Sapa

Our wake up call came at 5am; a disembodied metallic tapping stirred us from sleep. The train was approaching Lao Cai, a town about an hour's drive from Sapa. We were herded to a van through the rain, crammed in, and taken to our hostel. I'd paid extra for a room with a mountain view, but the only view we had was of an impenetrable wall of fog and rain. Our spirits doused, we slept the day away.

By breakfast the rain had gone, but the fog remained, keeping Sapa cloaked in a veil of secrecy. We decided to explore. We walked through town to nearby Cat Cat village, a small community of H'mong ethnic people situated in the rice-terraced hills of northwestern Vietnam. Visibility was low, limiting our view of the landscape to about 10 meters, but we did meet a lot of local people; H'mong women dressed in their brightly stitched skirts, beaded shawls, and colorful turbans, carried large baskets on their backs, from which they pulled various handicrafts, urging tourists to “buy something from me” while the men, in jeans and t-shirts, zipped around the countryside on their motorcycles, hunting for fares. There were animals too: chickens on the trail, ducks in the ponds, pigs rooting in the fields, a lone monkey chained to the railing outside a store. Only once during the day did the sky show a brief flash of sunshine, before fogging up again, thicker than ever.

We booked a trek and met our guide the following morning, a minority hill tribe girl of serene composure who had hiked 4 hours from her village to meet us, and was now turning around to go straight back. I liked her immediately. She proved to be an excellent guide, and a rich source of information. Her English, entirely self-taught from talking with tourists, was remarkable. Over the course of our hike, we learned that she was 20 years old, married, and had a son, that in fact, marriages among her people were arranged at 18-19 and a baby by 20 was common, (it used to be 14-15, and 16-17, respectively). Divorce was forbidden. If she insisted on divorce, she would not only have to leave her husband, but her family and village too.
She also told us of a “kidnapping” ritual, in which boys, if interested in a girl, get a couple of their friends together and ambush her, state their romantic intentions, then carry her off to the kidnappers house, where she undergoes a 3-day trial run of the boys home and family. If things go well, she marries him, if they don't, she leaves. If this weren't interesting enough, there's also a once-a-year “love market” where married people go to reunite with former lovers, though, just how friendly these reunions get was not made clear.

Our young guide led us along dung-spotted roads, past prehistoric palms, and through tiny villages where curious children gathered to watch and laugh as we struggled down muddy slopes, all the while pointing out this plant or that feature, and filling in the details for each:

“These plants are used to make medicine. You can get $10 a kilogram for them at the market, so a family that picks many of them can get rich.”

“There used to be a lot of different animals here: tigers, elephants, pandas, monkeys, but not anymore, they were all either killed or scared away. You might still find some monkeys in the mountains.”

“At one time, opium was very popular here, many people smoked it, but after they started selling their children to buy more opium, it was abolished.”

Walking back to our hostel that night, we came upon a crowd of people, motorcycles, and cars blocking the street. At first, I thought it might be a traffic accident—we had already seen half a dozen by this point in our trip—but, after working our way forward, I saw that it was a fire, or at least, the aftermath of one. A charred frame stood smoldering where, hours earlier, a three-story restaurant, bar and massage parlor had been. People from neighboring businesses splashed buckets and drizzled garden hoses onto the embers, while the owners sat crying on the curb. It was the biggest fire in Sapa's history.

From the forth floor bar my last morning in Sapa, I watched the fog flow in and out like slow, woolly waves over the valley, show the faintest hint of mountain, before crashing back into the foreground, blocking out everything beyond the windowpane.

We took a tour to the Big Market, three hours southeast, the sky clearing finally as we drove down, revealing the stunning beauty of Sapa to us for the very first time since we'd arrived: bright terraced mountainsides laced with rivers, spanned by rope bridges, crossed by shepherds herding flocks, heading for greener fields, and hot meals, cooked in distant huts.

The market was lively, with vendors of every kind, selling skirts, shirts, hats and shoes, food, bright bolts of fabric, handbags and hammers. Blacksmiths pounded out new tools opposite young H'mong girls browsing for cell phones. Local women gossiped in small circles while the men smoked big bamboo bongs in the food tents. This was no ordinary market either, for in addition to the usual fare, there were areas for selling live fowl, horses, and buffalo. One entirely white buffalo sat apart from the others on a hill, people touching its horns for good luck.

There was something I couldn't leave the market without trying, something our guide had recommended highly--homemade rice wine. However, at 48%, I'm not sure it can rightfully be considered wine. Nevertheless, I found an old Vietnamese couple who were only too happy to let me sample some. The man offered me a capful, poured from his finest recycled plastic bottle, and I drank it down. It wasn't half bad, a bit like triple strength soju, but as soon as I'd downed the first shot, he was handing me a second, and after that, a third. I cut him off then, paid 3000 dong (about 15 cents) for the shots, declined the proffered liter bottle for $2, and went on my way, buzzed before lunch.