We arrived in Vietnam’s mountainous northwest region in blackness.
The overnight train from Hanoi pulled into Lao Cai station at five am and we started to make our way up the 38-km ascent to Sapa, a former French hillstation. The car’s windshield wipers provided the soundtrack to our drive.
Rice terraces near Sapa
The gray predawn haze began to fill the valley, revealing little wooden huts dotting the steep slopes. Rice paddies enveloped in mist descended to the valley floor like ladders.
Soon we arrived at our destination – a pleasant town on top of a ride, full of hotels and restaurants catering to western tourist. Although it was still early – seven am – tourists in their hiking boots, gortex and cargo pants were already wandering the streets, trailed by dozens of tribeswomen dressed in colourful clothing.
We checked into a hotel, and then, armed with a very rough map of the area we set off to find some of the nearby villages.
As we wandered towards the outskirts of town, we gathered our own collection of tribeswomen. A colourful assortment of bright headscarves, multicoloured gum boots, oversized earrings and traditional clothing trailed behind us.
“Where are you from? How old are you? Oh, very young! Are you married? How many children? Why not? Any brothers or sisters?”
Each woman would run through a practiced set of conversation pieces in the lead up to the question de resistence: “You buy from me?”
As we got farther out of the city, the trail behind us got smaller until finally there were only three tribeswomen left. Hoping to deter them from coming further we politely told them, “No shopping today”.
“It’s ok,” one replied. “We walk to our village. You follow us.”
There was no escaping our collection of tribeswomen
We descended into the valley with them. Down through slippery clay mud, over rice paddies, across streams. We walked with them for hours.
Occasionally they would present us with a little gift – a fern tied into the shape of a heart, a horse figure made out of straw.
We arrived in their village around noon.
”Maybe you come to my house? I cook you lunch?” the one with the neon green and pink headscarf asked.
We followed them through the village, past a piece of ground where dozens of men, women, and children were churning up earth – “building a new house” we’re told – up a steep dirt path between huts, until finally we were at the entrance to our hosts house.
It was a simple hut, built like a barn – open and airy – with wooden walls with holes through which you could see glimpses of the animals milling around outside in the garden. The kitchen itself was separated by a thin wall; cooking was done over an open wood fire.
Our charming, but persistant, sales ladies
We were seated on squat, bamboo chairs. The women’s children cowered behind their mothers, contemplating the two rather large white foreigners they had suddenly found in their living rooms. Eventually one got up the courage to come and slap Jeff on his leg, before retreating again to the sanctity of his mother’s back.
Then lunch was ready: a minor feast of steamed vegetables, omelets, and instant noodles (“Mr. Noodles” to the Canadian among us). We dug in along with our three charming hosts. One lady kept shovelling more noodles into our bowls.
When it was all over we sat around chatting for a little while longer before deciding it was probably time to head off again. The women looked at us and smiled. A kitten ran through a crack between the wall and the floor. Chickens clucked by the entrance to the house. A pig stuck his head around the corner and grunted.
“Maybe you buy from us now?” one of the women asked.
Fourteen kilometres of walking in the rain, a lunch cooked over a wood fire, and hours spent schmoozing - I don’t think ever before in history has so much time and effort been spent to sell a few pillow covers (which we did end up buying). The story was similar everywhere we went in Northern Vietnam: enterprising people offering to sell us anything we could want – postcards/tours/books/jewellery/pineapples/fried bread/fruit/tablecloths and even a Vietnamese child!
Motorcycles stare you down as you cross the road
Once a domino caught between two superpowers, today’s Vietnam appears to be a country hard at work to emerge from the weight of its history. The cities are full of the hard labour of survival and grasping to get ahead: women wearing conical straw hats walk the streets at all hours selling fruit or fried dumplings, sidewalk soup stalls appear out of nowhere to rustle up a good pho for its customers, shopkeepers are open early in the morning and don’t rest until the last chance of a quick buck has passed, and touts and motorbike drivers lounge around on their bikes offering tourists a lift or other services for a small fee.
Walking is rather difficult in Hanoi
But it’s the streets, oh the streets, that the consequence of all this hustling is felt most acutely. The roads in big cities are a river of motorbikes, buses, cars, carts, bicycles and wading into its waters requires calm anticipation (which way will that large bus that’s barreling right for me swerve?), blind faith that complete strangers don’t want to hit you, and a silent prayer that your destiny is not to become road kill of the streets of Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City.
We quickly learned how to walk blindly into traffic and felt that we were almost locals by the end of our travels. We even got up the courage to rent bicycles and inserted our own bodies into the chaos that is traffic here, dodging imminent death at every turn.
It was a fantastic way to experience Vietnam.
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