Sapa: Hill Tribes of Northern Viet Nam
Trip Start
Nov 16, 2007
1
6
20
Trip End
Jan 14, 2008
Sapa,
Vietnam
Friday, November 23, 2007
We took a train from Hanoi to Sapa ... there's no quick, easy way to get there. We rode in a sleeper car on the fancy Victoria Express train. These are very nice, ritsy cars tagged on the end of the regular train. First off, let me assure you that Hanoi train station is a far cry from Tokyo Station!! You have to schlep your luggage across the 3 tracks, but it's not too confusing, as there were only 2 trains sitting there anyway
Steep valleys and terraced rice paddies
. It took 8.5 hours to travel 300 km, at a blistering average speed of about 20 mi/hr. This is not because of difficult terrain, either. We stayed at the Victoria Sapa Resort, a very nice, fancy resort. We felt a little guilty/sheepish, but it's kinda nice to pamper yourself a bit when you're traveling as long and to as many very foreign places as we were on this trip.
The landscape was surprisingly rugged. Sapa sits at the foot of Fan Si Pan, the highest peak in Viet Nam at 3143 meters (>10,000 ft). The valleys are very steep and rugged, the people raise rice and vegetables by hand in terraced fields, and many villages are not yet connected by roads. Our guide, Uoc, was 1/2 Black Hmong, had grown up in Sapa, and spoke their language. He took us to visit people he knew (not just Hmong) in several villages; it was fascinating to see their way of life up close.
The Black Hmong are the poorest and most numerous minority. They make indigo dye and spin, dye, weave, and embroider their clothing. The Red Dao (Zao) girls shave their foreheads and eyebrows and wear remarkable headgear with bright red pompoms cascading down their backs. We also visited the Day (Zay) tribe and saw them making incense. The Flower Hmong wear very colorful dresses and make a strong corn alcohol that they sell ... we watched them making it and tried it ..
Flooded rice paddies
. pretty powerful stuff, but much better tasting than the chicha I tried in Peru ... yuck!We drove 2.5 hr to the Bac Ha Sunday market, which was something to see! That market is for locals rather than tourists, and it was great to see them all in their traditional dress bartering, sharing food, and laughing; selling livestock, meat, fabrics, trinkets, rope, vegetables, and almost anything else you can imagine. Everybody walks or rides motorbikes or trucks to market, often leaving in the middle of the night.
We visited a border crossing with China and also drove a ways west on the road towards Dien Bien Phu. It was very windy and steep, up and over a 2000 meter pass at the base of Fan Si Pan. We hiked a little through the jungle there in a national park. There are lots of endangered species in this remote, diverse ecosystem. Uoc is interested in the plants and knows the names of most of them.
Our last evening Uoc invited us over for dinner with him, his wife, mother, and niece. It was a great experience to have a "typical" meal with a local family. We had pork, giblets, turnip greens, tofu in tomato sauce, bamboo shoots (a special type of bamboo from half-way up the mountain), rice, and homemade apple "wine".
We discovered later that the hill tribes of northern Thailand, at least those on the tourist circuit, have been too tainted by the tourist trade and are not nearly as interesting or authentic as these in Viet Nam. We can highly recommend a visit to the northern highlands, and we'd be happy to provide Uoc's contact information - he's a fantastic guide.
