After being delayed for what seemed like forever, we crossed the border from Vietnam to Laos on the second of February. It was a great relief to finally be making some forward progress in our trip and we were excited to see the next country on our itinerary. We felt a little rushed since our visa from Vietnam actually started on a certain date and we had already lost a full six days from our allowed time in the country.

The bus that we took from Muang Khua went directly to Dien Bien Phu. If you remember my short lecture on the history of the region, you might recognize the city as where the Vietnamese finally broke the French’s colonialist back. There are a lot of sites to see here related to the battle of Dien Bien Phu but Marisa and I had no idea about any of them until a couple days before we arrived. We used the city only as a quick layover before moving on to Sapa. For us, and this is probably selling the city waaaayy too short, it is most significant in our memories as the city where we had our first bowl of authentic, in-Vietnam pho. We wandered the streets for a while to find it, walking past dozens of closed businesses that were playing host to end-of-Tet family dinners. We found one noodle shop that was open and had some English on the sign and succeeded in getting ourselves some vegetarian pho. And yes, it was amazing.

We bought a ticket for the night bus to Sapa the day after we arrived. We were hoping to catch the early, early morning bus but the transportation gods were apparently still angry with us and there was none available that day. ‘Night bus’ was kind of a misnomer. Usually that suggests you board the bus in the evening and arrive somewhere in the light of day. We arrived in Sapa at 3am, pretty much the most abandoned time of day anywhere. The bus ride itself wasn’t too bad. It was our first experience with the sleeper seats and it was a huge step up from Laos.

Of course, that didn’t really make up for the fact that we had arrived in a new city, without reservations, in the absolute dead of night. We gambled on at least some accommodations having 24-hour staff but the only one that had someone at the desk cost $150/night. We weren’t quite desperate enough to fork over that kind of cash. After all, it wasn’t that cold out and we could have just waited for the sunrise on a bench somewhere. We kept walking through the town and actually found ourselves enjoying the fact that we had it completely to ourselves. Exploring empty cities in the darkness of the earliest morning has a charm all its own. Wasn’t this the kind of adventure we were on this trip to experience? As cool as it was, wandering the abandoned city actually turned out to be the prelude to one of the most interesting experiences we’ve had to date.

Around 4am, after wandering for an hour or so, we were approached by a young man with his friend. They seemed to be arriving home after a long night.

“Hey, are you guys okay? Are you looking for a hotel?” the taller of the two asked us.

We stood there, backpacks hanging heavy on our bodies after an hour of wandering, and kind of blinked. Clearly, we were not entirely okay. Very helpfully, he pointed out that all the hotels were closed and wouldn’t open for at least a couple hours. He explained that he and his friend owned a bar in town and had just closed up for the night, and then invited us to stay in their apartment until we could find a place of our own. While wary, we were exhausted and weren’t looking forward to sleeping on a bench and we said yes. He seemed genuinely friendly and we didn’t get any bad vibes off of him. Following him up the stairs, we thought to ourselves that this was either a best idea ever or the absolute worst idea ever.

It turned out to be a great idea. Tony and Son are really nice guys. We shared one tiny mattress on the ground while they shared the other. We spent about an hour chatting with them before finally succumbing to exhaustion (Tony, somehow, managed to stay up all night playing poker on his phone). In the morning, Son hooked us up with a room in his friend’s hotel around the corner. We made plans to visit their bar that evening and pay them back by spending some money. We enjoyed it so much we ended up going back both nights we were in town. We even talked about helping them get the word out about their bar through tripadvisor or maybe even a website. They definitely need the help. It was incredibly difficult to find it. We had to ask about five people, including one drunk local guy who, when we said that we wanted directions to a specific bar and not just anywhere with alcohol, tried to explain to us that ‘there are no specific places here’. Anyway, we found it eventually, and I came back the second night with my camera and tripod to take some pictures for them to use for any publicity they might embark on.

On the other end of the ‘hanging out with locals’ spectrum were the gangs of Hmong tribal women that wander the streets of Sapa. They carry around bags of handmade goods (bracelets, necklaces, small textiles) that they try and get tourists to buy from them. Their sales strategy goes like this: find some tourists and say hello. They all speak great English, and if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself trapped in an exchange of small talk that seemingly never ends. They begin to give you a ‘tour’ of the town, whether you want it or not. After a while, they ask you to buy something. If you refuse, they point out how you’ve become friends over the last couple hours and you owe them. We avoided the last bit, but we had our own experience. After being engaged in conversation, we tried to lose them by going into a cafe to get breakfast. The women that had started talking to us settled in across the street and appeared to be waiting for us to leave.

While we were eating, we looked up if there was some kind of scam in Sapa with the Hmong and got the lowdown. We sat in that cafe for THREE HOURS waiting for our assigned stalkers to leave. Eventually, we decided that we had to buck up a little and move on with our lives. Also, it seemed like they had left. Turns out that, nope, they were just around the corner and out of sight. We saw them before they saw us, but we couldn’t escape quick enough. They saw us hustling away down the street and out of the corner of my eye I saw them leap to their feet (seriously, leap) and run after us. We tried to find an escape route to a higher road but ended up at a dead end. Finally, we just walked past them, firmly though guiltily ignoring their attempts to engage. It turns out that walking quickly away was a much more effective deterrent than hiding in a cafe. They eventually gave up trying to follow us and disappeared.

Despite the antagonistic approach to marketing their goods, the throngs (and I do mean throngs) of Hmong people in Sapa make it more than just a plain old mountain town. There are dozens of them everywhere, all decked out in their traditional outfits. We didn’t get many good shots of them (pointing a camera at them invites their attention, which we did not want) but you can probably find some good ones through a google image search. Harder to find, for some reason, are pictures of the men’s outfits. They wear these awesome jackets with long tails and silver trim. I wish I had some pictures of them to show you guys but I guess I blew it.

When we weren’t busy drinking local beer at Tony’s bar or having Delhi flashbacks while hiding from teenage girls in a cafe, we were exploring the town itself. This didn’t take very long since it is quite a small place. In fact, we had already seen most of it while trying to find a hotel the night we arrived. Sapa is packed with both tourists and Hmong people but there were surprisingly few Western tourists. It seemed like mostly everyone was either Vietnamese or Chinese. The town is famous as a cooler escape from the heat of the lower elevations and for its views of the rice paddies that are carved into the mountain slopes that surround it. To get a nice vantage point on said mountain slopes, we climbed up through a surreal amusement park full of statues of both familiar and foreign cartoon characters. We figured the ones we didn’t recognize were local favorites.

The views are most spectacular in the wet season when the paddies are a patchwork of vibrant green. We were there during a much drier time of the year. The paddies were still cool to see but they didn’t quite match up to the pictures we had seen before arriving. Most impressive was the fact that they existed at all. Some of the slopes seemed way too steep for anyone to even climb up, let alone carve paddies into. We enjoyed our time in Sapa but it wasn’t quite as beautiful or rugged as we thought it was going to be. It’s very well developed and there are plans to build an airport nearby. Of course, for people like Tony (who is banking on more development), it’s a huge boon. It’s probably also good news for the Hmong, who make a lot of money off of tourists. For the place itself, though, it might not be so great. Asia is generally not known for having considerate development policies and money tends to trump the needs of the environment or the people. I have a feeling it will be a very different place in a few years.

 

 

 

 

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