23 September Sapa

Five am found us sitting sleepily on the bottom bunks drinking Vietnamese tea and waiting for the train to stop at Lao Cai. From here we caught a bus to Sapa arriving at about 7am. An English breakfast at the Mountain View Hotel went down well. There was no mountain view as we had our heads well and truly in the clouds. It was a case of baptism by fire as we were immediately accosted by H'Moung women trying to sell us their crafts. "Hello, where are you from? what's your name? you buy from me?" with a distinctive upwards intonation on the "me". Then "You buy from me too?!!"

Our guide, Hong, took us to a Red Zhao village in the valley below the town. When we got down into the valley we saw some of the rice terraces which cover the mountain sides. We arrived at the village in a small bus and were met by a "delegation" of women, all out to sell their craft wares. They do very fine embroidery and were selling mostly bags and cushion covers but also some handmade blankets. The conversation followed exactly the same pattern as we had already experienced in Sapa. We walked through the village to view a typical Red Zhao house with all the women in tow very optomistically expecting to get a sale if they persisted long enough. The house was made of wood and had two levels. The floor was rammed earth and the fire was set in some stones close to the entrance. The shrine for worshipping ancestors was close by the fire and there was a huge wok on a fire base, for cooking the pigs' porridge from the rice husks and other farm waste. Sleeping platforms were around behind a wall. Out one side of the house, the man of the house was husking rice in a generator driven machine. The garden was very lush - choko, turmeric, galangal ginger, pumpkins, cabbages, etc.



Sapa is 1600m above sea level and in autumn is often covered in mist. All around is lush jungle and extremely steep slopes. The town itself was built by the French as a hill station for a break from the summer heat. Tourists started going to Sapa in 1937 and there is a Catholic church there built in 1925. Apparently 50% of the Black H'Moung people are catholic.


Back to Sapa for lunch in a restaurant called Gerbera. We had sizzling venison and pork sweet and sour as well as vegetables and I can't remember what else. Very delicious.

Next, we were back in the bus and were taken on a very bad road to a Black H'Moung village. Again, a fairly long walk to the village where we had a look in at the kindergarten and primary school and then went to a house where indigo dyeing of the hemp cloth was done in two huge vats. There was also a loom with hemp being woven andd displays of wax resist batik decorated cloth which is the specialty of the Black H'Moung. Again we had our entourage of women clucking along, hoping to make a sale. This walk was about 2 hours and passed through rice paddies. Mist covered the mountains but we could still see the shapes of trees on the hills behind. There was a small field of sticky rice ready for harvest, which was tied up so that it wouldn't droop in the wet soil. This village used water powered rice huskers. The water flowed into a large spoon shape made in bamboo. When this was full it weighed down and emptied which sent the hammer pole down to strike the rice in a large wooden bowl.

All around the district the women who sell crafts wind hemp strips around their hands as they walk. They seem to have a good time in each others company and are experts at the sad face when it comes to negotiation.