsemeat soup, and where you buy or sell water buffalo (or anything else …) We watched gamblers bet on whether a farmer could cut hunks of fatty pork with one or two whacks of a large knife – the betting and chaos were very reminiscent of the Russian roulette scene in “The Deer Hunter”.

We walked through a nearby village and were able to watch several men at a forge making aluminum plow blades. They had just removed a blade from the mold and were melting more metal and repairing the mold for the next blade. Later, after they’d cooled, I’m sure they found a way to machine the edges. Blades are traded when they break, and the old blade is melted down to make new ones.

We returned to Hanoi on another train from Lao Cai, which is just across a small river from China. There’s a “Friendship Bridge” over the river, built in 1989 after border wars that I’d totally forgotten about (me, the Asian history student …). We would have taken a train to Kunming, but only freight trains are making the run – Tom’s pretty sure a landslide has affected the main line. We have to return to Hanoi and either fly or take a VERY long bus ride. While we were in Lao Cai, we were lucky enough to visit a temple honoring the Vietnamese Mother Goddess while a fortune teller was performing rituals to worship spirits associated with that temple. Rich families hire the fortune tellers (something like a priest or priestess) and others try to observe the rituals at the same time.

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Photos

CatCat Village
The children are always so cute -- and you wonder what they will see of life in this world.

Weaver
The women weave, print, embroider and wear beautiful textiles.

21 Years!
Our anniversary.

Market
Again, the produce for sale is better-looking than anything in our stores.

Hot Chilies
How many would you need to spice up your food so you wouldn't taste the fact that the meat's a little old?

Peanuts
Ha was buying peanuts to sell in her hometown of Sapa the next day. She hopes to make a few pennies in profit.

Ha, Our Best Guide
Ha's English was the best of any guide and her care for us was amazing.

Flower Hmong Women
See what I mean about their skill with textiles?

For Glen
They look tough, but are very gentle. We saw small children leading them all the time.

Horse Soup
Made of all the horse's parts. Ha told us that if you can't smell the horse's dung from the "chitterlings", it's not real horse soup.

Gambling
A farmer wagers that he can chop through one or more pieces of fatty pork. If he wins, he gets to keep the pork.

The Forge
These men were forging new plow blades from scrap aluminum. The mold is still hot.

The Forge, II
The man in the white shirt is pumping the bellows to melt more aluminum.

New Blade
It will be machined and sold or traded for an old, broken blade.