Sapa Trekking

Where to begin on the past few days? For a start, they’ve been awesome.

After Halong, I immediately boarded an overnight train to the northern mountain tribe region of Sapa for some mountain trekking. As luck would have it, another group of travelers I’d met from another tour group while in Halong were on their way there, too. We ended up with the same guide for our three day trek through the mountains, which ended up being the coolest thing I’ve done here.

Our guide, Chou (pronounced Shoo), is an 18-year-old Black Hmong whose family lives in one of the small tribal villages near Sapa. Over the course of three days, she took us about 35 kilometers through the mountains, stopping overnight at homestays with Tzao and Thai tribespeople. I’m so glad I didn’t skip over Sapa. The trekking was tiresome, but the sights we got to see were just unbelievable—miles and miles of tiered rice paddies, water buffalo, goats, chicken and pigs wandering everywhere, huge waterfalls and turquoise pools, bamboo and palm forests and above all, the local cultures. Within our short trek, we saw at least four different tribes, all living within a few miles of one another, but with completely different dress, languages and ways of living.

At our first homestay, we learned about the tribe’s medicinal practice of cupping to draw out the toxins when a person is sick. Shoo said the Tzao believe it won’t work if it’s done too often, but the people use it instead of painkillers for all sorts of sicknesses. She showed us how to use a small glass filled with a chunk of smoldering coal to basically suck the blood to the surface of the forehead, creating a a read dot that lasts for several days. After a few shots of homemade rice alcohol, nearly all of us had a red stamp on our forehead or lines running down our necks.

It’s amazing how happy these people are. They work literally nonstop harvesting huge plots of rice which, at the end of the harvest, is only enough to feed themselves—nothing leftover for sale or trade.Their sole source of income is in selling the hemp and indigo clothes and jewelry they create, then sell for next to nothing. They live in tiny, uninsulated, dirt-floored huts and cook over an open fire. Most of them are married by the time they’re 16 and continue to raise babies while continuing to work for the rest of their lives. We saw men and women who must have been well into their eighties carrying 40 lb. loads of firewood up the mountain. But still, these people are constantly laughing, joking and never complaining.

By the third day, we all were long overdue for a shower and a fresh change of clothes. After heading back to Sapa town (what took us three days of hiking took only an hour by bus) most of the group split to take a bus to Laos in the morning, while three of us took the night train back to Hanoi. After a quick stopover here today, it’s onward to Nin Binh and Hoi An to wait out the lunar new year.

A grass horse one of the tribe girls made for me.

Chou, our guide, telling us about the process they use to make incense.

Homestayin'.

A Red Tzao woman weaving hemp.

Brent climbs a bamboo stalk.

Some village girls who followed us for the first day of our trek. They're out of school for the Tet holiday and wanted to sell us bags and trinkets they'd made.

Miles of rice paddies.

Sapa mountains.

Walking through Sapa town at the start of the trek.