Sapa
Me, Tom, Shapiro and Seth (no Lisa) arrived in Sapa on Saturday and picked up an Irish guy called Ken on the minibus to the hostel. It was pissing it down with rain so we sat in a bakery and saw two American ladies playing Uno, and I asked if we could join them. We played Uno for ages then went to book trekking tours. The boys all decided to do a 2 day trek and homestay overnight in a minority village, but I decided I wanted to see the market that was only open on a Sunday and do a one day trek the next day. So this was our first splitup of the trip, 4 days in, and I was pretty excited about the prospect of 2 days without the nasty boys (love them really).
I woke up at 6:30am to take the minibus to Bac Ha market, 'the most colourful market in north Vietnam'. I was with a really cool bunch of people - a french couple, 2 israeli guys, a guy from switzerland, a 70 yr old vietnamese-french couple, and 2 vietnamese ladies, and I was the youngest by about 15 years. We had a sick tour guide who sat for the entire 3 hr ride to the market and taught us about vietnamese history and life in the countryside. I learnt that on the Vietnamese flag, the yellow star in the middle represents the existence of only one political party, and the red surrounding it represents the blood of the soldiers that died in WW2 and the war with America. I also learnt that if you want to propose marriage to a lady in the city, you have to pay money or earrings or a ring, but if you propose in the countryside, you have to pay for your wife with a buffalo ("but you give white buffalo if she ugly and lazy!") and then the family will kill the buffalo and everyone eats it at the wedding. 
We arrived at the market which is way up in the mountains and is attended by 3 different minority groups. The women all come out in their traditional dress and buy vegetables, clothes, alcohol etc, and they are all so small like I would stand in the middle of a group of them and be able to see the tops of their heads! That is weird for me. It was so awesome and colourful, all the women stand around chatting and going about their daily business with their crazy clothes and massive holes in their ears for their big earrings.
Me and the guide had a nice little date for lunch because he wanted to take me to try dog meat. It was a little bit gross. It's really tough and chewy and you dip it in this fish sauce and wrap it in a leaf that is furry and put it all in your mouth. Then he ordered us some 45% rice wine ("happy water" - "after you drink the happy water, you ride the motorbike very well!") and we had 3 shots of it, and it killed my mouth. Then he invited me back to his house after the trek - "i live all alone, you come and visit me yes, my girlfriend she live very far and it get boring sometime, it only 3 minute from your hostel".. lovely, but err no thanks. Then we drove to the village of the Flower H'Mong minority community and looked inside the house of one of the villagers. We trekked through rice fields and admired the view before driving to the border between Vietnam and China to check out the border gate and see the contrast between modern china with its new fancy tall buildings and vietnam with its old traditional village huts.
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1 comments:
only 3 minutes!
TEASE
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