Sapa Rice Paddies!
Our bus dropped us off around 8:30pm in Hanoi and we walked back to our hostel, showered, some repacked, tried to find the fastest food we could, and made it back in time for our second bus to come get us at 9:45. It was a really quick turn around when you consider the amount of walking we did to get from the first bus to the hostel and where the new bus was.
The new bus was a huge upgrade from the first bus too. It had three rows of these slightly up slanted beds that had blankets and pillow like things. The up slant comes from the person behind's feet going in under the head rest of the person in front of them. It was such a cool way to travel, also there were two levels of these, the first being on the ground and the second being a few feet up. We were able to sleep, in my case quite comfortably, on the ride to Sapa which got us there I suspect around 2 or 3 am and then we were let to sleep in the bus till about 5:30 am when we were taken to our hotel where we would be fed breakfast and dinner and was our home base, pick up and drop off point in Sapa.
We had a nice breakfast and beyond any of our expectation and to all of our surprise we were actually quite cold at 6am in Sapa, Vietnam. I haven't been naturally cold (AC on planes and movie theaters) since getting here. We overcompensated though and bought jackets and pants. The pants were like $2.50 but the jackets were all northface. I got a really nice northface jacket for $17 and we think these were all legit and not counterfeit and think that maybe manufacturing of northface is done in Vietnam.
Well our tiny tour guide came to get us around 8am or so. She was this absolutely tiny Vietnamese girl who spoke really good english. She was going to take us on a tour of the rice paddies to see all the natural beauty that Sapa had to share. I mean tiny though, probably no more than 4 and a half if that feet tall and certainly under 90 pounds. She ended up being 19 but she maybe looked 12.
A picture of some of their baskets and clothing. The one closest is my little tour guide.
As we approached where we would start walking down hill into the rice paddies we were joined randomly by several other tiny people. All female some being old and having big baskets on their backs and some being quite young. We found out that they would be walking with us and the tour guide was quite open in telling us that they would be our guides as well and generally expected us to buy things from them when we got to their village which was one of the stops in our 12km hike. They were all tiny well under 5 feet and so sweet. They wore some traditional seeming clothing and were amazingly secure in walking down this treacherous valley with us. The little old ladies would hold you wrists and make sure you didn't fall with surprising strength and they had great balance. They were walking with us until their village of Lao Chai.
We more or less figured out that they did this every day with tour groups to be friends with the tourists and to make money. Our original tour guide was the only one who actually got paid, the others relied on our good will. I pretty much knew I was in for an emotion based purchase upon getting to the village. They were so friendly and cute and sweet to us. They talked with us and asked about our lives and made little hearts and horses out of the grass for us. I mean it was all an emotional based marketing ploy but we didn't really understand the extent of it until we got to the village. At the time we just thought they were sweet and charming. We even took a group photo to remember them better. The guide isn't pictured but her name was Zing, there was a nice girl named Sarhm, my guide was named Jurh, and a few others were named dong, Mama Chai, and something else. All spelling guessed...
We got our first taste of things when we hit a rest station and these itty bitty little kids came up to us and tried to sell us these colorful pretty little bracelets for 10,000 dong which is a little less than 50 cents. I mean how could we say no? They were so cute! So we bought some. This continued though at all 4 rest stops and we had all succumbed at some point or another and bought a bracelet or two from a kid. the little one on the left was about the average age, the one on the right was one of the oldest ones. They really were young.
The trek was absolutely amazing, stunning views, and the geo-terracing of the rice paddies was really a sight to see. I mean it really was amazing and I'm sure the whole area is well known for it.
When we got to the village for lunch though things did change a bit. The old ladies expected us to buy things from them, that was fine. My helper, Juh, sold me a bag for 200,000 dong and while that was ridiculously overpriced I still appreciated that I was paying more for her companionship and help than the bag itself.
When we got to lunch though we were all but mobbed by children. Tiny little kids with sniffling noses all holding bracelets and little bags begging us to buy from them. They knew phrases like "will you buy one from me please" "please buy from me" and could say things like "two for ten" meaning two bracelets for 10,000. That number got as low and desperate as 5 for 10,000 which is a fraction of what we paid for them on the way there. One kid even said "please buy one from me, I know you're not coming back again" and for a while it was cute, then it was sad, then it was heartbreaking, and then it honestly just got annoying. They mobbed you, I'm talking 5-8 kids around you pushing bracelets in your face while you're trying to eat with an endless plea to buy from them and sad sad eyes. It didn't feel good at all.
The old ladies, already having gotten what they wanted from us had gone home presumably. We left lunch a little less excited than we had started. I began to realize that the kids who were with us and the old ladies were simply all the people in the village who either weren't old enough to be in school, weren't in school for some reason, or were too old to work the rice paddies. That really didn't feel good. Anyway, while it was a beautiful experience it was kind of darkened by the effect our presence as tourists seemed to be having on this village collectively.
It turned out also that our tiny little tour guide was only 19 and had been married since the age of 16 and already had 2 kids. I can't imaging her pregnant, she would probably double in both weight and size...
The trek was beautiful though and it was a great experience to meet the locals (at the beginning) and see the geo-terraced rice paddies. We also saw some cute farm animals like chickens with chicks, buffalos, and little pigs. They had the cutest dogs there as well in the village.
Our tiny tour guide showing us how they weave hemp into yarn and use giant looms
A photo of me and some of the little kids, they were so excited. They loved seeing themselves in the camera and made "ahhhhhh" noises the whole time. This was about the second rest stop.
Me later being completely unamused as Anna is trying to buy a bracelet from about 10000 children and I was stuck in the booth next to her.
