From Sapa With Love but No Money, No Picture
Caren Tĩnh
Editor’s Note: Caren Tĩnh, a young Vietnamese American girl who most of her life is criss-crossing the US from the West Coast to the East Coast, from Los Angeles to New York, from Seattle to Florida speaks English as her first language is now visiting the motherland … of her mother, and speaks Vietnamese as her second language. From the crowded Old Quarter in Hanoi, the breathtaking Ha Long Bay and much more, Caren files her blogs with OneViet. An UCLA graduated with a BS in Psychobiology, a certified pharmacy technician and an intern with Viet Mercury, Caren is working to be a pharmacist, a dentist, an ophthalmologist and/or maybe a writer.
Besides Ha Long Bay, the other highly anticipated trip during our stay in Northern Vietnam was the trip to Sapa, because once again it combined the 3 qualities of scenery, adventure, and culture.
From Hanoi, we boarded the overnight train at 10pm. Our cabin was only about 2 by 3m, smaller than the room on the boat going through Ha Long Bay, and inside were 2 pairs of bunks (4 beds total). My dad and I took the 2 upper beds, with my mom and another Australian man on the bottom ones. Once the train took off, I tried to catch glimpses of the countryside through the windows, but everything was pitch dark save for the occasional eerie glimpses of lone houses. I then crawled back into my upper bunk and attempted to fall asleep, which was much like sleeping on an airplane, with the occasional bumps and the noise of the engine throughout the night. It was as comfortable as you could get for a 7 hour train ride, though, except the bed was too short for the Australian, so his legs stuck out and kicked against my mom's several times during the night. We all had a good laugh about it in the morning. As we stepped onto the platform at the Lao Cai station at the wee hour of 5am, my mom exclaimed how much the surroundings reminded her of Da Lat, because of the fog and mountains around us. A van picked us up at Lao Cai and drove us up into the mountains to Sapa, a drive which lasted an hour. From there, we checked into our hotels and had breakfast, then met with our tour guide at 10am for the short hike, which was to last three hours.
We wandered through the marketplace where fruits and vegetables are sold (the other marketplace on the main road has mostly souvenir shops and restaurants targeted for tourists), then began our downward stroll down the mountain. The view was amazing! All around us as far as the eye could see were rice paddies carved into concentric step like circles around the mountainsides. Although we were there in November, after the grains had been harvested (May is the optimal month for seeing the rice growing), it was still breathtaking to see the textured landscape of the mountains. Each "rung" of rice paddy was about 2m wide and 1m tall (when rice is growing) and arranged into these step like patterns in order to retain water in the paddy rather than letting it flow down the mountain. The descriptions and pictures we took really do no justice. Soon we passed through several villages where the Black Hmong lived and went inside some of their houses, where the women were often embroidering clothes or handbags. The people of this indigenous mountain tribe still wear traditional garments consisting of embroidered robes, large silver hoop earrings and bracelets, and cloth legwarmers tied around their legs. They also adorn themselves with woven bags and bracelets to sell to tourists. Inside one of the homes, a Hmong girl showed us how they dyed their cloth using indigo from the fields. Upon striking conversation with her, we learned that she was 19 years old, had two children, and that the girls in the village typically married around 16-19 years of age to start families. When we were once again on the trail, many Hmong children ran up to us and tried to wheedle us into buying their handicrafts. They were really so persistent, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself! Over and over, they would ask us, "Can you buy from me? Buy from me, please? Just one? Maybe sometime?"
Around noontime we reached the waterfall which was the endpoint of our hike, where we stopped to take pictures, then turned around to head back. Along the way we passed across a rickety wooden bridge which, like in Chinese and Vietnamese movies, swayed from side to side .... That night, my dad went to sample the local wine with our tour guide, which the locals do almost daily since it's one of the few forms of entertainment in the town. The next morning while we waited outside for our guide to appear for the long hike, a crowd of Hmong girls had already gathered around our hotel. In their sing-song voices, they asked us, "You buy from me? Buy one more from me. We want money!" One of the tourists tried taking a picture of the group of them but they quickly turned their backs and said, "No picture, no picture.... You no money, we want no picture!"
When I asked one of the girls how much she was selling her handbag for, the whole throng of them swooped around me and held out their earrings, bracelets, and purses for sale. I said that I wanted just the handbag, to which they complained, "Oh! You buy from her, why you not buy from me?" Then I asked if I could have a picture of them, to which they agreed. After I had shown them the picture, saying, "It's very nice" they responded, "Buy some more from us if it's nice?" I couldn't help but chuckle at this.
Then I made conversation with some of them, and learned that in addition to speaking their dialect, they study Vietnamese in school, and have picked up a good amount of English and French from the tourists. They share this area of the mountains with other tribes such as the Dao people, who speak a different dialect. Although there are other groups of Hmong, such as the Red Hmong and White Hmong, they don't often come in contact with them because they live in other areas of the mountains.
At that time, our guide came so we started the more strenuous of the two hikes during our two-day stay there. Unlike our hike the day before, which went mostly through well-paved dirt roads, this one led us deeper into the mountains on paths that were often steep, narrow, and slippery due to the rains from a few days before. Along the way, many Hmong and Dao women joined us and gave a hand to the tourists during difficult parts of the trek. Since I'm notoriously clumsy and tend to stumble even on level ground, one of the Hmong girls stayed with me through most of the trek. A while later, I realized that she probably wanted me to buy something from her, so I gave her a tip.
The trek lasted around five hours, a good workout ... but the day was not yet over. We still had to check out of our hotel and prepare for the journey back to Hanoi. On the drive down from Sapa to Lao Cai, we met a funny Korean man who had brought back four bottles of wine from Sapa and wanted to open them to share with everyone on the bus. He spoke only minimal English, so it took awhile to understand that he meant for us to have a good time and then sleep well on the train. A college guy from the Netherlands just had his birthday that day, so everyone happily looked forward to having a celebration on the train. Unfortunately, we all got separated at the station ... Meanwhile, I ran into several people I’d met on the trip to Ha Long Bay! It definitely felt good to see familiar faces and we ended up talking until we went to sleep. I quickly fell into a heavy slumber because of the day's activities. When I woke up again at 4:30am, I was surprised to see that much of Hanoi was already setting up shops. From the Hanoi station, we took a cab back to our hotel and arrived there around 5am.
Andrew Lam
“Hòa ước muốn có mái tóc dài đẹp và không phải đội nón che. Hòa muốn được đi học, muốn có bạn, muốn được học may và làm nghề may giúp gia đình,”
Đổi Đời
Ngọc Thụy
Andrew Lam
Caren Tĩnh
Caren Tĩnh
Caren Tĩnh
An Evening of Howling Laughter to benefit FHF's Children Shelter
