Sapa Day 2: Friday

Friday morning I woke up to my alarm at 7:00 am and immediately went to marvel at the beautiful view outside our front door. I took some pictures, got dressed, got my hair braided by Jill, and had breakfast on the second floor of the hotel. I had an omelette with bread and some coffee and then walked to Baguette and Chocolate (yes, that's the actual name of the restaurant) to grab pastries with Brittany. On the way, we met some of the Black H'Mong people (their traditional clothes always have a black base with colorful adornments) and I befriended a woman named Cuu. We reached the cafe and I grabbed two pastries for Jackie and Leah and an apple one for myself before walking back to our hotel to wait in the lobby. Eventually our group walked with Long through the center of town and up this gigantic hill, where we left the town and entered some sort of park. From 9-11:30 am we walked up steep stairs and gardens to reach the top of these peaks. We stopped and talked, rested, and took group pictures before moving on to another peak. I sat around while some of our group members shot a crossbow at a target. We then ventured downhill and into an orchid garden, but it was out of season so we took another group picture instead.

At 11:30 am our group walked down the mountain and back into the center of town, where we got a group lunch in the same restaurant we had dinner the previous night. I sat at a table with Monica, Jill, Jackie, and Brittany and ate a banana pancake and some bread with jam. After eating, I walked around the small town with DiDi, Jackie, and Brittany and did some shopping. I also ran into my friend Cuu again and bought some stuff from her like I had promised.

By 2:00 our group was back on our bus and van and we were heading out of town to see an ethnic minority village. After a short 20 minute bus ride, we stopped along the road and met some more Black H'Mong people. Their village, in a town called Lao Cai, was still a decent walk down into the valley, so they escorted us down the hill. They tried to sell us things left and right, and that was very overwhelming at times. The sun was almost blinding and they were crowding around us in order to sell us pillowcases, hats, wall hangings, bags, etc. Some of them were handmade and some were made in China. I began to see the differences after a while, but I'm not the kind of woman who really cares about that anyways. So we walked down into the valley and stopped at a house where an old woman and man were whittling away and selling things. I bought some stuff from them and when my friends saw that I wasn't pulling out my best bargaining skills, they asked why. I just didn't see the need to talk them down 20,000 Vietnamese dong when it's so many meals for them and really only less than $1.50 for me. I then went outside and saw three beautiful children sitting together on these barrels. I got a bit closer and realized that they were singing a Vietnamese children's song I learned while studying the language in Saigon! I sang with them for a bit and managed to take a short video of the event:



We then kept walking and meeting new people in the village. The people there look Chinese, not Vietnamese, as they originated in China. They also speak H'Mong instead of Vietnamese so relied on their excellent mastery of English to be able to speak to them. Most of these people had been dealing with tourists for so long that they knew almost perfect English. I carried on conversations with them like I would carry on a conversation with my best friend. That made me wonder how we were affecting their lives, however. They were all dressed in their traditional garb and were accompanying us on a long walk through their village, but yet they usually share apartments in the town. This is because the young women (with their babies strapped to their backs) either have a two-hour walk into town from the village or just stay there overnight. This triggered some heavy thinking on my part, since their family and village roles have changes so much as a result of heavy tourism.

Anyways, our group spent from 2:30-5:00 pm walking from village to village taking pictures, making friends, and shopping. Along the way we saw children, old people, water buffalo, cows, huge black pigs, and chickens galore. In fact, towards the end of the afternoon a little boy walked by us holding a long stick with a rag tied onto the end of it. He was using it to gather a bunch of ducklings and guide them back to his house. I saw him walk away without noticing one of the ducklings so I chased it up the road for a bit before walking back behind this huge mound of dirt. Behind the dirt mound was the boy's house and as soon as I rounded the corner and they saw me, they were very confused. Until they saw the duck, that is. We smiled at each other in an amazing silent understanding and then I walked back to the main path and found the rest of my group.

After the duck rescue experience, we stopped at a hut for drinks and I had a Coke and ate a banana I had squirreled away from breakfast. We then walked a bit more and finally reached our van and bus, which had come down into the valley to meet us. From 5-5:20 I traveled back to my hotel on the van and then chilled out in Oliver and Dale's room with them, DiDi, and Jill until 6:15. We weren't meeting for the group dinner until 6:30 so Jackie, Jill, Brittany, and I went to the hotel's second floor restaurant and I had a hot Lipton tea with milk. We talked for 15 minutes and warmed up before venturing back to the lobby to meet the group.

Long took us down the street to this market covered by tin roofs. We stood in the middle of the restaurant portion of the market until me and a couple of other people made a decision to find a food stand and eat there. I sat and ate my xao bo with DiDi, Jackie, Jill, and Brittany while shopping a bit after ordering the food. After eating, paying, and leaving, we walked around and shopped for quite a while before again hitting the main road. I got hugs from toothless old women as we attempted to communicate and shop. At 9:00 pm the four of us stopped into another cafe and I had hot Lipton tea with milk and sugar. We were done warming up by 9:30 and ventured out on the main street yet again. We were all set to go back to the hotel until we saw Donna, our professor's wife. She informed us that some of our friends were just down the road at some bar and so of course DiDi, Brittany, and I went to go check it out. We found our friends from earlier in the day, about ten teenaged Black H'Mong playing pool and eating fruit with Dale, Cathy, Tica. As we sat out on the second floor balcony, the red lighting and the interactions between our American friends and our H'Mong friends was almost too much to handle. In fact, it seemed so surreal that it must have been something out of "The Twilight Zone." I considered how we affect these young girls’ lives as I watched them spit out some fruit seeds over the balcony and into the street. It had taken me all day to finally figure out their intentions. They are truly joyful people who would like us to buy from them but they are even happier to be with us and share our experience of their home, Sapa. After a while I was very tired of trying to explain why I was not yet married at my old age of 20 years old and left with DiDi and Brittany to walk back to the hotel at 10:15. I was washed up and in bed with my entire day already recorded by 11:00 pm.