November 14 and 15 Sapa Area

We met our guide, Tuan (0982844115, vuanhtuan@gmail.com) and he filled in our permission forms for our trek and filed them with the local authorities. Tuan is from the Tay tribe. We are headed for a Red Dzao village a hour and a half by car, then an hour and a half walk down the road, called Tan Kim Village to the southeast from Sapa, and about 2,000 feet lower elevation.

On hike to Ban Tan Kim

Ancestor alter in Red Dzao home

Woman working on red scarf headdress

Red Dzao sales women in front of Topas Eco-lodge

 Seeing many Black Mung and Red Zao along the road, we finally reached the Topaz Travel ecolodge, where about 20 Red Dzao women were waiting to sell their wares.  They would follow the foreigners for miles talking to them, hoping that acting as their "friends" would give them a chance of making a sale at some point. Our guide Tuan had said this ended up with the women wasting a lot of time waiting for the rare sale instead of doing more productive jobs. Although we told our two followers that we were not going to buy anything that day, they nevertheless followed us all the way down the very muddy road to the village, which turned out to be their own.

Making our way up a village path to the school, we met the teachers and gave them enough pens and pencils for the entire primary school.  We then made our way through the village, sometimes chatting a bit and giving out shampoo or sewing needles, until we reached a Red Zao home, where our guide took us in and showed us around the home.  The lady of the house was embroidering, and she was happy when Leslie gave her sewing needles. The village moved to its location 8 years earlier, when its location further from the road was subject to an avalanche which killed several villagers. While the concrete foundation was new, the village homes were constructed of wood which was from their homes in the old village, often ten generations old. We noted the home's shrine for ancestor worship and papers to ward off evil spirits or ghosts.  The Red Zao are both animists and ancestor worshipers. Tuan pointed out where the floor had been broken in order to have a fire directly on the soil that was needed for a ceremony to heal the man of the house when he had become ill. Shortly after the story, and the husband showed up, talked a bit and admired the lipstick that Leslie had given his wife.

After farewells, we went through the village, out the other side, and back up the road to where there was a local restaurant, where we had the picnic lunch Tuan had brought.  We then hiked back up the muddy road to our starting point, gave the sales ladies along the road each a lipstick, which made us very popular, and drove back to our hotel by about 4 PM.  The whole excursion, which was supposed to be a one-day treck reaching a village that was off the tourist track, made us realize that this area is in fact well covered by tourists, has modernized extensively, with roads going to all the villages, each house having at least one motorcycle, and Vietnamese taught extensively in the schools. That said, more  of the villagers, particularly the women, still wear traditional clothing than is the case in Laos.

Red Dzao lady in market still wearing helmet - 

!

Little girl in CatCat village - Black Hmong

2 Black Hmong women carrying charcoal in Sapa town

Next morning, after our sumptuous breakfast buffet, we headed down to CatCat waterfall and cultural village, about 1,000 feet below Sapa.  We discovered that we had to pay $2 each to get a ticket to enter the area, hiking down steps fringed with souvenir handicraft shops, and some model houses where the local ladies were dying hemp, sewing, or otherwise showing local traditions. There were many motorcycles waiting at the bottom offering to take us back up for $1 each, but we decided we needed the exercise and sweated up the steep road, stopping for lunch at a restaurant at the base of Sapa that offered views of where we had come from. We wandered through the market, where we again found some colorful people to photograph, then packed up our hotel room, took our luggage to the travel agency where our bus is to pick us up, and settled into our hotel lobby to try to get our our blog while we have WiFi and internet. We should have an hour and a half ride to Lao Cai, catch the night train at 8:30PM to Hanoi, where we should arrive at 5 AM on November 16.