Sa Pa Trekking

  Sa Pa, Vietnam
Sunday, February 18, 2007

Our second tour in Vietnam was to Sapa, a mountain town near the Chinese border. We were warned that Sapa could be very cold in the winter with clouds and rain every day so we packed the long underwear and jackets so we would be ready. Fortunately, the warnings were unfounded and we enjoyed unusually warm and sunny weather for that time of year.

Again, the tours done in Sapa are about 95% the same. You get a train ride from Hanoi to a town near Sapa, a bus ride to the town itself with a bunch of other half awake tourists, checking into a chaotic hotel with dozens of people checking out at the same time and after breakfast starting on your first trek. The fact that Tet was coming the next day made the situation even more chaotic. No one wanted to be working that day but were forced to because the tourists were paying extra and their employers wanted to keep making money. Even on a good day the tour guides and hotel employees had way to much to manage with the language barriers and the huge number of tourists coming in and going out each day.

The first people you meet in Sapa are the women from the surrounding hill tribes. After years of tourism these women have honed their marketing skills and they can be seen hovering in groups around the hapless tourists trying to stroll around the city. Small children, young girls, middle age women and old ladies - everyone gets involved. They sell great handicrafts, purses, fabrics, pillowcases, blankets and clothes. The prices are good but very soft. You have to negotiate hard to not get ripped off. Children as young as two learn the mantra "Buy from me! Buy from me!" that you start to hear in your sleep. What the men are doing, we aren't sure. We didn't see them much so they were probably herding the animals.

It is true that Sapa is very lovely, with rice paddies trailing down the hills and villages dotting the landscape. You can't help snapping photos every few minutes when the clouds clear and the sun shines across the valleys. In our group we had an American mother and son who were living in Shanghai for a few years and came here to escape the Chinese New Year. She had Chinese parents and wanted to force her son to speak Chinese everyday, something he balked at when living in the states.

Rice Paddies

He is now fluent, good boy. It was a good group and the guide was nice despite having to work on the biggest holiday of the year. Some friend's we made, a Canadian couple named Dave and Christen, were not as lucky as we were.
Their guide was fine on the first day but on the second day of trekking (and the day of Tet) he showed up in the suit he was wearing the night before after celebrating all night. He not only stayed on the paved streets the whole way (missing most of the actual hike) he stopped by in all his friend's homes and did shots for "a lucky new year". When we ran into them the guide could hardly stand upright and they were nearing the end of their patience. Midwestern Canadians are very patient, easygoing people, much like the Midwesterners in the states. He was lucky for that. By the end of the day, though, they ended up walking on without him when he stopped in yet another house to drink rice moonshine. They took a bus back to the hotel with another group. We had to laugh when we saw the guide zipping up and down the trail on a borrowed motorcycle with a panic stricken look on his face, looking for his lost couple. When they canceled the tour on the next day he tried everything to get back in their favor, including bringing his new baby to our breakfast table that morning. Not even these Canadians were that nice. We rented a car to see some views from the valley instead.

We ended up running into the man from Mali, Sylla, that we had met in Halong Bay and were able to spend more time with him. Julius and I were supposed to do a "home stay" in a village but our hotel messed up on the booking so we stayed another night in the hotel instead. Sylla was still signed up to go, but when he realized that he would have to sleep on floor mats with a big group of other tourists he declined and came back to the hotel as well. Some things don't make sense to many Africans - voluntarily sleeping on floor mats when you can stay in a comfortable hotel for the same price is one of those things.

The eve of Tet (Vietnamese New Year) was much more subdued than in the bigger cities. They had the firecrackers going off all night and everyone seemed to have their businesses opened since they were up celebrating anyway (Vietnamese almost always live upstairs from their shops).

Chuc Mung Na Moi!

 We went into a bar where the bartender was celebrating with three friends. He cut our bill in half, as is custom for the first customer of the new year. We gave them each a crisp new bill, as giving money (the newer the better) on Tet is also good luck. After lots of toasting and celebrating there we headed to bed.