Hiking With The Red Dzao Tribe

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After a few hectic days in Hanoi we decided to go for something a bit different and go to a bit more of a quitter place and do some hiking which we hadn't done for a little while. We had been recommended a place called Sapa in the north west of the country in the mountains not far from the border with China, here there are a number of tribes which have kept their traditional ways and still live in small villages and wear their traditional clothing, so we thought this would be pretty cool thing to do as we hadn't yet seen any of the tribes in Asia.

With trying to save a bit of money where ever we go we decided to get the night time sleeper train from Hanoi to Lao Cai which ended up costing around $20 each, not too cheap but from what we had heard it would be money well worth spent and we would be pretty comfortable on the journey and be able to get a little sleep as we headed up north. Our guest house we had been staying at in Hanoi had decided they would send someone with us to the train station to help us with picking up our tickets and getting on the right train, they also got us a taxi to take us to the station, which as soon as we got to, the guy we were with was a bit quick at getting to the taxi driver and paying him for us......this we thought was a little bit weird, but thought if he wants to pay for our taxi we will let him so we said nothing about it and just headed into the station. About 15 minutes later we were in the waiting room and the woman from our guesthouse called the guys mobile and asked to speak to me...which i thought was even more strange as that’s never happened before and soon she had informed me i had to pay all of the money from the taxi fare straight back to the guy with us before we left (this bloke didn't speak a word of English either).....then it suddenly came to us that he must have paid the driver so quick in the hope that we hadn't noticed the meter and they wanted us to pay a lot more than what the journey was worth, but we had been sat right in front of it and so we had seen the price of 31,000 Dong and so that is what he got and no more, which he looked very disappointed about but we were determined they were going to get nothing more out of us!

Soon we were settled into our little cabin and rocking from side to side as we slowly made our way up to Sapa. Once we finally arrived, bright and early the next morning, and still half asleep from a bad nights sleep, we were soon pushed into a little mini bus with a group of other backpackers and so began an hour’s drive through the mountains to the small town of Sapa. This place was originally a trading post when the French were around but now it's just a place where backpackers and holiday makers come and stay while not hiking, and to spend a few days in the cooler temperatures. It's a nice little place with plenty of restaurants, and it seems every one of them serves amazing food, which we were really happy about after our past experiences of the last week. If up this way 'Little Sapa' (The restaurant) is definitely worth a visit, it doesn't look much but here we definitely had some of the best food we've had in Asia so far! And we ate as much as we could....which i would soon regret later on as i don't think my stomachs used to so much good food all in one go as it's been a few weeks since we last had a really good big meal!

Once again we had booked a dorm but because there seemed to be not many people around, our new guesthouse decided to put us in our own private en-suite, so it turned out we paid a lot less for our own room than what we originally would have had to pay.

As i said the main reason for coming this way was to get some good hiking in while we were here and hopefully get to see some of the more remote tribes in the area so we booked a guided tour for the next day through our hostel. The one we had decided to go for was a less touristy route, while on the train it seemed to be packed with tour groups heading our way and apparently they all head the same way while trekking as it's a very easy route to do, so we thought we would go the other way in the hope that there would be less people around.....and our gamble soon paid off. The next morning we were met by our guide, who turned out to actually be a girl around our age who was a Red Dzao, one of the tribal groups in the area which we thought was great as she spoke pretty good English and took us to her own small village which was a good few hours trek away. Along the way we passed some amazing scenery of the distant mountains all with the ledges cut into the side so that rice could be grown. We also had the girl’s mum who had spotted us and was determined to get me and jade to buy some of her handicrafts. All of the tribe’s people make some of their living by making traditional clothing, bags, wristbands and the such in the hope that they can persuade any westerner they see to buy their goods. Even though they make some amazing things it soon becomes a bit full on as Sapa town is full of Hmong and Red Dzao woman walking in groups and ready to pounce on the next unsuspecting tourists. The guides mum soon decided she was going to get us to buy something if it was the last thing she did and so she came along for the trek and seemed to stick to Jades side like glue. The hike up to the village was really quite with us only passing two other couples who were heading in the same direction and soon we were passing through other small tribal villages with our guide telling us about all of their traditions and showing us how they lived which was fascinating to see. As we moved further along and the morning slowly moved on we came across the guides (I feel bad i can't remember her name!) sisters and they soon decided to join us on the long walk to their village, all of them carrying large heavy woven baskets on their backs all carrying their goods they were trying to sell. This soon felt like it was becoming a family affair and it felt really strange as in the end there was me and Jade and six Red Dzao woman (Two other friends of our guides came along aswel) all walking along the long winding tracks through the rice paddies.

Even though there was the obvious language barrier between us they were really friendly and seemed just as intrigued to learn about how we lived as we was about them. Soon we finally made it to their village where we were sat in a fairly large hut kind of building where they actually served us lunch......after five minutes however me and Jade were surrounded with everyone asking us to buy something from them, which we had to look and we wanted to get a little something anyway and so decided to get something from the guides mum who had come all the way from Sapa town in the hope we would get something.....but then she decided she was going to charge us a fortune for everything, and we actually didn't have much money on us so Jade soon settled on a couple of small handmade bags, which the Red Dzao woman didn't seem too happy about as she isn’t getting $50 out of us, and we didn't see her again after that.

After a big lunch we then headed out again and began to walk to another village just a short distance away where we were to be picked up by minibus and taken back to the hostel in Sapa.

The following day the weather gave a turn for the worse and the heavens opened and the cloud came in so low you could literally see nothing in the town and so our last day was spent in the guesthouse and local coffee shops as there was just nothing we could do, which was a shame but we did have the first day which was really good weather and we got a fairly long hike in so we wasn't too bothered. And so our attention soon turned to where we were going to go next.....

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