Rice Terraces, Muddy Slopes, and Hmong Tribes

Even though we still have 9 days left in our trip, it feels like the end is coming way too fast. This morning we hopped on a plane and headed to Hanoi for a nine day tour of Sa Pa, Ha Long Bay, and Hanoi. We had purchased the travel package months ago as a way to see these three areas and also semi relax by having everything pre-arranged and taken care of. 

We were greeted at the airport by a driver holding a sign baring Em’s name. The driver dropped us off in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, where we will be ditching our big bags for the next three days as we venture north to Sa Pa on a hiking, homestay, and photography adventure.

We arrived in Hanoi in the afternoon and had a few hours to explore the streets before our night train left to the north. The Old Quarter is slightly chaotic with many narrow streets roughly arranged by type of trade and goods for purchase. It’s also where you can haggle for same very cheap North Face, Nike, Under Armor, etc. clothing and bags. Many of the products that don’t meet “quality assurance” standards for the US find their way to these shops. Not everything is real, but it’s definitely fun to peruse and you can’t beat the prices. 

Em and I scored a pair North Face smushy  coats that fold small, Em got a hair cut, and I got my nails done. It was a pretty easy going day.

At 8:30pm, a driver showed up and escorted us to the train station, where we were given a ticket and sent on our way. We had a set of bunk beds in a small cramped compartment with two other guys. The compartment was so small that only one person could stand in the space between the two sets of bunks at a time and getting to the top bunk required upper body strength or a helping hand. 

As we pulled out of the station, we started driving through town on the infamous “train street”; a street where the tracks are lined on both side by homes, schools, shops, and cafes, but there is so little space between these dwellings and the tracks that the tables and chairs must be moved every time a train comes by. I must have been the only excited person to see this and other parts of the city move past our window as I was a lone person in the hallway while all the other bunk compartments remained closed up for the night. I guess no one else thought the rickety cars ambling through the city was something worthy of gawking at. Their loss.

Drippy Days and Muddy Paths

We arrived in the town of Lao Cai before sun up and we ushered into a mini van that didn’t leave the station until it was filled to bursting with passengers (about an hour later). As the sun started to peak over the hills and rain began to come down in earnest, our driver practiced his rally car skills and took us high into the mountains to Sa Pa.

Sa Pa is a district in the northwest region of Vietnam, near the Chinese and Lao borders. The area is known for its terraced rice fields in the Muong Hoa Valley and the various hill tribes that still cling to their ancestral roots. We were visiting for a three day, two night excursion to trek through this scenic paradise and explore the hill tribe villages.

After a quick stop at the hotel for some non-Em and Robby friendly breakfast, a chance to buy another plastic bag raincoat, and rent some boots in the hope of not slipping and sliding down the rain soaked mud paths (this turned out to be a failure even with the precautions), we set out with a group of Korean tourists and multiple local Black Hmong villagers on a 9 mile trek through the countryside. 

The trek was beautiful, but wet, muddy, and most of the views were obscured by heavy fog and light drizzle. We’d get lucky in places, as the rain would reduce to a trickle and the fog would part and reveal lush green stair step rice terraces with enriched colors due to the wet weather. 

The locals run up and down the muddy trails with ease and attempt to hold your hand and guide you down the slippery slopes. The problem is they’re part billy goat and even when they hold your hand, they’re racing down the mountain and it’s hard to find a suitable place to put your feet at such a fast clip. The end result is you slip and can’t really catch yourself (because they have your hand or hands), so you end up with a semi mud facial or looking like a poor man’s Golem.

Most of the Hmong villagers that trek with you do it to learn English, through talking with the trekkers. We were a little disappointed because most of the villagers helping us only knew enough English to ask “What is your name?” “Where are you from?” “How old are you?” Once asked and answers received, they’d walk away. There were only two that knew enough English or were willing to chat long enough to gleam some information about the Hmong culture in the local villages.

The trekking party stopped for lunch at a local restaurant in the center of Ta Van, one the Hmong villages, where we were swarmed by multiple locals demanding that we purchase handmade good from them as they’d helped us down the mountain. We didn’t really mind purchasing one item, but it was a very claustrophobic and uncomfortable experience as 20 people surrounded you and stuck things in your face and yelled at you that you must buy from them and you owed them since they had helped you down the hill. Even after we each bought one item, they were demanding and didn’t wanted to leave us alone until we all (there were two Koreans eating at our table as well) started yelling at them to leave us alone. 

I am all for helping local indigenous tribes and supporting people that help me, but it seems that a terrible culture has been built here with tourism where the locals are led to believe that if they help you descend the mountain then you owe them. It’s not done in a friendly way and it actually started to feel quite menacing after a bit. We meet some other girls later in the day that had a totally different experience with only one guide and one local villager helping them on their trek and therefore only one person that was asking for them to purchase goods and them being only half pushy. It seemed like this was more the norm and we just got stuck on the bad tour.

After lunch, the majority of the trekkers in our group took a shuttle back to Sa Pa, and only Em, Eduardo (a fellow trekker hailing from Mexican), and I continued only to a homestay experience in the village of Lao Chai.

We walked through more small villages looking at all these cute homes that said homestay, but didn’t stop at any. After a while we started hearing this terrible music being blasted through the valley and Em remarked, “I bet that’s where we’re going,” and damn if she wasn’t prophetic. Our homestay was a small restaurant/hostel, where the ground floor is a restaurant/communal gathering floor and the top, lofted floor, is a large dorm with mattresses on the floor and “rooms” separated via curtains. There was zero heat (it was pretty chilly) and the locals didn’t seem too keen on actually interacting with us. 

All three of us were a little tired and decided to lay down for a short nap/quiet time. Our retreat was rudely interrupted by the blaring music changing to blaring off key Karaoke. There three of us looked at each other, grabbed our shoes, and decided maybe it was best to go back into the rain to explore the town. Amazingly, as soon as we left the premises of the homestay, the music and the Karaoke stopped. I guess the family just didn’t want us there during the day.

We ended up meeting two French girls on the road and invited them to try egg coffee in one of the local cafes while we waited to be allowed to return to the homestay at 6pm for dinner. Upon arriving back, we found lots of other people and family members wandering around bringing out various local dishes. It was a much different atmosphere than earlier in the day, but no warmer - either in temperature, nor in warmth of reception. By 8:30 the home owners were shutting lights and everyone retreated upstairs. Then an angry French man told us we couldn’t talk anymore by 9 pm because they were all trying to sleep. 

So overall, the trekking experience, at least for day one, was not wonderful. Meeting Eduardo and hanging out with the two French girl lamenting about the experience was the best part. The scenery as well, when we could see through the clouds was spectacular. I think if I ever come back to this region, I will come without a tour and maybe just hire a single local guide in Sa Pa.

Tomorrow and the day after we trek with members from different tribes. Lets see how those experiences go.

You Have a Choice of the Easy Way or the Hard Way, We Go the Easy Way

After an okay nights rest, we woke to a foggy, but dry day with warmer temperatures. We were meet by a new guide that told us there were two routes that we could take to the waterfall; the easy route (i.e. the road) or the hard route (i.e. trekking up and down muddy slopes like the previous day). Eduardo and we picked the hard way, to which the guide replied: “there are eleven people in our group and a small girl, we go the easy way.” We asked why she even bothered giving us a chose or telling us there was an alternative route. I don’t think she truly understood what we were saying, but she could tell the three of us weren’t super happy. 

Five minutes later she tells us to come quick and follow her, she raced us through the village and deposited us with a different guide and a British couple, and off we headed into the forrest; trailed by multiple local villagers, many of which were young girls that fairly skipped up and down the slippery paths, laughing at our ineptitude to do the same. 

Even though we had tried to express that we didn’t need assistance and didn’t want to purchase goods from these villagers, no one understood us. Our hands were grabbed in attempts to help us up and down the muddy paths (somewhat successfully) and when we reached the waterfall we were hounded again to “buy goods since I help you on hill”. At least this time it was only two women and we were able to extract ourselves after only purchasing a small woven bracelet.

We returned to Sa Pa and had the afternoon and evening to wander the hilly town. It’s cute and reminds us of the type of towns back stateside that are often surrounded by snow resorts. The only gondola here though goes to the top of the highest peak in the area, Flasipan. The gondola and attractions on the top of the mountain are owned by Sun World and have the same Disneyland-esque quality to them as of their other property, Ba Na Hills. Em wasn’t too keen on the long tram ride over the valley and it there was a pretty dense fog that high up the whole time we were in Sa Pa, so we didn’t purchase a ticket to visit.

Since there is no heat in most of Sa Pa and we didn’t want to just freeze in our room for the evening, we went wandering about town. The city is a lot bigger than the hills we’d been up and down earlier. There is actually a small lake that is lit up at night and easy to transverse, as well as a plethora of coffee shops, restaurants, and “Made in Vietnam” shops (where you can purchase North Face, Under Armor, Nike, etc. items like in Hanoi). We got a foot massage, walked the lake, and then returned to the hotel to burrow under the blankets for the night.

Cat Cat Village - Where the Vietnamese Come to Take Selfies

Our last day in Sa Pa included a tour of Cat Cat Village. This is the most touristy of all the Hmong and hill tribe villages. You pay an entrance fee and then wander down narrow stairwells, lined on both sides by souvenir shops and restaurants, until you reach the base of the Muong Hoa Valley. The Hmong tribes that live?\work here are of the Flower tribe and therefore their traditional dress is different than that of our guides for the last two days. They were part of the Mountain and Grass Mountain tribes. 

At the base of the Valley is CatsCat Waterfall. The waterfall was named by the French, who claimed the area as a resort for French Officials in the early 20th century and the locals took that name and turned it into Cat Cat as their village name. The village has numerous bamboo bridges and giant water wheels, as well as other traditional Hmong buildings. The water wheels were how they used to get water up the hills to the rice terraces. Nowadays they use a water station and irrigation. 

While the whole town is super cute, we didn’t seem to find the authentic part. Everywhere we looked were tourists snapping selfies or youths from Hanoi dressed in Hmong traditional garb taking Insta-worthy photos. It’s was a little surreal. Our guide told us that it was a very popular thing for Vietnamese youths from the city to come here, put on a costume and spend hours taking photos everywhere. It seemed super bizarre to me.

I read online that you were supposed to be able to see locals weaving or help work in a field; visit a traditional home, or possibly learn how to dance, but Em and I didn’t see any of that and our guide never directed us towards anything like that. Everything was either a shop, restaurant, or scenic thing to walk around. Overall, it was lovely, but nothing like we had pictured.

Tonight we take the train back to Hanoi and then head to Ha Long Bay. I’m interested to see what adventures meet us there.