22. Arriving at Sapa, Vietnam

Dear family and friends,  Happy Cinco de Maya - 

View from where I had breakfast after arriving

I am writing from Sapa in far northern Vietnam, sixteen miles from China.  Sapa is a lush green mountain town of 150,000 people--the weather is perfect--65 and hardly a cloud in the sky. The regular people in Sapa speak Vietnamese, but the five local village tribes don’t--they each have their own language. 

Women from the Red Dao tribe

I spent my first day walking around town, getting to know the village women who were following me for obvious reasons. To work the tourists and communicate with each other, they speak English, which is self-taught. All the street women I met are married, live in their outlying village, have several children, sell whatever they carry around in baskets, are the main support of the family--and are illiterate. This was the first time I have personally equated intelligence with illiteracy. I was moved to help them in little ways, which earned me five friendship bracelets so far, and some good photos.

Black H'Mong gals
Both 21, married with children

Allow me to go back a couple days and write about my train ride from Hanoi to Sapa. Like always it seems impossible for me to have a “normal” experience. I always intend to go from A to B but somehow a Q gets thrown into the equation. The Q story:

Hanoi Train station

The train was to depart the Hanoi station at 9:30 p.m. for the twelve hour overnight journey to Sapa. At 8:15 the Art Hotel porter loaded my suitcase into a taxi, and to my surprise hopped in front. When we got to the crowded station the young porter told me to pay the cabbie the equivalent of $1(I paid $2), took my voucher and suitcase and went right to the front of some line, got the ticket within seconds, and led me over train tracks a couple hundred yards to where I was supposed to board the train, and then he left. The Art Hotel’s customer service is unbelievable.

Three of these in
one train cabin!!

While waiting I was distracted by three thirty-something Indonesian female water-buffalo’s with $2000 Nikons. It was black out, about ready to rain, and they were taking photo’s of the most non-photographic things - railroad tracks, the side of trains, ugly buildings and themselves. You know the type that succeeds in taking up the whole space, even if it’s outdoors . . . they were three times this--big loud women. I only hoped my compartment wouldn’t be near theirs. When the boarding began they were the first to herd in, I was the last. When I got to my assigned five foot wide cell and looked in all I could say was “Oh shit.” Every foot of it was filled with the bovines’ baggage and bodies, except my upper cot. There was no place for my suitcase and I would have had to be a gymnast to get up there. They were blabbering away, taking pictures of each other and ignoring me. No way in hell was I going in there! 

Sapa country

I left my stuff in the hall and went out to the loading area and stopped the first person I saw. He was not a train employee, just some teenager walking by. I asked if he spoke English and he said a little. He listened to my plea. The train was leaving in twenty minutes and after considering my dilemma he said, “Give ticket.” He took my ticket and started running toward the ticket office, back across the railroad tracks, with me hot after him. He stopped at a table where this guy had a stack of tickets--it wasn’t a booth. They talked in Vietnamese--it was chaotic with disruptions, interruptions, phone calls, people wanting tickets--for more than ten minutes while I waited, wondering about my luggage on the train and if I was going to miss it. Finally the teen told me the train was full. I began pleading--anything else will do--the water buffalo pen was not an option. More talk back and forth and finally he told me that if I gave the man at the table one million dong he would give me my own compartment. I called my hotel so the gal there could confirm it wasn’t a rip-of. The man got really mad on the phone with her (because it was normally $160 for that cabin and she was trying to get it for less than the $50 offer)  Once that cleared up I paid $50 for my own berth, relieved and grateful. The kid, who was sticking with me, and I ran to the train. We got my luggage and he ran with it ten trains down to my new car--he did all this for a complete stranger, for no good reason, except maybe the two bucks I gave him. Even with my own room it was a cold and uncomfortable trip--I couldn’t imagine the torture if I had acquiesced to the first cabin. I’m no longer interested in self-abuse, if I can help it. We arrived around 5:30 a.m.

Sapa

Grandmother - 96 years old.
I met her at her country house.
She was just like the street girls,
never stopping trying to sell
me her stuff.

I was greeted at the station by two friendly teenagers. The older one said he would take me to my bus. I was thinking of my good fortune with the boy in Hanoi, and they were about the same age and clean cut. We talked along the way. Their English was excellent. We got to a bus and they told me that it was my bus, and that it was thirty miles to Sapa and it would cost me $25. I was tired, wanted it to be seamless, so paid them the money. (not knowing that the normal fare was $2.50) Then a man walked up to me with a sign that said David Allison. Apparently my hotel had already paid for the bus, not that one. All the characters were right there and I asked the boys for my $25 back. Suddenly they didn’t speak English and ten of these Oliver’s were circling around me looking like they had no idea who I was or what I was blabbering about. I was wishing I was a Shoalin Master, taking them all on, then slipping the $25 in my pocket as they lay groaning. In reality they disappeared into the crowds. I’d been ripped.

Rice fields outside Sapa
-click to enlarge-

Elegance Hotel

Fortunately I then had the right bus. The country on the way to Sapa was the best, and when we arrived the driver stopped almost in the middle of the street. My introduction to Sapa was standing in a busy road arguing with the bus driver who didn’t speak English--scooters beeping at us--he demanding money. (I was thinking another $25, no way).  I was rescued by another teenager who grabbed my suitcase and said “Elegance Hotel? I nodded. By this time I was a bit ragged and needed some coffee, or oxygen--since Sapa is at 6000 feet. I followed him a quarter mile up back alley stairs, gasping to keep up.  We finally got to the hillside Elegance Hotel where I found out that the bus driver had already been paid. It’s a good hotel and I like my room.

Zuzu on right
All the tribe gals paint one of their front teeth gold

I spent the first day in Sapa being trailed by a series of village women. Later I found out that the hundreds of colorfully dressed women are negatively effecting tourism. They don’t take “no” for an answer and follow you everywhere. It got to be fun when I decided to talk to them, be my investigative reporter self, and start calling them my girlfriends. They all have wonderful senses of humor, like to touch and are in real $ need. My eight girlfriends cost me a buck each--well worth it. The last gal with her four children and farmer husband who paid her mother a $500 dowry he has spent ten years trying to repay, got to me. Zuzu can’t read or write, but she is sharp. She gave me her cell phone number (the phone a gift so she could talk to her children) and asked me to come visit her village home. I bought two of her pillow cases for $10.

View from my hotel window

I spent yesterday on a scooter following my guide to two tribe villages. Driving a scooter in Asia is tricky, but driving most of the day on steep loose-rock, off-road paths with street tires, and a bike that kept stalling out, was a challenge for sure. Two more days in Sapa before the train back to Hanoi.  No telling what stories are to come. btw - there are no Buddhist’s in Sapa. The religion is Roman Catholic.

With love, 

Three more girlfriends

David Dakan Allison