Christmas in Dzay Village, Sapa

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A few days before Christmas, Scott and I began our journey toward the mountain town of Sapa by taking an overnight train from Hanoi to Lau Cai. Despite the bumps and occasional wafts of cigarette smoke making its way through the air vents of our berth, we managed to get a fair amount of sleep before our arrival at 5:00 a.m. From the train station, we'd been told to catch a public bus to Sapa because that's the cheapest option. This proved to be difficult, however, since as soon as we set foot outside the train station we were swarmed by a mob of locals trying to offer us a ride. They followed us around as we walked from one unmarked, empty bus to the next until we finally found a bus with people in it that would accept the price we were willing to pay. We boarded the bus and paid the man we thought was the driver, but as soon as he had our money in hand, he disappeared. A little sketched out, we waited for the actual driver to show up, and when he did, he immediately left the bus, started yelling in Vietnamese at someone, attempted to fight him, and got back on the bus. We never figured out if this had anything to do with our sketchy transaction, but, nevertheless, we were on our way. We rolled into Sapa around 6:30 a.m., and, after confirming with our driver that he had in fact received our payment, we walked through the wintry morning mist over to Sapa's large Catholic church where our homestay host and Australia native, Andrew, and his Vietnamese pal were waiting for us with their...yep, you guessed it...motorbikes. They greeted us warmly - literally offering us gloves and beanies, since we were less than prepared for the cold weather - and called up a friend with another motorbike to help transport us and all our luggage to the homestay.

I must say that, despite our drivers' expertise and familiarity with the winding, bumpy, and often downright terrifying roads, I held on for dear life as we swerved through one blinding cloud after another. Scott and I hadn't realized that the homestay was actually about twenty minutes from Sapa in a small village housing multiple Vietnamese ethnic minorities, such as the Black Mong, Flower Mong, and Red Dao, each with their own unique homes and handmade wardrobes. Our homestay, ironically named the Four Seasons, was far from luxurious and lacked any frills whatsoever (aside from a giant flatscreen TV with a vast selection of American movies), but was invitingly homey, rustic and quaint. Owned by Andrew and his Vietnamese wife, Lan, the house was a "no nail" structure, meaning all the wooden beams fit together perfectly without reinforcement. Andrew had bought the house in another village, disassembled it, and rebuilt it in Dzay Village with a few changes and improvements. The upstairs portion of the house contained a wide, open area with several bed cushions lined along the floor and a high beamed ceiling. There were also a few private "stalls" along one side of the room, each separated by a wooden barricade that was taller than the average person but didn't reach the length of the high ceiling. Scott and I claimed one of these little rooms as our own for the week and found it to actually be quite cozy even though the house didn't have heat. It was rather foggy and cold for the first day or two, so we passed the time in the company of a nice Aussie couple about our age bundled up by the small charcoal fire Andrew kept constantly burning. When the sun finally came out, we found ourselves surrounded by a gorgeous landscape of mountains, terraced rice fields, and small farms and gardens. We went for a walk with our new friends to Andrew and Lan's friend's traditional craft and clothing shop and couldn't help but splurge on a few beautifully hand woven items, including a warm, brightly colored blanket, a scarf, some headbands, and a traditional Flower Mong skirt. We also bought a traditional headscarf worn by the women in the village, but Scott liked to wear it to keep his head warm, which the locals found to be quite hilarious.

After a few days, we realized that the best (and only) way to get around and see the sights was to rent a motorbike. This was definitely the scariest terrain we've ridden on so far, with many rocky, hilly dirt roads, but Scott was very careful and safe with his driving, and (finally!) we didn't have any incidents. Since this was our Christmas destination, I did get pretty homesick at times, but our hosts made us feel very welcome. Andrew cut down a small Christmas tree for us to decorate, and Lan cooked us an amazing Christmas dinner of grilled duck, rice and veggies and even made us some traditional hot spiced red wine. Scott also bought a cell phone so we could call home since we were twenty minutes from the nearest computer. To stay in the Christmas spirit, we watched all our favorite holiday movies, like Elf, Home Alone, and Love Actually. On Christmas day, we rode into Sapa to Skype with our folks and then popped into a cozy little restaurant with a Christmas tree and a fireplace for lunch and some more hot spiced red wine - yum! Then I went to get a massage since they were having a Christmas special...it started out fine, but in the end it turned into me basically getting beat up. Fail. Overall it was a good Christmas, though. We spent the rest of our time relaxing and riding around most days, but on our last day Andrew set us up with a local girl (who was younger than me, but was already married with three kids!) to take us on a hike through the hillside villages. This was great and gave us some good exercise, but since it had rained the night before, it was very muddy and slippery.

That night, we took a bus back to Lao Cai, during which both Scott and I got extremely car sick, and caught the night train back to Hanoi. We arrived at 4:30 a.m. after getting minimal sleep due to some loudly snoring berth-mates. We spent five hours waiting in our hotel for our room to be ready, and then finally took a long, much needed nap. When we woke up, we went to the post office across town to ship a bunch of our accumulated souvenirs home, got some Indian food, browsed the night market, and went back to pack and get some sleep. Unfortunately, we still didn't get much sleep because there were weird noises coming from outside our room all night, and we had to wake up at 5:30 to catch our flight to Bangkok. Then it was time to say goodbye to the country whose food, culture and landscape we'd grown to love over the past six weeks, and, though bittersweet, we greeted the farewell with the hope and excitement of new adventures to come.

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