Sapa

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In an effort to complete my rail journey through Vietnam, I boarded one more over night train to Lao Cai. Pulling up three miles from the Chinese border was pretty much as far as I could go. Sapa is a big tourist spot due to it's location in the Tonkinese Alps, the village reminds one of a small French chateau. Of course there is no snow, but the terraced rice fields are still view worthy. In time I am sure artificial snow machines will find there way here to fulfill the tourist industries dreams of skiing amongst the hill tribes!

Known for it's ethnic minorities, one is constantly surround by various members of the Black Hmong and the Red Dzao ethnic groups. The groups were hawking the streets in hopes of selling you their knitted wall hangings, tribal hats (which I didn't see any of them wearing the same ones), various sized purses and other knick-knacks that they have decided tourists want (which they were correct in their decisions).

The oddly color coded tribes forced my pursuit to understand how the colors were chosen. Turns out that the color association is based upon the headdresses worn by the women of each tribe. The world's original team uniforms must have come from Northern Vietnam. The Red Dzao women donned red headdresses while the Black Hmong women wore black ones. Seems simple enough.

The ethnic minorities live near each other but communication is few and far between aside from the streets of Sapa. Geographically close, linguistically divided. In order to communicate, the tribes switch to Vietnamese to understand one another even though they prefer not to speak Vietnamese. Most hill tribes children remain out of school due to the fact that they aren't taught their tribal language. This might not be the best form of rebellion as the kids are then put to the streets to sell to the tourists.

Not sure what it is about my restaurant experiences but the strange keeps happening. While eating Vietnamese food in a restaurant designed to look like a French Chateau with hunting lodge decor (I was dining underneath a deer head) and Mariachi music blaring from the speakers, the owner of the restaurant kept coming up next to me and peering out through the windows into the night. After the third round of cupping his hands on the window and looking out, I asked him he was looking for. He then told me fire and left. Not the most comforting of words, I sought him out to get a little clarification. Apparently some of the hills to the South had caught on fire (it was dry season). With the winds blowing hard he was just scouting out the hills to make sure Sapa was safe.

Minus a 4am wake-up call by a rat dropping into my room, Sapa was a nice place to get a little hiking in amongst the rice fields and the ethnic villages. The ethnic groups are no fools though and they charge a rather steep fee to hike through their land.

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Photos

Tonkinese Alps
The clouds rolled throughout the valleys near Sapa

Red Dzao
Ready to make a sale.

The kids got style
Much respect

Black Hmong Girls
Heading towards Sapa

One more moped shot.
That's a water tank on back.

Apple Wine
Sounds as bad as Florida's grapefruit wine.

Comments

[Josh]

Water tank?
Are you sure that was a water tank and not the travel keg from heineken?