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Published: August 10th 2006
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When I returned to Sapa after climbing Mt Fansipan all I wanted to do was relax the next day, but I found myself with an offer way too good to refuse - a Hmong girl called Vu who I had befriended in Sapa before I went on the Fansipan trip invited me to her village to help pick corn for her family!! I was really surprised and touched, while she worked in Sapa selling souveneirs to foreigners, she was a really sweet person who hadn't been pushy at all with trying to sell me stuff and I had had some really great chats with her.
So while I wasn't really looking forward to another walk so soon, I felt so privileged to be invited to her village, to see her family's house and find out more about how she lived - I was really blown away by what I saw. The Hmong are a minority group that live in mountainous regions of Vietnam and Thailand, and other parts of Asia. They have their own language and traditional customs and live in their own villages - so in a way they have become another part of the tourist attractions of Sapa.
Vu lives in Lau Chai which I think is about 12km from Sapa.
The night I returned from Mt Fansipan I bumped into her on the way back from dinner with Raz and Selyf, and she also extended her invitation to them - so even though the rain was the heaviest I had seen so far in Sapa the next morning, I forced myself to get up at 7.00am, and I am so glad I did!
We walked for 2.5 hrs to her village, and then to a corn field. Selyf was worried that we were accessories to a corn robbery, as he couldn't believe how far away the corn field was that Vu and her friend Lulu were taking us to pick corn from. It was such bad weather, and as the corn was planted on slopes it was really muddy - but kind of fun! We picked corn for about half an hour and sorted it into their baskets. Then we understood one of the reasons they had invited us... the corn would have weighed about 15 kilos and the girls about 40 - the walk to Vu's house was another 40 minutes - the guys
shared carrying the baskets on their backs and had a pretty hard time! But Vu and Lulu carry the corn on their own at least once a fortnight - it would be really backbreaking work.
At Vu's house we met her family of about 10, they didn't speak any English, but they were really kind to us. They were all so short - we understood why when we ate lunch with them. This was the worst time I have been given a large piece of food that I felt obliged to finish, but every bite seriously made me feel like I was going to throw up. Vu said it was sticky rice - but it wasn't like any of the sticky rice I have ever had before - it was more like a cross between rubber and playdough. Next we had some of the corn we had helped to pick - it was cooked in the embers of a fire and was really nice after the sticky rice. After that we had some rice with plain cooked chicken and pork... The guys didn't know what it was, as it was all fat and no meat - also a little
hard to digest! There were no vegetables at all, and it looked to be the main meal of the day - not wonderfully nutritious.
I didn't take any photos inside the house as I didn't want to be rude, but it was really amazing! There were a couple of lights inside, but all cooking was done on an open fire in the middle of the house. Surrounding the house were dogs, pigs, chickens and buffalos. It really felt like another century!
What amazes me the most is that Vu speaks 5 languages, has an email account and wears some beautiful jewellery. Yet her family lives in a wooden house with not windows and very few possessions, and while there was electricity there was no plumbing. I wonder how much longer this will continue - Sapa seems like a world away from her village for now.
The next day Vu and her friends asked to me to help them write emails to their friends overseas - they email people all over the world who they met in Sapa. To thank them for the previous day I took them to Baguette e Chocolat, a french bakery/cafe that has amazing
pastries. I don't know if it was such a good idea as they were pretty uncomfortable to begin with - and some of the people in the cafe were giving us all strange looks - but we ended up staying there all afternoon doing puzzles as it just kept raining.
I'm back in Hanoi now and am going to Ha Long Bay tomorrow. After that I will probably go to Laos - will try and keep this blog a little more up to date!
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jane
non-member comment
hi monique
Hi Monique - I've really enjoyed reading your blog. Looks like you are having a fantastic adventure. Keep up the good work!! love "cousin" jane