We took the overnight train and had minimal sleep, so we are pretty exhausted! We arrived early, around 5:30, and then took a winding mountain road up to Sapa.
View from our hotel
As soon as the women in the streets saw our bus, they started running and chasing us, faces pressed up against the glass. They are dressed in their beautiful indigo hemp traditional dress, and always ask what your name is, where you are from, and how old you are...and then if you will buy something from them. After breakfast we has a short nap and then went for a walk around. About 6 of them were waiting for us and were our shadows for the better part of our walk. We walked around, through a market, saw more dog heads piled high for sale and little baby birds on sticks for roasting. As soon as we stopped to take a picture of the scenery, that's when all of our "shadow's" came out asking us to buy. We tried telling them we couldn't buy from all of them, and they said that wasn't fair...it was pretty difficult, especially since most of them are children.
After our walk we grabbed some lunch and then went for a walk through an ethnic minority village (Black H'Muong) and got to see how the people live. Walking through all of the rice fields and seeing the buffalo and pigs right up close was really cool. We also saw a huge field of marijuana, which they grow for the hemp they make their outfits and fabric out of (our guide told us they just discard the leaves...)
Tomorrow we are taking a trek through the mountains for 4-6 hours which we are looking forward to! Hopefully the rain holds out (it has been raining here quite a bit because of a cyclone that is circling around SE Asia). After our trek we are taking the night train back to Hanoi and heading out to Ha Long Bay where we will be spending a night on a junk (boat) and kayaking (weather permitting). Not sure when we will have internet next, but will write again when we get the chance!
i call shenanigans on this
ReplyDelete'(our guide told us they just discard the leaves...)'