At this early hour, Sapa felt like a place of tranquility, and seeing the Hill Tribe people wander into the marketplace, a wonderful place to watch a last minority of people carry out their daily life. Aaaaah......peace. But Sapa was anything but peaceful. It became quickly apparent that it was a lot poorer than the areas we had seen so far. Any child above the age of 5, who not already selling in the town, was working. They were farming, collecting wood, making things...and the younger children were left taking care of the babies.
The H'mong men were largely unseen, but the women and girls were all in the town, with one aim only.....to SELL. Fair enough I guess. It was actually quite charming at first.....but then we started to get followed into restaurants, followed down the street, grabbed hold of, swarmed.....some had learnt limited English, but the younger girls were literally repeating the same line over and over again with obviously no idea of what they were saying 'You wan' buy fom me?'
The majority of H'mong people have never left their local surroundings - they have been born and raised in the minority villages amongst the rice paddies and the mountains. I wonder what they have been told about foreign visitors, and what they think our aim is when visiting them. I had hoped to visit Sapa for the beauty and the culture, but I think these people genuinely thought we had travelled there to buy from them...and it could cause great offense if we didn't. Smiles quickly turned to spitting or muttering words.
So we left the pestering of Sapa town behind and rented a scooter to explore alone. And the scenery is beautiful! Mist and cloud engulfs the town, but it quickly moves and rises, and when it does it displays endless rice paddies, mountains, rivers, buffalo grazing and villages in the valleys. Outside of the town, the people became a lot more friendly, waving at us as we drove by. We headed up to the highest road in Vietnam and sat taking in the breathtaking views.
The next day we decided to do some trekking to the local H'mong villages. Wanting to avoid all the tour groups, we ventured out alone. The first village, Cat Cat, was absolutely packed with tourists and I do not believe that a single H'mong person lives there. It was very charming and pretty, and worth a visit, but it was just another place for the people to sell their goods. We quickly moved on.
The other villages were quite a distance away and therefore had far fewer tourists. Arriving to the start of the trail by motorbike taxi, 3 local village women with babies strapped to their backs welcomed us and started walking with us. We were waiting for the inevitable 'you wan' buy fom me?' ...but these women just seemed happy walking with us, showing us the way and speaking some English. Part of the steep descent down to their village they handed both Lee and I small handmade animals made from reeds that they had been making while walking. Once we reached the village, to thank them for their help and directions, we handed them 50,000 dong (£2) each. They looked genuinely surprised that we were giving them anything, and as the smiles broke on their faces, they each gave us a small gift before leaving. It was the highlight of Sapa and a reminder not to judge people because of the actions of others.
That evening we left Sapa. We left with mixed feelings about the place - the scenery was breathtaking and the local villages, once far enough away from central Sapa, were gloriously simple and welcoming. But once inside Sapa, the tourism simply took over and the 'sells' by local people too driven. The people need to be careful that they don't turn from being the reason to come to Sapa, to the reason to avoid it. If Hanoi's sound is the beeping of motorbike horns, and the sound of Halong Bay the lapping of water against your kayak...then the sound of Sapa is definitely 'you wan' buy fom me?'.
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