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A few days with the tribes-
We wanted to get out of Hanoi pretty sharpish and had heard the north was well worth a visit so booked a tour up to Sapa for a few days. Leaving Hanoi we took an 11 hour sleeper train and arrived an Lao Cai for 5 o'clock in the morning, tired, after a random night spent in the cabin of a group of vietnamese lads with beers!
We then took a very dodgy hour and a half long bus ride up the mountains to sapa. The sun was slowly coming up and you couldn't help but watch the amazing scenery roll past as the clouds lifted and we kept climbing higher. We had a hotel for the first day and checked in when we arrived, there was about 9 of us in our group and we were traveling with two German girls we had met in Hanoi so had some breakfast and got ready to trek down to cat cat village. It was absolutely freezing cold, I had pretty much all of my clothes on and was still cold until we had been trekking for a while, first stop was this cat cat village - in a huge valley in the mountains a minority tribe called the black Hmong people still live in huts while the men work the amazing, never-ending rice paddies and women sit and sew clothing and bags etc from materials died with ink from plants to sell to visitors. Our trek was lead by a 17 year old girl from the village who is saving so she has enough money to educate her self in the future, she learnt English from tourists and stayed with us for the whole 2 day trek we did the following day.
Cat cat village was good but I got the feeling that it was just a bit if a tourist trap, it was still good to see how they lived and worked but unfortunately it was all centered around trying to sell you things, there was quite a few tourists and it just seemed a bit set up. It was a long steep walk into the valley to get to the village and the scenery was incredible, every mountainside around had deep steps cut into the side to grow rice on and I still can't get my head around how they got there and how they are all so perfectly evenly sized. We had to precariously walk over bamboo and rope bridges, through dense rainforest and past a huge waterfall to get to a little hut where young black Hmong girls and were putting on a traditional dance show with umbrellas and bamboo instruments which was actually pretty good. The black Hmong people make all their own clothes and dye all the material with the indigo flower which gives a navy blue colour, at the tender age of 10 every girl has to make her first outfit and decorate it with intricate stitching around the collars cuffs and front, they believe that wearing the brightest possible colours will bring luck, ward off danger and keep them happy, therefore the stitching and all other accessories like scarves socks hats are bright pinks, yellows and lime greens! Literally all you ever see the black Hmong women doing is cooking or sitting on a little stool, in the path or even just walking along sewing, it's all they know and their work is absolutely incredible I honestly didn't believe that it wasn't done by machine until I saw them doing it with my own eyes.
After spending a few hours in the village and learning about the tribes we broke away from our guide and visited the local market, the most colorful market you'll ever see! Tribes people from hills all around walk down tiny mud tracks, through bamboo jungles and over tricky rocks to buy their meat (the actual tribe villages are almost completely self sufficient other than their meat) and the most bright, colorful blankets, clothes and little trinkets you'll ever see are hung amongst the fruit and veg etc, in the hustle and bustle of various tribes people in full dress.
We had dinner back at the hotel and a relatively early night ready for an early start in the morning. It was the start if our 2 day trek, I just took my daypack with essentials and a change of pants then headed out with about 7 others and our tour guide at 7.30am in the direction of our first stop, lan chai. Accompanied by other your black Hmong girls making their way back to their villages after visiting the touristy sapa town we embarked on what actually turned out to be a pretty hard trek, it was up and down mountains, over and through rivers and through bamboo rain forests, water buffalo are every where thanks to the rubbish weather the days before the route was really slippery and muddy, fortunately we were lucky to have a perfectly clear relatively warm day so we could fully appreciate the stunning views. We walked at the foot of the highest mountain in Vietnam and got high enough to see right over the tiny villages, rivers and rice paddies, it was breath taking.
Our initial plan was to explore this amazing place on our own without a tour, though you need a permit to be allowed to go off the beaten track and visit the villages so ended up going with a tour who arranged this for us, it turned out to be a much better plan as we learnt slot from our guide and she was so proud to be able to show us her village and tell us about their beliefs and reasoning for doing certain things. A fair few people visit sapa but few venture into the depths and go and stay amongst it for the night but I'm so pleased that we did. Perhaps our guides proudest moment was being able to show us this tiny school that had been built, nearby to a few different villages. Mums walked their tiny toddlers for miles each day across appalling terrain just to take their kids there for a few hours, we visited the dingy school and found no electricity, grubby kids playing with a few marbles on the floor and battered old books, it really brought it home!
After lunch beside a waterfall and river in a little wooden shack we trekked for a couple more hours to Lao Cai where we were spending the night, it was a home stay and the 9 of us were joined by our guide and a couple of other tribes people for the night in our bamboo hut with no electricity where we slept on blankets on the floor covered with a mosquito net, all bundled in together. We helped cook dinner on the log fire that was burning in the kitchen and all ate together on the veranda out front with the mist amazing views. We sat there playing cards until the sun went down, drinking home made rice wine from a plastic water bottle and chatting. Everyone was in bed by 7.30 so az and I had a couple more beers in the exact same spot then retired to bed.
The next day was another early star and an even harder trek, it was raining, we were above cloud level so couldn't see a thing for the thick fog but made our way through the mud, forests, rain and random animals to a huge waterfall and our next stop. We really were in deep if it now, our lunch was under a tarpaulin, sheltered from the rain and sat on plastic stools eating a Vietnamese soup cooked on an open fire in the freezing cold! I bloody loved it! The rest if the day was spent working our way back to civilization and we eventually emerged covered in mud, soaking wet and with a big smile at a small road where a minibus took us back to the hotel.
We ate, showered and warmed up ready for a 10 hour sleeper train back to Hanoi that night, it was a rather hairy minibus ride to the station, the driver couldn't see 2 meters in front for the fog and we tackled blind corners, ridiculously pot holed roads and stupidly steep hills, I'm pretty sure I got some hang time from some of the bumps! A few games of cards with the Germans in our sleeper carriage ended the day and it was another early start after arriving back in Hanoi at 5am ready for our next adventure!
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