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Other entries in Sa Pá

You buy from me?

Yesterday evening we had a delightful meal with my aunt and uncle (paul and sandy) at a place in the old quarter of Hanoi. It was called Highway 4 (which refers to the highway which connects vietnam to china) and other than being just a great place to eat, also specialized in all kinds of different licours. They had ones with lizards in it, snakes, starfish, ginseng, and tonics meant to "beautify." Noah and I opted for the girly drink option which was rasperry licour with soda water (the red lady), which we knew was girly because it came in the classic girly drink container, the martini glass. Afterwards we got all our stuff and went to the train station, to board our sleeper train to Sapa.

Paul and Sandy were actually on a different train (there are 3) which was nicer than ours, but ours still had room for bags, 4 beds, and complimentary water and bread. We shared our berth with an israeli backpacker and an older woman who we shared about 15 minutes of conversation with before turning in. The sleep on the train was actually quite pleasant for me as the rocking motion helped me relax, and the bed was just as comfortable as the one in our hotel in hanoi. what was unpleasant was the wake up call, which consisted of Vietnamese rock music/patriotic music (we think) played on a broken stereo (which kept fading in and out from nothing to blasting) and loud clapping. 

When we got of the train we looked around for paul and sandy, so that we could catch a ride together(the ride from where the train gets out to sapa is about an hour), but they were nowhere to be seen, so we bargained for a ride. fortunately right before we were about to leave, we saw a sign which advertised the shuttle of their hotel, so we hopped out and decided to wait a little longer. As it turns out, the different trains arrive at different times, so while we waited we had a pleasant bowl of noodles and enjoyed the calmness of the rail station sans white people. As soon as the horn blew for the other train to arrive, the vietnamese motor bike drivers and van drivers started to line up in anticipation. A policeman also stood around making sure everyone was in line.Then it happened; the white people started to file out of the station and the hassle and bustle began. Luckily for the first 30 people off of the train, the policeman kept pushing drivers back into line when they approached tourists too soon, but eventually even the sternest of communist couldnt hold back the flood of capitalistic drivers. Shouts of "40,000 dong," "You go Sapa," and even "30 dollars" could be heard as the sharks desceneded on the bleary eyed tourists. Fortunately everyone finds a ride, generally not for 30 dollars, and we found paul and sandy.

Once in Sapa we had a nap and then met up to walk to the nearest ethnic minority village: cat cat village. Now I have to go out on a  little limb here, but I think this is a village of Black H'mong people, who have distinct customs, dress, and language from ethnic vietnamese people. We started out from the center of Sapa and soon enough were being followed closely by several H'mong girls (definitely H'mong girls) who asked us to buy what they had to sell: pillow cases, small mouth harps, hats, shirts, blankets, etc... which was always punctuated by the phrase: "You buy from me?"  which is actually half question, half command. Anyhoo, two of the younger girls ended up actually following us from the market, all the way to the village, walking through the village (serving as translators), and answering some questions for us. To Noah and I's delight, the village was unlike the "ethnic villages" that we saw in Peru, people here were still going about their daily business despite our intrusive appearance. Several men picked stones out of a quarry to rebuild a retaining wall, grandmothers watched their grandchildren play, and people worked on the fields. It was all in all a nice stroll through a part of the world where modernization has yet to have too much of an impact (except at the entrance of the village where there was a hut with  a satellite dish where the locals could watch the BBC). At the end of the trip, after huffing about 2 km back up a steep hill, paul and sandy paid the girls, and then after really having to persistently say no, we fended off some more vendors so that we could have a beer and reflect on the day in private.

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