Photos: Lyle Such
Camera: Canon 5d Mkiv, DJI Mavic Pro
Writing: Thu Buu
After the French abandoned Sapa in the 1950s, it was left to itself with little contact and influence from the modern world until 1985 when a few backpackers “discovered” the area. It quickly became a popular destination among backpackers, and with the advent of the railway in 1995, Sapa was soon at the top of the “must-see” sites in Viet Nam. A decade ago on my first trip to Sapa, the only way to get to there was via a ten-hour train ride, after which another hour and a half of windy mountainous roads must be endured by bus or private rentals. Since then a new freeway with large, smooth, multiple lanes and clean rest stops with modern western toilets have been built to accommodate the influx of tourists.
Sapa itself has transformed from a quaint, quiet, ethereal village with some paved roads and a handful of hotels bordered by giant bamboo forests to one of clogged streets full of tour buses, souvenir shops, restaurants, hostels and hotels. The noise, the dust, and the sight of construction work are commonplace pollutants that have negated the charms and reasons for visiting Sapa in the first place.
Sapa’s popularity has brought about many damaging environmental consequences. However, the lives of the locals have risen in standards. Where bamboo nap-shacks and wooden homes once stood, now more durable and sanitary concrete buildings stand. I’m just afraid that with the amount of industry and growth in this area, many visitors are beginning to look elsewhere for more authentic experiences of mountain villages and rice terraces. In another decade or two, will Sapa be left a ghost town, its natural resources diminished and its indigenous population exploited?
The food we’ve had on this trip so far was delicious beyond desire. Even Lyle was looking forward to breakfast. That’s saying a lot. Here, we learned how the locals eat pho, with a fried egg on top. We also had the most wonderful crushed ginger hot tea with a hint of honey that just warmed our bellies, except for Lyle’s. He can’t stand ginger.
Chi Nga spent a day of self-pampering at the resort; she booked six hours of spa treatments while the rest of us headed out for a daylong hiking tour of the rice terraces and a Red Dzao village farther away from the city.
The guide here seemed a lot more “politically correct” than Anh Long. He’d give us a lot of facts and history, but shied away from any personal comments. For the little amount of walking and the slow pace, we took a lot of breaks because the guide needed a smoke every half hour or so.
Our first stop was a primary school in the Dzao village. There were 2 classrooms, each with two grade levels consisting of about six-eight students each. However, there was only one teacher for the whole school, which meant that when she was in one classroom, the other classroom was without supervision.
When we walked into the first classroom, the kids were playing cards, of course. It’s THE number one Vietnamese pastime, especially around New Year. They quickly put it away. After a few shy introductions, I asked the students to teach me how to play their card game. One boy pulled out his cards, shuffled, and began passing them out. At this point, the teacher appeared at the door and reprimanded the students, “Cards are not appropriate at school. Do not play cards during class time.” Oops, I just got the students in trouble. But I passed out lollipops and that made up for it.
We couldn’t take a tour of the villagers’ homes that day because they just had prayers, and for the next three days, a cleansing ritual was observed where visitors were prohibited from entering. A small bamboo stick with leaves attached to the top was placed in the ground in front of the house to mark the ritual.
Due to the higher elevation, the weather in this area is cooler, and so planting season had not yet started. We trekked through quiet, empty fields bordered with lavender-colored flowers. Dead stalks from last season’s plants were still slowly molding in the terraces.
This grandmother is 85 years old and was still embroidering. She was sewing silver decorations onto the piece of cloth.
This gentleman is multitalented. He makes paper from bamboo. Alexis bought all the supply he had for her drawings. He’s also a scribe who was trained in Mandarin calligraphy. His skills are needed during the New Year and other celebrations throughout the year when banners of good luck and good wishes are hung beside entrances of homes. He also dabbles in making jewelry from silver coins that he’s found digging in the dirt around the area. Some of the coins he’s found date back to the early 20th century, when Sapa was still a French military center when Vietnam was a French Occupied Territory.
Upon arrival at the hotel, Anh Vu promised the local Red Dzao ladies that he would buy from them on the last day of our stay at Topaz Ecolodge. Consequently, each time they saw us after that, they did not hesitate to remind us of his promise. Anh Vu fulfilled his promise after checking out. They drove such a hard bargain that Anh Vu had to step back into the hotel’s property where they couldn’t follow to take a breath and regroup. Sweat was literally streaming down his temples.
Unfortunately, the ethnic Blue Thai and Red Dzao minorities of this area, who used to sell genuine handmade jewelry and hand-sewn accessories with distinct tribal needlework designs, now aggressively try to peddle the exact same Chinese-made wallets, purses, and little hats. Alexis had a hard time looking for original, hand-made hats for her girls. She didn’t by for Leevah and Morgan so they were mad at her for being disloyal. How dare Alexis buy from someone she didn’t even know when she’s had a whole three-day relationship with them! As a consolation for not buying from all of them, we passed out lollipops, which seemed to appease them.
With a two o’clock departure scheduled, we decided to head up to Fansipan. Reaching above 10,000ft., it is the highest mountain in IndoChina. Just a couple of years ago, summiting Fansipan required at least a couple days of strenuous uphill backpacking, many times in inclement weather. Conquering Fansipan required physical and mental conditioning.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t backpack our way to the summit because all that’s needed now was a twenty-minute cable car ride. At one point, we were so thick within the clouds that everything around us was white…dreamy, puffy, cottony white. Suspended within the clouds...surreal.
If I hadn’t known that Fancy-pants was a bona fide mountain prior to arriving at the top, I might have mistaken it for some other man-made place. The whole natural mountain was covered in bricks and cement. A multitude of plazas, temples and sitting gazebos were connected by a series of stairs that extended all the way to the top. At the very summit, the rocky tip of Fancy-pants was allowed to protrude through a hole of in the cement as a photo-opt. What a way to utterly decimate natural beauty. How man believes he can outdo Mother Nature, I will never understand.
Talking about photo opportunities. Grant and Lyle were superstars! The locals and Vietnamese tourists queued around our tall White boys like they were A-list celebrities, pulling them into pictures and making them pose front and center. The boys loved the attention and played along good-naturedly, shaking hands and throwing peace signs left and right. Alexis and I started fangirling around Grant, pretending he was Ryan Gosling who’s La La Land was a big hit back in the states at the time, which encouraged even more locals to jump at their chance of taking selfies with a Westerner. What can we say; Vietnamese and our love-hate relationships with those White Imperialists! On our cable car ride down, a Vietnamese couple was caught in the same car with us. About halfway along, Anh Vu turned toward the guy, who, up to this point had been trying so very hard to appear uninterested, and explained in Vietnamese who our companion was. Inevitably, by the end of the ride, the couple was taking a selfie with our very own Ryan Gosling. We were all laughing so hard at Grant’s expense. It was wonderful!
