Sapa and last thoughts on Vietnam

For my last weekend in Vietnam, my colleague Leah and I went up to Sapa - a hill station on the Chinese border. We found this weekend package offered by Victoria hotel that included an overnight train ride to and from on their special car, which they referred to as the "Orient Express of Vietnam". It was certainly nice but the bunks were just nicer versions of indian sleeper cars. The pict is of the cafe car which was nice. We still had to share with two strangers. The bathrooms were probably worth the price alone!

Sapa is pretty amazing but in the end I left a bit torn. As a photo-addict I am completely in love with the minority tribes that inhabit the area and still dress in their traditional garb (I especially liked their legwarmers - check the pict of the girl!) But they were essentially surviving on the tourists like me who come to gawk and photograph them. So the charm of getting pictures of them wore off very quickly and it felt like the worst kind of voyeurism. And yet - the villages were fairly well off presumably because of our tourist dollars (or Dong to be accurate). The package included an "excursion" on Saturday that was actually lovely. It was a few hours of very light walking through some villages and the scenery and rice paddies were stunning. And although these villages too made their money mostly from tourists (one had village homestays and there were little tourist shops all along the way) it was a lot less intense. One of the outcomes of all the tourists is that everyone speaks decent English (which was very rare for the rest of my trip). But the "where are you from? how old are you?" gets pretty tiring.

I ended up buying some basic stuff from the one lady (close up picture) who had walked with us most of the way and just chatted with me rather than trying to sell me anything most of the way. The second day Leah and I walked up to the radio tower. I love these little hikes in Vietnam. We go all ready for hiking - geared up with water and proper shoes and day bags and everyone else is barefoot or in heels. I get all sweaty and everyone else is just enjoying the day with their kids. Silly white people. The area was surprisingly pretty. Crazy tourist ready with ice cream stands everywhere but still really nice. The area gets misty and then sunny so the views are always changing and pretty spectacular. I wasn't prepared for how pretty Vietnam is.

The train station is actually in a town called Lao Cai which is right on the Chinese border but oddly no chinese signs or evidence at all. Must be that the government wanted it to appear that people don't cross the border but seemed very strange. I gave the trinkets I had bought to Tenzing, my housekeeper and then showed her the pictures so she'd see who made them and her response was that they looked very Tibetan. I explained that we were close to china there and she said, "I don't like China". But she saw a lot of resemblance, even in the gold teeth of some of the ladies I took pictures of!

So that was it for Vietnam. My big take aways are I love the food. Everything is relative (everyone else found vietnam very chaotic and noisy and full of traffic while I was enjoying the peacefulness). Vietnam is gorgeous - i think Halong Bay is probably the prettiest place I've ever been. Love the internet connectivity - wireless everywhere! India has prepared me well and makes me appreciate how lovely everywhere else is.