A Sloppy, Sweaty Trek in Sapa, Vietnam

The drive into Sapa was a cavalcade of buses. And, despite the many switchbacks, they were vying to be first, passing in the shortest of lanes so that often the bus being passed and the vehicle coming from the other direction had to slam on the brakes so the impatient driver could shoot through the gap.

Simultaneously, I’m eyeing the beautiful mountains in the distance and the valley floor several hundred meters below and wishing there were a little more space between the bus wheels and the gap…

But I arrive in Sapa. And already the bus is swarmed by taxi drivers and trekking guides, each with an umbrella lifted high, marking their space. I walk the ten minutes to my hostel. It’s not raining, but clearly it was recently raining because the side-walks are damp. And, again (I know not why), a place with an entire season of rain has built their sidewalks with the slipperiest stone known to man. So I walk on the road, which is pretty normal for Asia anyway, and listen for the buzz of cars and motorbikes getting too close (so I can hastily step onto the death-trap sidewalk).

My hostel is fine, though the room smells of mildew. I think that is simply a state of being in the North Vietnam rainy season rather than a comment on cleanliness or anything else.

When I venture out a short time later, people are scarce, but the buildings themselves are loud. Each is five or more stories and covered in lights and balconies and names of cafes and restaurants and dotted with local woven lanterns. Sapa was built by the French and the architecture still holds those memories. I walk the main tourist streets, shocked at the number of hotels and guest houses and hostels. Right now, mid-day, the town feels sleepy. When are all of these places full and how chaotic is it?

I venture down some smaller streets, and I really mean down. Sapa is built on a hillside. I wander for an hour, delighting in the temperature. A lovely 75 degrees. It feels absolutely incredible after my time in Hanoi (95 degrees with 95% humidity). Of course, it is still crazy humid here, which makes itself known when I switch directions and spend the first 45-seconds walking up hill. It’s steep, though not hard walking. I’ve a long way back up though. Sweaty me stops several times (whenever I can feel a breeze) because I’m trying not to be a drenched, sweaty mess.

Once I reach somewhat even ground, I make my way out of the touristy area. It’s here that I start finding restaurants that don’t serve “pizza, pasta, and beefsteak” or list pho for 150,000 VND. Little kids wave at me and there’s not someone on every block asking if I want a massage.

I find a local market with stalls selling fruits and vegetables, as well as entire rows of unrefrigerated meat and swirling fans to keep the flies away. It seems crazy and unhygienic, but the chef at my cooking class in Hanoi told me that local people are more likely to buy meat from stands such as these rather than from the supermarket because they know the meat on the streets has to be fresh. They don’t know how old the meat in the supermarket is. I guess that’s valid, but I would like there to be fewer flies.

For dinner, I head out to a small local place that I found on my walk. Two people from the hostel come with me and I think they’re not quite sure what to do when it becomes clear the owner doesn’t speak English, but my noodles are delicious and 1/3 the price of my lunch in the touristy town center.

Walking back, the whole city is lit up with strobe lights and glittering signs. Suddenly the center of the sleepy mountain town feels like a mini Las Vegas.

In the morning, I wake to rain. Pounding against the roof, pounding on the streets outside. I’m supposed to go trekking today… Perfect.

Actually, I’m not particularly upset. I knew I was coming in the rainy season. In fact, most websites told me not to go to Sapa in June because it would be too slippery to trek. But I’m not afraid of a little rain. I’ve got my small day-pack all ready to go, clothes rolled and slipped inside a trio of ziplock bags. I’ve got my raincoat and my umbrella. It’s not cold, so a little water won’t hurt me.

My trekking guide, Tom Tom, arrives on the back of a motorbike driven by her husband and I hop on, so the three of us go slowly through the rainy streets of Sapa with her umbrella held over all of our heads.

We meet more guests in town and set off in the rain. Tom Tom stays back to get a few more guests and five of us follow her sister-in-law, La La. We walk through town, headed down. It’s a while before we’re away from the cars rushing past and spraying water onto our ankles, but soon we head away from town and turn onto a narrow country road, following it always down. I’m happy for that, as I’m currently very comfortable with my raincoat on, but if we start climbing, I’m going to get very hot.

I ask La La a million questions. She and Tom Tom are Hmong people, ancestrally related to the Mongols who conquered China and Northern Vietnam in the 13th century. Her people have lived in this area for generations, farming rice and corn and raising water buffalo, chickens, and pigs. Also in the area are other ethnic minority tribes such as the Dao, Zhai, and more. It is these minorities that have farmed the famous rice terraces that have long drawn tourists to Sapa.

Dramatic mountain views are another draw, though I haven’t seen much of them. The clouds are low lying, covering the tops of the mountains in a grey blanket and obscuring the truth of them—their mass, their height, their shape.

We stop in Lao Chai Hmong village for lunch, which is a family-style spread with rice, spring rolls, chicken with vegetables, and a tomato and tofu curry, all of which is delicious. Little Hmong girls stand next to us with woven bracelets in their hands, murmuring words that could be English or could be Hmong, but they’re mumbling so much that it doesn’t matter. And when we shake our heads and say “no thank you no thank you no thank you” they don’t budge, just continue staring and holding out the bracelets and murmuring. It feels rude, but only by ignoring them will they go away.

The villages are in the rice fields. A central road runs through a cluster of buildings, but then it’s narrow cement roads, hardly wide enough for a car, and paths through the rice terraces. Homes are scattered because they are built among the rice terraces rather than in a centralized town space. Cloths hang on lines beneath overhangs, though I don’t know how they ever dry in this humidity. Dogs laze on cement, chickens run free and ducks play in water. Every free space is green and growing, either rice or flowers or corn or other vegetables. Water buffalo stand in small shelters, their eyes big as they watch us pass.

But the area is no stranger to tourists trekking through. Buildings advertise coffee and tea in English and some restaurants sell pizza. In the town centers, buildings are full of woven scarves and bags and shirts and lanterns for sale.

We continue on into a Zhai village and then into another Hmong Village, finally ending in Hau Thau Village at about 5pm where Tom Tom and La La live. We wait outside the supermarket for Tom Tom to buy some ingredients for dinner. The market is indoors and full of the kind of food and appliances that you might see anywhere. One whole wall is dedicated to displaying rice cookers.

We follow Tom Tom up a steep cement road and then on a narrow path past some of ther neighbors’ homes until finally we reach hers. Her home is built among the rice terraces (her family’s rice terraces). A massive cement slab covers the same area as our cabin and deck and a two story wooden home stands upon it. The roof is corrugated metal sheets which overhang the house by a large margin to create a dry outdoor area. The house itself is rectangular. There are two doors on the front, one opens into a narrow kitchen with a fireplace, a small table, two taps in the wall at about thigh height, and about four feet of counter space. An internal door leads into the large main room, as the second external door opens into this space as well. A steep staircase leads to the upstairs loft and a bedroom is tucked into the back wall. This is Tom Tom’s bedroom. Two tables and a few large jugs of water sit in the main room. Lastly, several bedrooms open off to the right. The wood is shiny and lacquered, but the panels aren’t tight. Gaps large enough to stick a finger through are found all through the house. But the roof is watertight and that is really what’s important. It’s not cold, although I’ve read that it can get cold in the winter. It will snow on the mountain tops (though not in the valleys), so that is pretty cold for a non-airtight house.

Upstairs is all open with mattresses on the floor and blankets hung between. This is where I will sleep. Another guest who has been with Tom Tom for a few days tells me that usually her three children sleep in the loft too, but she’s full up with tourists, so I think the kids are going to sleep in the bedroom with Tom Tom and her husband.

We sit outside and Tom Tom brings us tea, then we help her and her husband make dinner, shredding carrots and a vegetable that she calls “shu shu” and chopping bell peppers and rolling spring rolls. But when it’s time to do all the cooking, she sends us back outside.

The homestay experience is a little bit different than I was expecting, mostly because there are a lot more people. I’d anticipated maybe 3 or 4 total people, but Tom Tom is hosting eleven people tonight. And nine of them are Israeli. A group of 6 and a group of 3. The group of six seems to have no interest in speaking anything other than Hebrew, but two of the others are keen for conversation.

We talk a lot about their military service and especially how they might get called up to participate in the Gaza conflict once they get home. It’s so weird hearing them talk about how, when the conflict first erupted, Israeli people were leaping at the chance to get called up. And even now, they speak about it with such nonchalance, how when they get back home they will be doing university, but will probably get called up for a month here and there to serve. To be in tanks, to watch people die. The guy, who was 27, talked about how he’d already been called up once. How he spent 24 hours in Gaza and one of his commanders was killed but he couldn’t think about it until he was back, and then it hit him all at once.

I was fascinated by the conversation, but also tremendously sad that these young people have to experience this. And also that they are so indoctrinated to believe that this conflict is right, that this is the right way. I understand that the military has to teach their soldiers this, otherwise they wouldn’t go to war. And, that it’s a mental defense mechanism, as well–they have to believe they are right, that the conflict is just, that Israel is doing the right thing, or else how can they live with themselves? But it’s all so sad.

When dinner is served, Tom Tom eats with us and, again, I have a million questions. She tells me that she never went to school. She lived far away from the school in the village and her mom didn’t like to have her far away, so she never went. She had an arranged marriage at 18 and had her first kid at 21. Ten years ago, she decided to learn English so that she wouldn’t have to work in the rice fields. So she started following tourists and helping other trekking guides. She taught herself English from listening and trying to speak. Only in the last few years has she figured out how to text her guests in English. But she can’t read Vietnamese and speaks English better than Vietnamese (her mother tongue is Hmong). So, everyday that she has guests she takes them trekking through the villages and makes them breakfast and dinner and has enough beds to sleep at least twelve people plus her family. And, when she doesn’t have guests, I ask?

She works in the rice fields.

It’s the Hmong women who are trekking guides, who have taught themselves English. Tom Tom’s husband and La La’s husband don’t speak any English beyond Hello and Thank You, and that is quite normal among the tribes. The men work the rice fields and take care of the kids and the women are guides and weavers (making clothes, lanterns, bracelets) and head into town to sell the goods they’ve made. If there aren’t tourists, then they help the men. And that is how it goes, it seems, from a young age to old age.

They have their babies at home, though, if there are complications, they can take a motorbike for half an hour to reach the Sapa hospital. They are predominantly Christian (French influence) but also, La La tells me, practice some shamanism, Buddhism, and Daoism. They are Vietnamese citizens, but their Vietnamese ID card has to have a Vietnamese name, not a Hmong name, so they have two names. Most kids go to school for free in the village until high school, then they have to go to Sapa and it’s no longer free. Rarely do people leave the village unless it’s to marry into a nearby village (like La La did). But it’s difficult to move to the city because it’s expensive. “Sometimes we have no money,” Tom Tom tells me. “But we always have food here, so it’s ok.” In the city, if they don’t have money, they also don’t have food.

The Israeli crew is up until 2am drinking and smoking and playing games, so I don’t get a very good night’s sleep, but I’m still awake around 7:30. The only other non-Israeli guest (a 23-year old from the Dolomites), is also awake. He’s been staying with Tom Tom for five days and she tells him that the group is going to hike a route he’s already been on, but La La can take him somewhere else. He says that’s what he wants. Tom Tom looks at me and says I can go too, since the Israelis are all still asleep. “You can go with him and go fast,” Tom Tom tells me. “Or you can come with us and probably go very slow.”

When our two groups met up yesterday, there was a lot of waiting around for some of the Israelis to catch up, so I believe her when she says they’ll probably be slow. I jump at the chance to go with the smaller group and with the one other person who won’t exclusively speak Hebrew.

I am so glad I did.

It was beautiful walking between all the villages the day before, but it wasn’t what I’d imagined when I’d imagined trekking in Sapa. To me, trekking means walking on paths, not roads. It means going into the mountains, not just following the roads.

This time we did exactly that. We got muddy and slipped and slid and walked past herds of water buffalo and crossed unbridged streams and climbed up and up and up and up and I got super sweaty. It wasn’t raining, but it may as well have been for how damp I was. And I was not alone. The guy from the Dolomites was pretty sweaty too, though La La seemed unaffected!

We walked through bamboo forests and through clouds so that we could see no more than fifteen feet in any direction and trekked around the muddy edges of rice terraces and still we climbed up. After a break in a village for lunch, we kept going. The rain came up and I was too hot to put on my raincoat so I followed La La’s lead and just got out my umbrella. Hiking with an umbrella is not something I’d ever done before, but it’s the way of things here.

We got to a spot that La La said had excellent views, but we were wreathed in clouds. We took photos anyway. We were all smiles just for the fun of being out and working hard.

Continuing on, we were blessed. Just as we got to the top of the mountain, some of the clouds began to lift. At another viewpoint a few minutes later, the sun came out and the valley opened up before us. For the first time, I got to see the tops of the mountains, got to see the expanse of the green valley and the hundreds of rice terraces. We stayed for a while, just enjoying the sun and watching the clouds move and dance, obscuring everything for a few short minutes and then moving on, a lively sea below us.

It was a slipping and sliding descent for about half an hour into Sapa to end the trek. With the clouds lifted, I could actually see the mountains around Sapa. It made me ache a little bit for my own mountain towns back home.

We sat for a little by the lake, then exchanged photos and goodbyes, splitting up after a glorious day of hiking. That one of the weird things about traveling. Sharing an amazing experience with people, and then realizing you will probably never see each other again.

The fleeting nature of it, the ephemeral relationships are, in some ways, part of the magic. And the people (minus the 2am partying), the guide, the mountains, and the tough scrambling hike all conspired to make Sapa better than I could have imagined. It was everything I wanted out of the experience.