Sapa, We Just Can’t Quit You and Happy Birthday Jen and Sabs

 

Well guys, as we predicted, we’re still here.  Sapa has swallowed us up and we can’t seem to leave.  Life here is simply lovely and we have settled in to a really nice routine.  We are beginning to wonder if we will see any more of South East Asia this time around.

We are becoming locals, of sorts.  The hilltribe ladies recognize us on the streets of Sapa now and comment on how we are still here…and on how we have still not bought anything from them.  We started volunteering most  school days at Sapa O’Chau, a non-profit school that teaches English to hilltribe teenagers so they can have a future in the tourist industry (as trekking guides, working in hotels or restaurants, etc.).  The kids are really smart, their English is pretty amazing, and helping out at school is really fun.  It’s not a rigorous program by any means, but they are all well on their way to being conversant in English if not already there.  In the mornings we play a warm up game or two (think hangman or karaoke to UB40 or The Beatles) and then help them work in their workbooks.  In the afternoon sessions, we focus on the theme of the week (last week was “the world”) with small group activities or games.  Most kids have never even been out of the mountains so learning the geography of their country’s neighbors was a big deal.

 

So what do we do the other half days, you ask?  Good question.  We wander the trails of the Sapa valley getting phenomenally lost each and every time, and somehow repeatedly failing to learn from our mistakes.  It is highly recommended that when trekking the trails of Sapa’s surroundings, one hires a local guide.  We have still not done this (at least technically – yesterday we paid two locals at two different times a couple of bucks to get us back on track when we were so lost and so unclear as to where the trail was that we were considering backtracking 4.5 hours the way we came).  We have been on 11 hikes.  We have gotten lost 11 times (FYI, getting lost is defined as having no clue if you are on the right trail at least 50% of the time you are walking.  Around here, stats any better than 50% count as totally knowing where you are going).  A typical day in Sapa goes like this:

• Wake up and gape at our gorgeous view for a few minutes; get organized for the day.
• Head down to breakfast which looks out at the same gorgeous view and, incidentally, is the same food every day too.   Boiled eggs and tea for me, Banana pancake and fruit shake for Gabe (there aren’t many choices).
• If it’s Mon – Thurs, head to school for morning session, or head out on a hike before school’s afternoon session.  If it’s a weekend, head out on a hike.
• Over breakfast we look at one of the completely useless, inaccurate and not-even-close to scale maps of the area, while visually surveying our planned route from the window or balcony.  We always feel confident that we have a good, clear plan and the path we are going to take is totally obvious.  Who needs a guide?  We can see it with our own eyes.
• After this point, everything goes to hell.

We wander down the main road until we get to our favorite trail entry to the valley.  Here begins anywhere between 4 and 7 hours of slipping down muddy paths, wrong turns, crossing extremely questionable looking bamboo bridges over raging rivers, trails that fork 20 meters after a local tells you to take it (at which point that local is nowhere to be found), trails that fizzle out after you’ve gone too far to be able to justify doubling back, local after local laughing at you or telling you that you can’t go that way or shouldn’t go that way or that way won’t take you to where you say you want to go (all in charades of course, no one speaks English – or Vietnamese for that matter), and also endless breathtakingly gorgeous scenery.  While we never have any clue where we are going, it is overwhelmingly enjoyable to wander aimlessly through the valley.  Along the way we see:

• Young boys herding buffalo – that’s their job in the family (or if there are no sons, the job falls on the daughters).  These tiny boys herd these gigantic buffalo around the steep hills of the valley.  They climb on them while they are resting, they jump on them while they are walking, they stand on them while they are eating, they ride them whenever possible (often facing backwards), they whack them with all their might – and these docile buffalo just wander on, chewing their cud and barely noticing the boys are even there.
• Small, completely filthy children with no adult supervision, or pants, whatsoever.  This is a curious thing.  The no supervision thing I kind of get (though every kid in Sapa would be in Child Protective Services in the U.S.).  Mom’s are in Sapa selling, Dad’s are in the rice fields or drunk on rice wine (there seems to be quite an alcohol problem here).  So kids are kind of on their own.  Older siblings (and we are not talking about very old – like 4, 5, 6 years old) care for younger siblings (infants that are like 8 or 9 months old) – often the infant is strapped to the young child’s back, I assume by Mom and Dad, and I can’t see that the kid gets unstrapped until an adult comes home to help.  As far as the no pants thing goes, my guess is that if a kiddo is too young to be potty trained, he/she is naked from the waist down until they work it out for themselves – not a lot of diaper action around here which is great for the environment, not so much for hygiene and sanitation.  And, no matter their age, all kids are caked and smeared with dirt and mud.  Their faces, their hands, their feet, their clothes – everything.  They spend their days playing in the muddy hills of Sapa – and they look it.

 

 

 

• Chickens and chicks, ducks and ducklings, pigs and piglets, cats and kittens, in ridiculously cute numbers.
• The wimpiest guard dogs and puppies you will ever meet in your life.  All with vicious barks and often in small, intimidating packs, but if you take one step toward them they turn into total wimps, tails between their legs.

• Stunning rice terrace, after stunning rice terrace spilling down the mountainsides.
• Hilltribe villages – usually consisting of 2 to 5 very basic wooden houses with mud floors, and no shortage of animals, and lots of small children yelling “hello” as you approach and “bye-bye” as you pass
• Pungent marijuana fields (presumably to make hemp clothing but we have been offered hash by an 80 year old indigenous woman in town on more than one occasion so I am pretty sure there is some funny business going on, too)

 

• Fields of indigo plants for making dye to color the traditional costumes for the hilltribe communities
• Corn fields
• Long-stem rose fields, with each rosebud individually hand-wrapped in newspaper and tied shut with a piece of ribbon (presumably to keep the bud tight and closed until it’s ready to be cut and sold in the market)
• Bamboo jungles
• Gigantic insects, butterflies the size of your hand
• Gushing rivers and confluences
• Cascading waterfalls
• Idyllic swimming holes
• Etc., etc.

When we finally make it back to town, we are usually exhausted, starving, and pretty much resemble the local children as far as cleanliness (in that we are caked in dirt, not pants-less).  We get clean, get a bite, and then study the route we have just taken from our balcony, marveling at how we could have possibly gone wrong.  Again we see the intended trail and again we see no sign of a trail on the route we took.  We vow to get a guide the next day.  And then the next day, we do it all again.

We have also made some fun friends in the local ladies in town.  Yesterday our friend Sa sewed a handmade patch on my jeans where they were starting to wear thin and fixed my fraying headband, and today she’s bringing some other handmade wares from her village to town for us to peruse (she commutes 2.5 hours walk each way, each day).  She has spent not one day in school in her entire life, cannot read or write, yet she speaks H’Mong (her native language), English (which she has learned 100% from tourists) and Vietnamese (most H’Mong do not speak Vietnamese).  She is probably about 35 and has never been out of the mountains of Sapa.

 

So that is our simple life in Sapa at the moment.  We are starting to make noises about moving on but with the continued perfect weather (65 to 80 F, only ever rains at night, usually accompanied by a gorgeous lightning show across the valley, $4 five-course dinners, $1,000,000 view for $20/night), it’s hard to imagine being anywhere else.  We’ll keep you posted.  And we love you.

Love,

Haley and Gabe

Other notes:

They fixed the water pressure in our shower.  I am now washing my own hair.  Gabe is still getting massages while he waits.

We went to an amazing local market in another mountain town last week.  Overwhelming and crazy and different.  Not for the faint of heart.  Not for animal lovers, either.

We are very close to China.  We even went to the Chinese border last week.

The honking situation in Sapa puts Hanoi to shame.

If you want to get in good shape fast, train at 5,200 feet.  If you want to have the experience that you are breathing oxygen while doing so, head a little closer to sea-level.

We now speak more Black H’Mong than we do Vietnamese (or Thai).

Unlike Argentinian wine and bread, and also unlike Thai cuisine and fresh shakes – uber-fresh, healthy, vegetarian Vietnamese cuisine does, in fact, a smaller ass make. Well that coupled with 4-7 hours of daily hiking.

Also, check out the new ‘videos’ page to see lots of videos from our trip.