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Published: December 21st 2006
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Me and the H'mong girls
Trekking through the hills. Well our first day in Hanoi was definatly exciting! It was the most chaotic and cultured city we have been this far! As we walked through all the different streets they were all dedicated to a certain item. For example clothing street, shoe street, herbal medicine street, christmas street, etc. There were about 50 of these different types of streets. We got lost walking through the old quarter of Hanoi. Every corner we turned was filled with a new suprise. The sidewalks are so filled with motorbikes and street stalls selling so much random junk that you have to walk in the middle of the road and weave through all the motorbikes. During the day when we were walking around I was comfortable. Once the night time hit when Asia gets busy I didnt even want to be on the streets it was crazy!
Hanoi is one city in Vietnam that is well known for scamming the tourists. In our guide book it says to only book through licensed tour companys. So as we were looking for a company to book our Halong Bay tour we notice that there were about 50 different tour companys with the same name. We
had to look for the exact one to know for sure that it was legit. That was definatly hard work. It took us about a day of talking to people and reading to decide on what company to use.
After our time in Hanoi we decided to leave the big city and head into the mountains of Sapa. Sapa is a town where all the villagers from the surrounding mountains shop and meet. We hopped on a overnight train and arrived in Sapa around 8am. It was the most beautiful place I have seen. It was a huge mountain range and all through all the hills there were so many different tribal villages and endless rice paddies. It was a place that i never knew could have existed until I went there. It is so amazing and difficult to explain the experience. As we drive throughout the mountains along the roads you see all the different villages and the people dressed in all their tribal wear doing their daily chores. When we arrived in Sapa we were freezing cold. We didnt bring any winter jackets or clothes on our tropical vacation because we didnt realize Vietnam could be so
cold. The temperature was only about 5 degrees or so and none of the hotels or restaurants had ANY heat! We looked everywhere for a hotel with heat but had no luck. We finally settled for a hotel with a fireplace, but the wood they gave us only lasted for about 1 hour! We froze the rest of the night. Other than that it was a beautiful hotel that we only paid 5$ for and the views were amazing.
On our first day in Sapa we just explored the local town and visited the market. We were asked by about 100 different people if we wanted to buy bracelet, clothing, blankets. How old are you? Where you from? What your age? How many brother sister? How old your mom? Every person asked us the same questions over and over. It was quite fun to communicate with all the girls. We even found 3 girls to take us through their different villages the next day. Throughout the market saw quite a few disturbing things. There were dog heads, cow heads, cow legs all with the fur still on them just the seperate parts sitting all over tables. Not the most
pleasant sights. After hanging around the town for a while we decided to make our way to the nearest village called the Cat Cat village. It is the most touristy one of them all but we didnt have much time during our first day. So we made our way down the hills and into the village. All the kids were around doing their daily chores. They start early here. Kids chopping wood and working the fields by the age of 5! Everyone coming up to you asking to buy their goods. This was a good introduction to the village life but we were really excited for our trek the following day with our local guides and not so many tourists.
The next day our 3 guides (chi chi, lulu and zao) met us at 7am to begin our 10 km trek, They wanted to start extra early so we could avoid paying the ticket cost to all the villages. Apparently the Vietnamese government charges everyone to go through the villages but does not give any of the money to the village people that actual need it. The government only gives them blankets once in a while. They dont need
the blankets of course because they make their own. So we bypassed the ticket booths and continued our trek through the rice paddies, by the villages and up and down the mountains. We really felt off the tourist path this time. Didnt see a single tourist along the way. When we went through some of the different villages alot of the children started crying and were scared when we walked by because they had never seen white people before. We stopped by a mini market to buy some stuff to prepare for lunch at Chi Chi's house. They gathered a big bag of groceries and they told us that we owed 13000 dong (80 cents). At home this amount of groceries would have cost about 10$..quite funny the difference. We then continued on to the H'mong village where ChiChi's house was located. She made us some great noodle soup and we just hung out with her family. The process of making a soup in this house is not easy! It took about 2 hours to do where at home it could be done in 5 minutes. It was amazing to see the simple little hut that they lived in. It
The rice paddies were endless!
Hard to capture the beauty of the hills was a one room bamboo hut with a mud floor and big fireplace in the middle for cooking. It is crazy that these people have never even left their little town of Sapa not even to a town about 30 minutes away. Very simple life these people lead. After the H'mong village we carried on to a couple more villages. There we visited a school. It was very different from any school at home. All they really learn is to interact and to speak Vietnamese. All the kids were running around playing marbles or jacks. The other two villages were not as exciting as the first one we went to but still great to see the way of life. We then just carried on trekking through the beautiful scenary. I dont think i will ever see anything like it again. An experience of a lifetime!
We then took another overnight train back to Hanoi. Spent today in Hanoi and we are off to Halong Bay tomorrow for 3 days and then back to Hanoi for Christmas! Hope everyone is doing well take care and Happy Holidays!!
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alisha
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too cool
I hope I get to see some of the same things