Sapa

Since our last entry, we have trekked to a "homestay" at a rural village called Ta Van. For me, the most interesting thing about this place is the people. There are several "minority groups", also known as hill tribes, in this area - the Black H'mong, the Red Giao, and the Flower H'mong are the ones we've seen the most of, but I think there are others. Each has its own very distinctive, colourful traditional dress and its own language and customs. Although many of the men and a few of the woman have taken to wearing western style clothing, the traditional garb (which is handmade in the local villages) is still everywhere. This makes for quite a sight in the markets.

H'Mong children selling bracelets.

Speaking of markets, they are interesting places of themselves. Mostly they are packed with fresh produce, craft goods and sometimes cheap electrical goods - all nice stuff. After a while, though, we began to notice that the crafts like traditional clothes, bags, wall hangings, purses, wallets, jewellry, nick nacks, etc, looked very similar from place to place. And not just from shop to shop in the same market, but between different towns and cities which were geographically a long way apart. Even the goods that the hill tribe women carried around peddling to tourists looked the same. Apparently, a lot of these seemily genuine souveniers have been made in factories in Vietnam and China, which takes the attraction out of it a bit.

The homestay was an interesting experience. All twelve of us plus two guides stayed in the same largish house (by their standards), sleeping on a wooden platform about the living area. They cooked a beautiful meal for us. The rest of the night was pretty ugly. Our guide, the lovely person that he is, was in the mood for a very big night, and at 30,000 dong ($2.50) per 1.5L bottle of rice wine, who were we to say no? In any case, he wasn't taking no for an answer. Without his influence, we were all happy to follow the Intrepid moto of "responsible travellers", but his interpretation of "responsible" was a little more flexible on that night.There were many shots, much yelling and singing, and in the end, more than a little vomitting. Even our faithful companion Cooper got in on the act!

In any case, the scenery around Ta Van was pretty amazing. The town is spread over a pretty large area, nestled in a valley between two huge mountain ranges. The lower steepes are mostly made up of terraced rice fields and further up is covered by bamboo forests.

We had a nice walk through the rice fields and forest the day after our big night (those of us who recovered well enough), and got to see the rice paddies up close.

One of the interesting things we saw were the people working on the mountains. The men (many of them just children) were dragging logs down the hillside while women would carry these massive baskets of sticks. Usually all they had on their feet were sandals, if anything.

Then back to Sapa for some R&R, including my first ever foot massage (very good!). The next day involved a lot of travel and not much else, except for the Bac Ha markets. It was notable for its huge size, absolutely packed with locals, and for the colourful "Flower H'Mong" people.

And then another exciting overnight train journey! (note the sarcasm). (Don't lie brett, you said you slept well on the last one - bek).

-Brett