Yes, that's roast dog. On our last day in Hanoi, we checked out of our room at noon and stored our luggage. We had to wait for the night train so we took another walk around the old quarter. Just around the corner from our hotel was this street vendor doing a good business selling roast dog. We weren't that hungry.
As we took a rest on a small wall at Hoan Kiem Lake, a group of university students, who have Sundays free, asked if they could talk with us to practice their English. We spent well over an hour with them and then talked for a while with a few other students. They're so eager to learn that it's a great experience to talk with them. Always fun.
That evening we taxied to the train station and found our carriage on the train to Lao Cai near the Chinese border. We had 2 berths in a 4 berth room which we shared with 2 young women from Malta in the Mediterranean. The berths were fine but we were right at the end, actually the window right behind us in the picture, and right over the wheels and near the coupling. The rails aren't that great and the carriage was a little old too, so there was banging and rocking all night. We got a few hours sleep an hour at a time and arrived in Lao Cai at 6 am.
We had arranged for the hotel van to pick us up and drive us the hour to Sapa. After an hour wait for the next train to come in with other passengers, we got to Sapa about 8 and had breakfast at our hotel. We couldn't check in right away but after breakfast our room was ready. We had already booked a day hike to a couple of villages because we thought the day would be wasted if we didn't get out and walk, even though we were tired.
We had asked for a less touristy route and that's what we got. Our guide was a young Red Dzao girl, 19 years old, from the village of Ta Phin, 15 km away. First we walked along a trail to the village of Ma Cha. There were some beautiful views from the trail of the terraced rice fields and the mountains.
Here we are above Ma Cha.
Although our guide had only gone to school in her village, she learned to speak English by selling embroidered handicrafts that her mother made. She was very bright and spoke very good English.
All of the terraced fields have been hand carved out of the steep slopes over hundreds of years.
Anita is outside the little primary school in Ma Cha, about 5 km from Sapa.
In the villages, the bigger kids, not infants, are often on their own because their parents are working in the fields. A couple of kids were sharpening knives in the village here while others watched.
We walked between the rice paddies to get to a narrow, winding road to Ta Phin, which was another 10 km from Ma Cha. Luckily, the weather was sunny and about 22C - a beautiful day for a hike.
It's nice to be in the mountains where there is lots of clean water.
There are pigs and water buffalo roaming around everywhere. It's winter so the fields are open to all the animals.
The government has been improving the roads and bringing in electricity to the villages over the last few years. The road is gradually being paved with concrete and is about 12 feet wide. This is one of the flatter sections.
We're getting used to walking past lots of water buffalo.
Everywhere we looked were beautiful mountains and terraced fields.
Anita and our guide were approaching Ta Phin.
The village of 3,500 people is spread out over a large area. The village centre is quite small.
Anita bought a small embroidered change purse from our guide's mother. The married Red Dzao women shave the front part of their heads and wear a red head scarf. The legend is that a long ago king had 7 wives from different tribes. The Red Dzao wife let a hair from her head fall into his food and he died from it. Now the Red Dzao only marry, by arrangement, within their own tribe and the ladies shave the front part of their heads so a hair can never fall into the food. Our guide's parents want to arrange a marriage for her to a young man in the village but she has refused to marry him so far. She says he is a good man but she won't even speak to him for fear of giving his parents and her parents the idea that she would accept marriage to him.
Our guide's mother is 52. She and her husband have been to Sapa, 15 km away, but have never been to Lao Cai, 28 km from Sapa. Our guide had been to Sapa and to Lao Cai but never further. She knew very little of the other ethnic minorities in the region or anything, really, about life outside her village until she became a tour guide. She had made all of her clothing, in the traditional way, and her family wants her to become a village wife and mother and work at embroidery in the evenings when other work is done. What she is wearing in the picture took her a year to make.
These people get up at 3:30 am and work hard all day doing manual labour in the fields. We saw no tractors or roto-tillers. Big hoes or mattocks are the farm tools. Men and women bring the small children and their lunch out to the field and hoe all day.
This is the restaurant where we had lunch. They obviously don't get a lot of business so they were very gracious hosts. After lunch we walked up to a nearby cave and then back to the village centre. Although we had come by a different route, the road from Sapa to the village centre is good enough that the hotel van could come there, as arranged, and pick us up. We gave our guide a generous tip because she was fantastic and it was a way of directly giving money to those who need it. Yesterday was one of the highlights of our trip.
Because we had booked a tour through the hotel, they upgraded us to the VIP room for one night. It's really big, on the 6th floor (walk-up) and overlooks the mountains. Mount Fansipan (Fancypants according to Anita) the highest mountain in Vietnam, is right outside Sapa. The room is decorated in traditional brothel style. Note the lamp with purple lights and flashing base.
This is the view from our room. The clouds drift in and out between the mountains.
Tomorrow, we'll blog about our hike to another village today. It's time for dinner.
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