Advertisement
Sapa, a small town north west of Hanoi, famous for its perfectly manicured rice terraces, ranks up there in the most beautiful places that we have encountered on our travels. We arrived off of the night train early in the morning and taken by mini-van the final hour to Sapa town. As soon as we stepped off of the mini-van we were approached by a few local tribe women asking us where we were from, how many siblings we had, how long we were planning to stay in Sapa., etc. Their ultimate goal was to sell us some of their handcrafts, or to accompany us on a trek to their village a few hours away. Sapa is the home of three local tribes - the H’Mong, Red Xao, and Xai people. Every day the women travel by foot two to three hours into Sapa town to try to sell their goods to all of the tourists visiting the area. Many have young children strapped to their backs or those who are old enough to talk, working along side of them. Fearing another episode of the Angkor temples we tried to let them know early on that we weren’t interested in buying
anything from them, however most talked with us for a few minutes, seeming genuinely interested in knowing more about us, our country, and our cultures. They did try to offer us their goods, however weren’t angry or rude when we said that we didn’t want to buy anything from them. It is also worth noting that the local tribe women spoke the best english that we have encountered so far. They were stringing together full sentences with conjunction words and were answering questions that we asked. The local tribes all have their own languages that they communicate in, and a Vietnamese joke is that the tribe women speak better english than they do Vietnamese!
When we were in Malaysia back in December we met a guy who recommended a place for us to stay while in Sapa. Still remembering his advice, we checked into a corner room in the Mountain View Lodge and were very thankful that we listened to his advice. Our room, with floor to ceiling windows, had an amazing view over the rolling mountains and rice terraces. As it was still relatively early in the morning, the sun hadn’t broken through the clouds and mist, and
we sat, drinking our Vietnamese coffee while watching the wind blow the fog in and out of the valley exposing the terraces and then hiding them again in cloud.
We walked through the town’s market later in the morning which had a Vietnamese delicacy for sale cut up into multiple peices; poor Lassi was barbequed and displayed for our viewing pleasure. We knew that dog was one of the main meats that Vietnamese consume, and to quote one Vietnamese man that we talked to, “dog is delicious, “ however this was the first time that we had actually seen it for sale in a market. Snake hearts, random seafood, no problem, but we both agree that there was no way that we would even consider trying out the canine category of food. The social stigma that surrounds eating dog screams ‘no’ all over it to us, and we don’t think that we could ever knowingly eat man’s best friend.
The main thing to do while in Sapa is to go on a trek to one of the local tribe villages to see how they live day to day. We decided that we would take a different approach to
Sapa, and rented a motorbike for the day and toured around the villages and rice terraces ourselves. We drove around for hours, stopping every few minutes to take pictures of the beautiful terraces. Every bend we turned revealed new and amazing views and driving through the terraces and small villages was incredible. The perfectly manicured paddies amazed us and with it nearing the start of the rainy season, the colours were only a fraction of what they would be a couple months from now. I can only imagine how beautiful they would be at their peak. At one point when we stopped to take a picture, I hopped off of the bike and was walking to get the best view, and I looked back to see about 8 Xao ladies running towards us, crafts in hand, yelling at us to buy something from them. I left Matt on the bike swarmed by these ladies and enjoyed watching him trying to defend himself as they all tried to sway him to buy something for me, his mother, his friends, anything and everything they could to try to get him to crack. He was strong and didn’t break, and we drove off
Sapa
The view from our hotel room early in the morning with them all waving and saying that they would wait for us to buy something later! On our way back into Sapa we saw some local Red Xao women enjoying an ice cream cone after a long days work so we decided to join them. It was really cool as they were on their way home and not really interested in trying to sell anything to us, so we were able to have a conversation with them and learned more about their cultures. As we were eating and talking a few H’Mong women walked by and looked at us talking with Xao women and made a comment that we should buy something from them instead, then laughed as they walked away. There isn’t any rivalry between the tribes, but it showed us that they know that at the end of the day it is still just a job to bring in money, and tourists have the money!
Sapa was incredibly beautiful and we loved driving around admiring the rice terraces. But, our real adventure was to come in our pursuit up to the top of Mount Fansipan...
Love to all,
MandL
Travelers Tips *
For the night train to Sapa, avoid all of the tourist agencies selling tickets and head to the train station a few hours before the train leaves. Tickets are a third of the price by doing it this way, and the sleeping carts are usually only full on the weekends so you won’t be left without a soft place to sleep
*
Advertisement
Tot: 0.096s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0611s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Janice
non-member comment
Ewww
That is absolutely gross - only you would take pictures of dog meat!