Sapa

We took a night train from Hanoi, 8 hours north to the small town of Lao Cai on the Chinese border. When we arrived at the train station at 4:30 in the morning, we were piled into a mini-bus with a mixture of other weary travelers and early rising locals. It was an hour drive from Lao Cai to Sapa on a winding mountain road that climbed over a mile of elevation through the alpine terrain to the old French hill station of Sapa. The dense, low lying mists seemed to have followed us all the way from Halong Bay, and the scenery that materialized through breaks in the fog was on a very grand scale. Mountain peaks soared over head, while cascading rice terraces followed the steep contours of the hillsides as they plunged into the valley below.

The town of Sapa is an interesting mix of French colonial architecture and traditional hill tribe structures. The hill tribe people who live in the mountains of north Vietnam are composed of a variety of nomadic ethnic minority groups whose farms and villages are scattered throughout the mountainous highlands. Although farming remains the primary source of subsistence for many of the these villagers, the rapidly developing tourism industry has provided new economic opportunities for some who now earn their living by selling handicrafts and embroidery to travelers as well as offering homestays and guided tours of their villages. It is a common sight in Sapa to see western travelers flanked on all sides by groups of Black H'mong or Red Dzoa women dressed in their traditional attire of elaborately embroidered clothing, offering up a selection of hand crafted garments or jewelry. Although the growing tourism market has offered new commercial opportunities to some of the hill tribe people, it is also contributing to the erosion of their traditional way of life and has lead to some forms of exploitation as children are often forced to sell trinkets or beg for money from travelers. The Vietnamese government has set up schools and health clinics in some of the villages in an attempt to integrate the younger generation in mainstream Vietnamese society. Although this will provide greater economic opportunities to what are some of the poorest communities in the country, it is also seen by some as an unwanted effort towards assimilation, while many of the tribal people wish to remain autonomous, and do not consider themselves a part of this or any nation.

For now, the tribal people, and particularly the youth, are living in between worlds. On our first hike in the mountains overlooking Sapa, we were passed by a group of Black H'mong teenagers dressed in their striking ensemble of of indigo dyed linen clothing, skirts, tunics and cylindrical hats. Every one of them was either talking on a cellphone or bobbing along to a track on their iPod as they hiked upward through the rocky terrain toward their village.

Later, we took a guided tour through a couple of hill tribe villages in the valley. We purchased some handicrafts and walked along the terraced rice patties. Once we were out of Sapa and down in the villages, nobody really paid us any mind, as they went about their daily business of plowing the fields and planting the new season's crops. This life of subsistence farming truly did feel a world apart from our daily lives in the "developed" world, and though it would be absurd to idealize this life of endless toiling and laboring and trusting in the land to provide, it struck both Tara and I profoundly the degree to which we are disconnected from the sources of our own subsistence back home. From the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, to the endless barrage of new products, we are so far removed from the origins and from the true cost of the items we consume on a daily basis.

After a couple of days of hiking through the breathtaking mountain scenery, we were ready to begin our long journey back to the beach. We spent our last afternoon in Sapa drinking Bia Hoi with a rotating cast of locals, all of whom were eager to practice their English with a couple of "Tay balos," a teasingly derogative term that translates more or less to scruffy western backpacker. Every time we finished a glass, it seemed that there was someone else there with a new pitcher to top us back off again. It was a good thing that our bus come along when it did, or else I may spent the whole afternoon at that Bia Hoi joint and Tara would have had to carry me back to the hotel.