It turned out to be a great time to visit Sapa as it is summer here in Vietnam and the mountains were warm and sunny during the day and refreshingly cool at night. Cool weather is not something we have had a great deal of on our trip and the crisp alpine climate turned out to be a welcome respite from the sultry humidity of Hanoi and the coast. Our plan was to hire a bike at Lao Cai which is where the train from Hanoi terminates and it’s right across a short river bridge from China. From here we would go to Sapa which is about 35km straight up the side of a very large mountain pass and this is exactly what we did. We hired a sweet bike in Lao Cai and after a few test drives, so I could get used to riding a ‘real’ motorbike for once rather than a scooter, we strapped our gear on the back and set out up the pass. It is a picturesque ride up to Sapa from Lao Cai but like most in Vietnam, it’s the sort of road where you have to keep your wits about you. Trucks and buses go hurtling up and down the pass with no regard for sticking to their own side of the road and we turned more than one corner only to come face to face with a group of horses or water buffalo meandering all over the road with no person looking after them in sight.
Sapa itself is a reasonable sized town that is a popular destination for foreign and local tourists who come here to escape the heat of the rest of Vietnam. The town has one defining feature other than its alpine location and that is the presence of the ‘minority’ or hilltribe people. There are numerous different ethnic minority groups here but most people know them as ‘H’mong’ people, but in truth only a small percentage are actually H’mong. They are different from the Vietnamese as they arrived from China a couple hundred years ago and have different cultural practices such as language and, most obviously, dress. The streets are filled with H’mong women dressed in their traditional clothing which includes flowery garments and head dress.
Although they are awesome to look at in their unique clothing they are actually extremely canny and persistent salespeople who see tourists as one of their main sources of income. Many of these women walk up to 15-20km every day to sell their supposedly handmade garments in Sapa. What this means for visitors is that groups of up to ten women and girls are waiting outside your hotel for you to walk out in order for them to then begin trying to sell you something. They are extremely persistent and will follow you wherever you happen to be going, asking you all the stock standard questions they know by rote such as, ‘where are you from?’, ‘you buy something from me?’ and they absolutely refuse to take no for an answer.
This can get a bit much as sometimes you just want to go out to the shop or get something to eat and you have literally a whole gaggle of women bombarding you with questions and pressuring you to buy something. If you say no enough times then they will try to get you to agree to buy something later, tomorrow or next week, whenever! My patience was sorely tested to say the least but Kate being the pillar of patience she is was able to ignore their constant questions and badgering with good humour and a smile, I honestly don’t know how she does it!
One of these particular ladies we met offered to take us to her village the following day to see how they live and have lunch. Her village was about a 10km walk down the valley and we agreed to go to see how the locals really live. Our guide, ‘Cho-cho’, was a bit of a character and as promised the next morning she was waiting outside our hotel to lead us on our long march. The valley itself is a photographer’s dream and Cho-cho had a reasonably good command of English so we passed the time chatting and taking in the awesome scenery.
Before we left Sapa we picked up a chicken from the market for lunch and a cabbage to wash it down with as this was our end of the bargain for her taking us to the village. The walk was pretty easy going downhill and we passed through a couple of other minority villages on the way where the locals come out and once again try to get you to buy things from them. It never ends honestly! I actually got nipped by a dog walking through one of these villages but as I haven’t developed rabies yet I’m assuming it was a ‘clean’ dog, well, about as clean as the dogs over here get!
Once we arrived at Cho-cho’s village of ‘Tevan’ we had a chance to see what life in a minority village is all about. And what it’s all about of course is rice! What else? Well, at least, rice production. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, you can tell the locals about growing rice, they know it all! The enormous valley leading down from Sapa through Cho-cho’s village and beyond is one huge rice terrace. They are so skilled at terracing hillsides here that in some places the rice paddies rise all the way to the summit of the mountains, literally. Near vertical hillsides are no match for the locals and their rice planting endeavours and almost every aspect of rice growing is done by hand. No fancy farm machinery here just a lot of well loved water buffalo, about the most basic plough you can imagine and a whole heap of elbow-grease.
Cho-cho’s family was no different and of about the ten people or so that lived in her wooden, earthen floored shack only her, her daughter and her husband had time to spare to enjoy lunch with us two. Although we didn’t have to pay for anything other than lunch in order for Cho-cho to take us to her village the ‘protocol’ is that we should also buy some of her traditional hand-made garments as a gesture of goodwill. Cho-cho’s nine year old daughter turned out to be a real hard business woman (surprise surprise!) who fleeced me like a pro. Fair dues but now my nieces all have some traditional H’mong bags on the way to them, girls if you’re reading this, I’m too cheap to pay for airmail so they should be there in a couple months!
After lunch was over and the chicken was all gone it was time to pull up stumps and begin our trek back to Sapa. The only problem with walking ten kilometers into a remote village is that you have to walk ten kilometers back! And to top it off we had walked down the valley earlier so now we had to do the ten k’s back uphill. Boo-hoo I hear you sniffle, but you should see the ‘hills’ here! Did I mention Sapa is towered over my Mt Fansipan, the tallest mountain in Vietnam?? No? Well it is, and that means our little ten k trek was going to be a bit tougher than your average Sunday arvo stroll. No matter, we did it and we refused all offers from the guys whizzing past us on motorbikes to give us a ride back to Sapa, for a small fee, and by God we made it. It was more walking than I’ve done in one day for probably, I don’t know, 20 years!! But all in all it was a great day and Cho-cho was a gracious host who taught us a lot about how locals really live here in the remote mountainous region of North Western Vietnam.
As for the rest of our time in Sapa did I mention we had a sweet bike?? Well we did and our days were spent blazing through the high mountains dodging trucks and buffaloes and taking in the spectacular scenery. On one day trip we did a loop up to a remote Chinese border post via another breath-takingly spectacular mountain pass and a buttock shattering twelve km dirt road that threatened to shake our bike to pieces and strip the tyres right off of her. We finally made it to the border crossing and on finding the barrier was up thought we’d just have a little drive down and see what we could see. As we could see a river below us with China obviously on the other side I thought no one would mind if we just cruised up and took a look. Wrong! What seemed to be a deserted border outpost turned out to be anything but, and it appears we woke the guard on duty just out of sight in his barrack. His screams and rants convinced us that maybe just sneaking a bit of a look over the border might not be such a good idea so it was time to turn around and high tail it out of there rather than risk an ‘international incident’.
We blazed up day after day on the bike and explored the main roads and back tracks of the Sapa region. This was hell fun and the Tom Tin pass was especially awesome as the temperature rises by about ten degrees once you’re away from the Sapa side and the ride down the pass is amazing. The road however was anything but amazing and about twenty km’s of slips, gravel and continuous road works made for a challenging but rewarding ride. After a week or so of these kinds of shenanigans it was time to head to another mountain town about 100km’s away for their famous Sunday market where you can drink corn hooch with the locals and buy a fine pig or water buffalo if you’re so inclined. This place sounded pretty sweet and after the tourist badgering streets of Sapa we were both looking forward to it.
Sapa had proved to be an interesting place. The local hilltribe people are aesthetically beautiful and they inhabit an extraordinary part of the world. The only drawback being the way they hassle you constantly to buy things every time you go outside, but away from the town itself this really is a special region. Bac Ha sounded like it would be more chilled but still very interesting as it is the home of the ‘Flower H’mong’ people whose traditional dress is even more colourful than the groups in Sapa. But more about that next time. ‘Til then.
View of Sapa.
View of Sapa from our hotel balcony.
Some tourists being attacked by the local minority people.
Our walk to Ta Van village with Cho-Cho.
Walk to Ta Van village.
Two pals walking along the dirt track.
These cute group of kids asked for a dollar once I had taken the photo.
Water buffalo having a soak in the mud pool.
The rice terraces and the water buffalo.
Huts in Ta Van village. In Ta Van village there are 300 huts which house 3000 people - that is an average of 10 people per hut!
Buffalo ploughing the rice field. The man is in traditional gears which are black jacket and pants. Most of the clothes are dark coloured. If you wear white, you are considered a lazy person so no one wears white here and no wonder as it would be really hard to keep clean!!
View of the hills, huts and rice terraces.
This is the path through the Ta Van village.
Rice terraces. The farmers were preparing the fields to plant rice for the next rice season so there were very few terraces which were lush green. Growing the rice first starts with a few terraces that are packed with rice seedlings and once the seedlings are big enough then the farmers replant them in the the rest of the terraces.
Here they are getting the terraces ready for planting - they are chipping away the weeds from the terrace walls. We didn't find out the reason for this but i am sure there is one - maybe so that the weeds don't soak up all the water??
Tim and Cho-Cho. In the background you can see the mountains we had to walk down to Cho-Cho's village!
A girl we meet on the way to Ta Van village. I took a photo of her and showed her and all along she just gave me this same expression!
Lunch with Cho-Cho's family.
Tim, Cho-Cho and her daughter in front of their hut. Their hut had a hard, dirt floor with at the most three rooms. Cho-Cho's daughter was 12 years old and was on school holidays so she was in Sapa everyday trying to sell her trinkets to all the tourists. Cho-cho said that she does the 10km walk with tourists to her house at least 3 times a week. Her and a few others from her village rent a room in Sapa so that they don't have to walk back to their village every evening.
Tim and Cho-cho's daughter negotiating on the price of bags.
View from the hut onto the family's rice terraces.
Tim drinking tea. For lunch we had steamed chicken (which we bought from the markets in Sapa) and cabbage soup with rice which was kindly cooked by Cho-Cho's husband.
Our long walk back to Sapa.
A man from one of the minority villages looking over the view of the valley.
Walking along the rice terrace walls. You had to be careful not to slip into the muddy water!
Rice terraces. The green terraces are the seedlings being grown for the next crop of rice.
Ride 1: Ride to Sapa
On the 30km, 1000m rise ride from Lao Cai to Sapa we saw some impressive sites. Here are just a few!
The farmers do not use fence here so the animals always wander along the road.
Minority village hut and rice terraces.
Rice terraces.
More rice terraces.
Tim and the beasty bike. We had to make numerous stop because of course, the view but also because our bums would start to get numb!
Ride 2: Ride to no where. We rode for about 30kms which took about 3 hours as the highway was being tar sealed. We ended up going no where but we saw some pretty cool countryside.
Traffic along the highway!
Another view of some awesome mountains.
Another view of the awesome mountains and countryside.
Water fall. This was the best waterfall we have seen so far in SE Asia - very little rubbish and it actually has water in the waterfall!
Ride 3: 100km round trip from Sapa to Ban Vuoc (China border crossing) to Lao Cai (main Chinese boarder crossing) to Sapa.
A drink stop after a 12km, 1.5 hour journey along a very dusty road (which was more like a track)! It was a relief to get off the dusty track and onto the road again!!
Along the road was heaps of green fields filled with rice. We dropped maybe 1000m or so and the weather was a lot hotter compared to Sapa. Sapa on average was around 25 degrees whereas these planes were probably in the 30 degrees.
The dusty road. In our tourist map it said that this road was a main road so we assumed it would be tar sealed - it was a main road as there was a lot of traffic but far from sealed!! The locals could hoon along this road but we could only go 5kms a hour!
Another view of the road.
Tim and the view of Ban Xeo. This was the start of the dusty 9km trek. You can vaguely see the road in the back ground wrapping around the mountains just left of Tim's head.
Some fat pigs and her piglets!
Me and the beasty bike. No I did not actually ride this!
No comments:
Post a Comment