I could not stop taking pictures. I put a fresh 512mb memory card (439 pictures) in my camera before this trek and I now have about 60 left. It’s my last memory card so I need to burn a card or two to CD and try to upload and store a bunch on my website. That doesn’t mean you can see the photos though, only that they’ll be dumped and stored. So many pictures but they won’t even begin to capture the experience.
I think I’ve met 3 Americans total my entire trip. Americans don’t travel. Tons of Frenchies, lots of Spaniardes, a fair amount of Englishers, some Canadians, and a mishmash of other foreigners. But no Americans. Obviously by Americans I mean United States. At first when I was asked where I was from I’d say United States but they generally don’t understand because they understand America to be the U.S. Once you say America then a lot of them say “California?” You try to say no but very close in a state called Washington but they often just say “California?” again. I should specify and say that the California thing has mostly been here in Sa Pa, not so much in the other areas.
The Black H’mong are the primary villagers in Sa Pa and the immediate surrounding countryside. In fact, there are 3 girls next to me in the Internet place right now, probably about 12. I just read an email the girl next to me had gotten from some foreign boy professing his admiration. And now she keeps asking me how to spell stuff for her return letter. Ha. I’m tempted to describe the clothes they wear because it’s very unique, and different between males and females, but pictures will easily tell the story and save me time. One thing though is that the girls wear a wrap around the lower half of their legs. I think they’re really cool and they’re nice and warm. Hmm, I know they are nice and warm because I wanted some even though I suspected they weren’t for men (I didn’t know yet). I started asking around at the market and some of the women and girls started giggling when I said I wanted some. But one lady who had some nice ones, as in the embroidery was male/female neutral in colors, wanted to sell and get money so she wouldn’t tell me if they were for women or not. She put them on me and I was stoked. While she was away getting change I conned the girl in the stall next to her, who spoke English very well, to tell me for sure. I didn’t care at that point though because I knew they’d keep my legs warm from the rain. I didn’t make it too far though and I felt bad because one guy looked at me very strangely and I felt like I may be disrespecting him. A few ladies simply giggled but I didn’t want to cause a stir, in San Francisco or Broadway Street in Seattle I’da fit right in!
The blog started about the trek but quickly tangented. It’s important I let myself tangent at this point though because I have all these thoughts and stories and I can’t always write everything down and keep it chronological.
The best way to talk about this trek is through pictures so that’s why I started talking about pictures and I don’t plan to say too much about the hike itself. It was definitely the raddest hike I’ve ever done. Jungle, mountains, terraced rice fields, terraced corn fields, terraced gardens, gnarly and rocky and muddy “fooot-path,” rain/drizzle the first day, extremely HOT the second and third days, 30% grade or more in quite a few spots. Danica was actually quite close to passing out yesterday from heat exhaustion. We ran out of water during the most brutal part of the trail.
Our guide was totally sweet, 25-year old Tuyen. He spoke English really well, in fact he graduated University with English teaching degree and taught secondary for a while but gave it up for more money in tourism as a guide. As a teacher, the government paid him 780,000 dong per month, $48.75. With that, he had to pay for rent and food, transportation, his teacher books, and all the school supplies for the kids, including chalk, pencils, etc. As a guide, the hotel he works for (Mountain View, the one we’re at) gives him a free room and food, pays him a daily trek salary depending on the difficulty of the trek, and I imagine usually gets tips from his trekkers. Especially this guy because he rocks. He treks 20-25 days a month so he’s got some pretty good stamina and sure-footedness. He wore some uncomfortable rubber boots the first two days and then swapped for some of the local white single-strap sandals they have around here. So on the brutally steep climb out of the village this morning he was wearing sandals that I find hard just to keep on my feet because there’s nothing between the big toe and second toe.
Tuyen is one of the few guides willing to take a harder, more gnarly route, which we totally went for. Instead of taking the main path and road that most peop’s use, we chose the narrow, rugged footpath. We couldn’t have done it if the rain had continued from the first day. The rain and mud reminds me of the first day when Danica was holding her camera in one hand, lens cap in the other, attempted manuveuring a few steps over some rocks, and immediately lost her foot to the will of the mud and ate it. Instinctively to protect her fall, she put the lens cap in the mud on her left side and the camera in the mud on her right side. Say bye-bye to that lens. She says she may find “arty” uses for the scarred lens however.
After the super-hot climb where Danica was close to passing out, we were chilling in the shade of a rest stop (where you can get water, soda, etc, sometimes cold, sometimes warm) and a man in a sharp, perfectly clean suit, an umbrella to shade him from the sun, and spotless bright white sandals came strolling by on the rocky, muddy road. It was amazing. It’s funny how often I’ve seen strange things like that though. The people will be living or working in areas where it’s dirty and muddy but they’re dressed far better and cleaner than any American.
By saying Danica was close to passing out I do not at all mean to imply a weakness. She’s a total trooper and does far better with less complaining than most guys from the U.S. would do. “I am sure.” I think the only difference was I was lucky enough to be hydrated a little more via Camelbak water pouch. I should mention we had another trekker with us, Julian from England. He’s probably close to 50 and a geography teacher for secondary school, which is 7th grade to 10th grade in England. He and Danica both held their own quite well with Tuyen and I, both strapping young 25-year old men. Ha.
I was wondering why water buffalo never moo or make a sound. In fact, they are really gentle compared to cows, you can pet them and kids ride them to herd them around and stuff. Apparently, the back of the tongue is where they “speak” from but it’s a delicacy in Viet Nam so when they reach a certain age, the tongue is cut out. Alas, no mooing or speaking. I hope you just believed that story because it’s the same false story Danica made me with again. Chalk up two, the monks posing as orange construction cones and now this one. Danica: 2. Keith: 0.
Now to tell one on Danica. Our guide explained to us that there used to be tigers, elephants, snakes, and many other scary dangerous animals that roamed and ruled this area but ever since the jungle was farmed they moved away. I’m sure there are still snakes around but we didn’t see any. As we walked down the path something rustled up in the bushes just ahead of us. With a very serious and convincing face, Tuyen turned and said, “Could be tiger.” “Really?” Danica questioned. “Yeah, I think tiger.” He actually turned quickly and started backward and Danica began to bolt. But then he laughed. It was just a dog. Shortly after, he tried to convince us that this dog that was standing on a path checking us out was a wolf. He never convinced us of that though. From then on, he joked a lot and was constantly trying to scare or mislead Danica. He’d tell us we had about 4 hours left to hike but we’d be only a half hour.
The first night was in an area with Black H’mong so we got hounded a bit by them trying to sell us stuff, which of course gets annoying. But the second night was completely absent of “You buy from me? You want blanket? Bracelet? Why you no buy from me?!” Ahhh, it was beautiful. The place was so peaceful and beautiful. Since we’d taken the harder, longer route, we got in too late to take a soak in the swimming hole so I had to console my hot, sweaty, sticky, stinky flesh with a “shower.” In the countryside, showers are done with a large red scoop. They have 2 blue plastic buckets, one for filling with fresh water from a spicket and one for mixing with soap or laundry detergent. To take a shower, you let water flow into the fresh water bucket, scoop water out with the large red scoop and pour it over you. Most often places have hand soap to use but the place last night did not. No big deal since I keep a small one I kept from a hotel a couple weeks ago.
This morning after another banana pancake with sugar and chocolate breakfast (if you don’t remember, banana pancakes here are crepe style with sliced bananas wrapped inside: sugar, Vinamilk chocolate, and fresh limes were provided too so you douse the bananas in sugary loveliness, fold the crepe in two, and use a fork and knife to cut and consume it) like the morning before, we tromped up and over for 10 minutes to a beautiful swimming hole by an awesome and powerful waterfall. The waterfall isn’t too high but has a lot of force behind it. If you actually got under the waterfall you’d be roiled and beaten to death on the huge rock it pounds into. But don’t worry, Mom, you can’t swim that close to it. The current in the middle is swift but if you swim hard enough you can beat it. There were several nice boulders on the side and in the middle of the water you could swim to and climb up on and chill. The best part was finding a nice place to jump off, maybe fifteen feet high. I had Danica snap a pic but I’m already in the water in the photo because Danica was freaking out I was gonna die and she’d have to jump in and rescue me. I was fine except for slipping and cracking my head open on and bouncing down the rocks into the swift current that swept me off another waterfall I hadn’t seen earlier. I’m actually blogging from a Ha Noi hospital and they’re operating on my brain right now. Um no, I was fine and still am. I’ve fallen in love with cliff jumping and want to work my way up to 40-feet. Woo hoo!
“Falling in love” with cliff-jumping are extreme words for my feelings on cliff jumping actually. But it is fun.
Following a very hot and grueling hour or so climb this morning after swimming and per-lunch, we lunched (obviously) on noodle soup made by our guide, and then put our lives into the hands of a Vietnamese jeep driver. The jeeps don’t have near the character as the Phillipines jeeps described by the D but they are cool nonetheless, military style for sure. Dark green and rugged. One of the funniest things this entire trip occurred in the jeep this afternoon. The driver was charging along, we were bouncing along, and I was trying to keep my head situated between 2 metal bars on the ceiling so that if we bounced high I would hit the canvas roof instead of the bars, when we came around a corner and there was a late-20’s foreign trekker, his girlfriend or wife, and their guide standing on the side of a giant puddle in the road. There are several “puddles” along the road, which are actually just part of waterfalls. So these 3 innocent bystanders are on the side of this puddle looking at something but the guy was almost in the middle of the road. Since drivers here don’t stop for things like that but just honk instead he just kept charging and went to the far left of the road to squeak by the guy. At the last second, the guy looks over and sees this big jeep coming almost right at him. His eyes got huge, he yelled, and jumped out of the way grabbing his girlfriend. The jeep nailed the puddle and completely doused all three of them. All of us in the jeep erupted in laughter, including the driver, who had done it completely on purpose. We laughed so hard. We looked back at them while bent over laughing and the backpackers were giving us unfriendly hand gestures. Haha, they must have been soaked from head to foot! All in all, they couldn’t have minded too much though because it was scorching hot so I’m sure they dried within a half hour. Makes us feel less mean to think that anyway…
I’m off to grab some Friendly Restaurant goodness. Keep it real while I do.
Keith,
chad | April 9th, 2007 at 3:45 pm |nice to see you “exploring” the world, nothing like it till you’ve done it. Props to your cliff jumping, maybe when you get back we could try the monroe street bridge…ha
Ross says a warm “hello” spent time with him at Olympia before he goes to alaska soon.
Take care, be safe,and do some more puddle jumping.
Chad
Hey Chad! Thanks for posting a comment and for the Ross greeting. I’m having a blast over here obviously, Sa Pa is especially awesome. Up in the mountains, cooler weather than the other places, and beautiful scenery. We should definitely find something to jump from when I get back! Ha.
admin | April 9th, 2007 at 3:46 pm |