Sapa

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Cloudy, foggy, freezing, rainy. Those were all the words I heard to describe Sapa. Don't get me wrong, I had also heard it was beautiful. But it's December in north Vietnam, and if it's foggy, you can't see anything so don't bother.

Back in Saigon, I had met that Kiwi guy, and he gave me a phone number. He told me that when I go to Sapa, I should call that number and say, "Mama Sung, pick me up at the church." With all the tours offered, I decided to wing it and call Mama Sung.

Knowing that I would be trekking all day after a night bus and not napping, I decided to take more extreme measures. So, in Vietnam, you can buy Valium over the counter. About $8 for 10 pills. I've never taken Valium, but Advil PM wasn't doing the trick, so Valium it is. I took it as soon as I got on the bus, and it worked magic. The bus got to Sapa at 3 am, but they let us stay and sleep on it for 3 more hours. At 6 am, they woke everyone up, and we filed off the bus. I borrowed a phone from someone and tried to call the number. Rather than hearing ringing, someone started speaking to me in Vietnamese on the other end in the "this isn't a number' kind of tone. I walked to a nearby hotel and asked for help. The woman looked at the number and said it wasn't a proper number. So the Kiwi must've told me wrong. Bummer.

I had met two English people on the bus to the bus who were also winging it once they got to Sapa. They were talking to one of the many women in traditional dress that greeted us as we got off. This woman's name was Em, and she was offering to take us on a 16 km trek to her house for the night for $20 each. We accepted and followed her in search of coffee and breakfast. She took us to a small cafe where we drank coffee and ate delicious omelets with bread. She tied bracelets to our wrists, strapped our bags to her husband's motorbike, and then we set off.

The group was Em, her sister-in-law Sai, Sai's 5-month-old baby Zu, Annie, Will, and me. Em is 22, and Sai is 20. Em speaks the best English of any Vietnamese person I've met in Vietnam. We started our trek on the edge of town. We walked among some houses and then started going up up up. I was wearing leggings under my harem pants, wool socks, hiking boots, a tank top, a long-sleeved shirt, and a light jacket. It was freezing in the morning. As the sun came out and we hiked up, I quickly stripped down to my tank top. It was blue skies, sunny, and HOT.

As we hiked up the mountains surrounding Sapa, more people in traditional dress hiked down past us carrying huge loads on their backs. One man passed me hauling a big basket with a bag in it on his back. As he passed, the bag oinked. We went up and up through thin paths, and small fields. We took our first break at the first peak and looked out onto Sapa as we ate oranges and drank water.

The view of Sapa was of the entire city and the huge hospital below. It was surrounded by peaks poking out of clouds that had settled in the valleys. I hadn't brought sunscreen. After our first break we set off again, and ran into some wild horses, at which point Dispatch got stuck in my head for a long time. When we got to the second peak, it was like we were on top of the world. Across the valley from us was the highest peak in Vietnam, and below us was a ceiling of thick clouds covering the huge valley. Then we started our descent down. We went down past water buffalo (now Veggie Tales was stuck in my head) that surprised us by being only 5 or 10 feet away, camouflaged in the trees. We passed some people and motorbikes and goats, all the while descending down towards the clouds.

Eventually we found a road. We were immediately assaulted by little girls in traditional dress (awww) trying to sell us bracelets (ehhhh) in super creepy voices (eeeee). Think of a horror movie with children all around you saying in soft voices "buy from meeee, buy from meeee." Since we already had bracelets and were terrified, we didn't buy anything from them. Sorry, kids.

Lunch was at a look-out point on the side of the road. We were the first there (it quickly filled up with other tour groups), and it was our first glimpse at the view of the rice paddies Sapa is famous for. The clouds started to clear as we ate (fried rice), and sprawled out in the valley were terraces on terraces of rice paddies. Every hill about halfway down the mountains was carved like steps. It was absolutely breathtaking, and all of my pictures are of rice paddies (sorry not sorry).

After lunch, Will, who is British, realized he was thoroughly sunburned after having done the first part of the trek shirtless...and being British. He made a make-shift thing where he put his tank top across his back and my long-sleeved shirt across his front, and put his backpack over them to hold them in place. You know, so he wouldn't get weird tan lines (he did. He already had them). We walked down for hours. I DIDN'T SLIP. NOT ONCE. BE PROUD OF ME. We walked next to rice paddies with ducks paddling around, pigs sleeping on the side of the road (bacon bakin'), and loads of dogs, chickens, and goats. We arrived at Em's house at around 2:00.

At this time, I was reading a book called, "Fieldwork" about a guy learning about this woman's life, mainly through missionaries working in hill tribes in northern Southeast Asia. This is relevant because around 2:30, a lot of people had shown up to Em's house for the Sunday afternoon church service. They have church twice on Sundays, and more people show up for the morning one. They're always held at Em's house. Some girls did a dance, there were hymns and prayers and readings from a Bible translated into their tribal language (just like in my book!!!). Church is normally a solemn occasion, and for some in this little house, it was. As the three of us sat on the side holding Zu, this is what was happening in the rest of the room:

A little girl was running in and out of the house right between the altar and congregation.

Teenage girls were gossiping in the back.

2 women were breastfeeding.

Some men were praying and reading their bibles.

More women gossiping.

After the service ended, we decided to go have a swim in the river, despite the sun going down and it starting to feel chilly. We put on our bathing suits, and Em convinced 2 previously very shy little girls to escort us down. We had no idea whose children these were, who Em's children were, or who Sai's children were (except Zu, but he was easy because he was strapped to her back). We quickly won over these little girls by holding their hands and skipping and playing all the way down to the river. When we got to the road, we passed by a cafe with more creepy little girls selling bracelets. They didn't try to sell us anything, but glommed onto our group (no adults around, of course) and brought us all the way down to the river. About halfway down the path, the girls started giving us things made out of plants and ferns. They made us purses and little pieces of art. It was adorable. Whenever a motorbike came by, they pulled us out of the path before we even heard it. I said "beep beep!" every time i heard one, and it quickly caught on.

We got down to the river, and to the dismay of the girls, we actually went in! The clear blue mountain water was FREEZING, and I only went in to my waist. Will was the only one who went all the way in and basically sizzled with his sunburn.

When we got out of the water, the girls started handing us skipping stones, which we skipped across the river. Some other girls starting making us crowns out of ferns, grass, and flowers. By the time we started walking back up to the village, we each had 2 or 3 crowns. The girls played some sort of tag game going back up, which we half-participated in because we were going UP. Now every time a motorbike came by the girls would all yell, "beep beep!" and get out of the way. We thought they'd leave at the cafe but they came right up to the house with us. Where they then tried to sell us bracelets. That got awkward.

Once the left, we had the original two girls again who are apparently no Em or Sai's kids. Still not sure whose kids they are. We played with them and snapped peas while Em and Sai made dinner.

Dinner was cooked over an open fire pit built into the kitchen floor. While Em's husband friend spring rolls by headlamp, Em's kids (who we finally met), Cece and Mitu (pronounced me too) ages 2 and 4, ran around wayyyy too close to the fire. Dinner was rice with unbelievable spring rolls, pork with peppers and onions, and snap peas. We had to eat everything on the table for good weather the next day. We almost made it.

After dinner we bought some crafts from Em and Sai. I got a small hand-embroidered change purse. Em brought out some weed (they grow a lot in that region because they make their clothes out of hemp) and we all smoked a bit. Cece sat in Em's lap and played with a needle and thread, 'sewing' her shirt. It was adorable and despite not even being 2 yet, she knew how to manage it. I went to bed that night freezing and exhausted, but the bed had two of the heaviest blankets I've ever see, and I slept well.

When I woke up in the morning, Will and Annie were gone. They had an 8am bus back to Hanoi, so they had gotten up early and gone back to Sapa on motorbikes. I spent the morning in the village (Hau Thao). Em's husband made me eggs with bread for breakfast as well as bananas and coffee. I had some breakfast and sat by the fire while Em stirred corn for pig feed and Cece played with a machete (yup. That definitely didn't freak me out.) Em had to watch the kids that day while her husband helped a friend build a house, so I walked back to Sapa with Sai.

We walked back 10 km on the road. Sai doesn't speak a lot of English, so the walk was mostly done in silence, but boy was it beautiful. We walked with views of rice paddies and mountains the entire way. It was another sunny hot beautiful day, and we walked while drinking water and chewing on sugarcane. The entire 10 km stretch was uphill. We walked with these two little kids for a while who were on their way home from school for lunch and were playing tag way too close to the edge of a cliff, but it didn't seem to be a problem.

We arrived in Sapa around 1, and I thought my legs were going to fall off. Sai brought me to the bus station, and I said goodbye.

Back in Hanoi, before this whole trip, my hostel had booked my bus ticket for me. Round trip. I wanted a night bus to Sapa, one night in Sapa, and then a bus home the day after at 4:30. When I went to the bus station in Sapa to confirm, turns out my return ticket had been booked for the previous day. After a bunch of phone calls, they were able to get me on a bus that night at 10 pm, arriving in Hanoi at 4 am. I took it and spent the rest of the day sitting in cafes in Sapa drinking warm drinks, reading in the sun, and drinking hot wine once the sun set.



I love Sapa. Go to Sapa.

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Comments

[TeoYongSheng]

I love Sapa too!
Lovely photos of Sapa, I went in May and it wasn't as foggy but your pictures did make my heart itch to want to return back there again!

[Home and Away]

the book is based upon the real life experiences of the Morse family, missionaries in Yunnan, northern Burma, and northern Thailand. Readers Digest published a book about them, "Exodus to a Hidden Valley" by Eugene Morse. It's a real life Swiss Family Robinson story. You can order it from Amazon. He and his wife Helen helped us settle in when we moved to Chiang Mai in 1974, and provided us with two hill tribes servants, Martha and Atsupah, who really didn't know how to take care of a western house. We cam back from a vacation to Europe only to find our front yarn knee high with corn. When my car wouldn't start, Atsupah told me to pray...very sincere and simple faith. They soon returned to the hills from whence they came. The Morse children, Tom, David, Ron and Margaret were our age or slightly younger, so we hung out a lot with them...swimming at the Rincome Hotel, etc. You can read my blog about our time in Chiang Mai in the one dated Feb 1974. Back to Berlinski, his dad is a brilliant agnostic physicist/mathematician, David Berlinski, who has written a number of books in support of intelligent design, most of which I've read. So a lot of connections to be made with the title of one book.

[Rebecca]

More amazingness
Another fantastic entry - looking forward to Thailand!!

[D MJ Binkley]

Climb that mountain!
We didn't make it to Sapa when we were in Vietnam but it sounds like you had a wonderful time. Your Valley of the clouds photo is amazing. All those great views are up hill but well worth it.