Sa Pa is in the Northwest mountains of Vietnam where many minority groups live in villages on the mountainside and in the valleys. Due to the elevation it was even colder in Sa Pa so the puffy jackets turned out to be a great purchase. It was also raining the whole day we were there. Once we arrived in Sapa, around 8 am, we walked into the first hotel we saw and booked a one day trek to see the minority villages. The trek was about 14 km with one stop for lunch.
Our guide was an 18 year old girl (I can't remember her name) who had learned English from the tourists (though it was limited but it worked). She was from the Cat Cat village which was right near Sapa, a much shorter hike away than what we were doing. She was also already married and her and her husband lived in Sapa. Married at 18... kinda crazy.
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| This is Cat Cat |
There was also a group of women that would just stand outside the hotels with tour groups and then come along with the groups down the mountains. They were actually very helpful since the trail was really muddy and at one point we had to cross a river that was pretty intense due to the rain, however, at lunch they brought out all their stuff and asked us to buy from them, of course, and then left us. Though the hassling doesn't stop the women were actually very helpful and gave us some good information about the villages. All the rice paddies that covered the mountainsides have been there for a couple hundred years.
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| That's Lang and Me! |
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| Crossing the River |
The farm animals that the families own (ox, pigs, goats, chickens) aren't penned in, they just roam but one woman, Lang (my helper) told me the animals know who their owner is and comes back to them every night. I'm also assuming there's not a lot of wildlife that preys on the farm animals so the people just let them do what they want.
There were also these cool contraptions powered by the running water on the mountain that, I think, is used to crush the rice? or dry the rice? I'm not really sure but it was kinda ingenious I thought.
The trek was great, though is was wet, however the hotel had no heat so we dried all our stuff around a bowl of coals while we waited for our night train back to Hanoi.
We got back to Hanoi at about 4:30 am, and not really knowing what to do with ourselves, Rachelle and I and our new friend Idun (from Norway) went back to the backpackers hostel and played cards all morning. It was strange though, at that time in the morning the only people out were older to middle aged men getting their morning exercise. I felt safer in Hanoi at 4 am than I probably would in an US city at that time.
That day Idun, Rachelle, and I went to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. The mausoleum was a very strange. You could not bring in any large bags or cameras or water. To get into the mausoleum you have to walk on this red plastic carpet, 2 by 2, you can't step off it or the guards freak out. You walk into the place and can't really talk and you just walk in a square around the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh and then walk out. Very strange. We found though that the people of Vietnam love Uncle Ho. His picture is everywhere, in every restaurant or store. They almost worship the guy. An Australian man we stayed with in Phong Nha later in the trip mentioned that if Vietnam were to have elections right now, Ho Chi Minh would still win, even though he's been dead for almost 40 years.
There were also a bunch of US bombs and torn up planes that had been dropped on Hanoi or shot down during the Vietnam war.
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| Traditional Music at Temple of Literature |
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| Temple of Literature |
Fun fact from the Temple of Literature: The 4 sacred animals in Vietnamese culture are the turtle, dragon, phoenix, and the unicorn
Our next stop was Phong Nha, a small town just north of Dong Hui. A friend of the Australian that owns the Backpacker's Hostel, owns a hotel in the small town and offers tours of the world heritage National Park Ke Bang. The guy is an Australian man named Ben who is married to a Vietnamese woman named Bick. He's lived in Vietnam for about 3 years or more and had some great stories.
So to get there we took an overnight bus that was headed to Hue but stopped and dropped us off in Dong Hui. The bus was miserable. It was so small and freezing, and our bus driver hit a motorbiker only 10 minutes into the trip! It was crazy. Then the bus dropped us off at a different location than what they told Ben they would stop and about a half an hour earlier. So Rachelle and I were stranded in this town at 4:30 am with motorbike guys asking "Moto? moto?" until our cab came and took us to Ben's place. It was a very strange morning.
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