Sapa Friday

A welcome break from the hustle and bustle of Hanoi where the incessant honking can be exceedingly annoying as well as sleep depriving. This was proved last night when arriving at Lao Cai at 5:30 am, Angel said he had slept better on the swaying, stopping train then he had in Hanoi! Mario conked out as soon as we were let on the train. We left Hanoi at 9:10 pm and arrived to Sapa about 5:30 am. You have to show your ticket that has been punched to exit the train station. Of course, I had to dig deep to find where I had stuck it. We came out to find a young man holding a sign…Naomi Snorma! This was for our group. We loaded our gear as well as about 10 other people into a van over to Sapa driving 30 KM through the clouds. The clouds were so thick that no scenery could be seen as we drove from Lao Cai to Sapa. This held true for our trek as well. We checked into our hotel, Papillion Sapa Hotel, where we may be the only guests! Ate breakfast and then went trekking to KatCat. This is a village of the black Hmong, one of 5 ethnic minorities in the area. It is becoming very touristy with shops lining the entire walk, all asking “you buy from me”. I saw a young boy that I had seen several years ago as we trekked. He stood out (I am an orthopaedic surgeon after all) because he had no use of his legs and was pulling himself along by his legs. Today he was playing marbles with a friend. He still pulls himself along but appears to be doing okay. This is a very difficult environment for normal people, let alone someone with his disablitily. Perhaps we can help him in the future! We went into one Hmong home which has agreed to let tourists in. This is a 3 room building. The first had a fire going, was hot with a lot of smoke. Hanging from the rafters were dried ears of corn. Chanting was coming from the open doorway and at first, they would not let us in to the middle room. Then it was okay. The chanting with a clicking sound continued. We stepped into the middle room where at the doorway stood a man (?magician, magic man? This is what it sounded like in the translation) holding 2 wooden sticks that he was beating together in rhythm with his chanting. Behind him stood a Hmong man holding a large still alive rooster. I suspect his demise was coming. The third room had a man and 4 children hovering over a bowl of entrails from a recently killed pig whose body was laying behind them. A fire was blazing away. Another man was washing down the floor with water using a small bowl. According to our guide, this was a ceremony to help with the harvest. Our guide is Vietnamese, named Mike and was not as informative as the previous guides I have had who were Black Hmong. I was glad to breathe fresh air when we stepped outside. The rest of the group is off to a Red Dao village and the silver waterfall which I have seen multiple times so I have opted for a little quiet time. Tomorrow we will trek, slip sliding down the clay slopes to Ta Van. Our guide tells us that we will leave at 9:30 and return at 3:30.

Sapa started as a French resort town I believe in the 1900’s. It does snow in Sapa on occasion and did last year. According to our guide, many water buffalo perished due to the cold and this has caused hardship for the minority tribes. I did see a rotor tiller in a rice paddy for the first time