July 20th, 2017
July 20
We woke up and it wasn’t pouring rain. Seems like a good day to head out on a trek then eh?
We spoke with Mr Kong at the front desk and he arranged for us to have a car, a driver and an English speaking guide to take us out to see the countryside, a couple waterfalls and then take us to a hilltribe village. We have no idea what all this really means but it sounds good, so we wait 15 or so minutes and a young Vietnamese man and a lady in full hilltribe garb come into the hotel lobby. The shake our hands and tell us their names. The driver-no idea. The guide- I’m going to take a stab at the spelling – Dong. Not like the Vietnamese currency, but more with a soft “g” at the end. And we are on our way, she hands us a couple waters each and we walk out to the car. We start driving up up up to a lookout point that had no lookout as we were encapsulated in clouds and then the Lost waterfall. The story of the name has something to do with couples coming there and then getting lost, or maybe one of them getting lost. Something like that. Dong’s English was pretty good but occasionally some of the finer points would get lost in the translation. There was a long walk to get into the waterfall but it was totally worth it. Very scenic and zen. Not many others – this could very well have something to do with the fact it was now pouring rain. Luckily I have our Seahawks coloured “body condoms” as we now lovingly refer to these disposable ponchos. What a sight….
The walk did give Dong and I a chance to chat and visit. She asked me about kids. I said 3. Girls or boys? I said girls. She said “I have more children that that” wow- it’s a throw down! But she has me whooped. She has 7 children. 15, 12, 9, 7, 4, 1.5, 7 months. First 5 are girls, then boy boy. She told me all about why they need to have children until they have a boy, and how she had the boy and was done, but then oops, four months later she was pregnant again. But it was a boy so all was good. They need boys, bcz boys (and their wives) are who stays and lives with you and cares for you. All her daughters would eventually leave her by 19 or 20 at the latest when they Marry to go be with heir husband’s parents/family. So she will have two sons who will marry and then stay with her always. She lives with her husband’s family and it is her mother inlaw that keeps the 7 kids while she is at work. How different is this. She got married at 19 had a baby by 21. I meant to ask if she got to choose her husband but I forgot. So do the math she is 36 with 7 kids, one who is a couple years from getting married herself. How different lives can be!!
Then we are back to the car and off to the Silver Waterfall. This is basically a straight up climb, with stairs thankfully. To a waterfall we can’t see the top of, the clouds are so low. But beautiful none the less. These waterfalls are running at full tilt due to the volume of rain over the past month (not to mention the last few days/typhoon weather) .
There is something very powerful about waterfalls-they just never get old….
Back into the car, VERY WET! But still having fun. Off to Dong’s village. We drove for about 30-40 minutes on some roads that would never be open in America. They just wouldn’t allow traffic to pass on them . I use the term “roads” very loosely in fact. Regardless, our driver persevered. Troy said “there’s no way this is his car” probably true. These “roads” here have got to be very hard on a car’s suspension.
So he pulls over and drops us off with Dong. We really don’t know what’s going on, but we follow her. And an entourage of other hilltribe ladies. This makes me nervous. I know exactly what is going down her. They are going to pester me to buy crap I don’t want/need and probably already have. Oh well, I will do my best to dodge. They are persistent however, asking me questions, smiling, showing an interest. Dong stops and tells us stuff as we walk down down down into valley (still raining btw).
We see how they husk rice, cut and dry hemp, weave, grow indigo and dye clothes with it, grind corn, all the different types rice and how they farm that among other things.
We saw a really really drunk hilltribe lady. She was putting on quite the show, she had a group of people all around her including children and she was yelling and slapping herself in the face. Dong said to us she drank too much of the “strong water”. Jeez, I’ll say! Sorry I didn’t have the nerve to take a photo of her, although in hindsight it might have been worth it.
We stopped at a place to eat lunch. They brought us steamed rice, lemongrass chicken, a pork dish, stir fried veggies, watermelon, pops. Pretty good spread.
I hesitate to call it a restaurant, although Dong did. The moment I saw the guy sweeping the tables with the same Broom he used to sweep the floor, and the dog run off with the poop filled diaper from the baby they were changing in the corner I kind of had new rules about what I wanted to call the place. Alas, we had finished eating (mostly) by this point, so it was what it was. Definitely no 30 second rule on dropped food however. Dropped food, gone forever. Threw it over the rail into the river below. (That Dong told us they couldn’t drink because it was filled with “peepee and poopoo”. Direct quote no word of a lie. Like I said- pretty good English.
So funny story about getting pressured into buying something. There were these three ladies-they were relentless. They were hanging out trying to get me to buy stuff while we were waiting for our food. They even said to me, “you buy one thing-we will go away” they know how to hard sell. But I really didn’t want any of their stuff. It looked so old and dirty, like they had been trying to sell it to tourists (with no luck) for 50 years. But they had bracelets, so I said ok, I’ll buy 2. How much? They say 20,000 dong ($1 usd). I’m thinking it is worth one dollar to get them to leave me in peace. So I pick two, pass over the 20,000 dong and as promised, they move on. Then after we eat three CUTE little girls come over-oh no. My weakness…. but they have the same bracelets I just bought. I mostly avoid eye contact as they talk themselves down in price and they get to a spot where they are 2 for 10,000. Arg what?? I just paid 20,000 for two. But it’s only 50 cents. I can live with that. I decide to bail and go to bathroom (which may or may not have been a Wise move given the condition of the place) but either way it got me out of the sticky spot with those cute girls. When I come back Troy is busting a gut laughing. I say “what?” He says the girls talked them selves down to 10 for 10,000 dong. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? He says it was my own fault for not haggling! Good lord…….
Another funny story, one of the hilltribe ladies that I would have sworn was close to 70 years old asked me how old I was. I told her 47. She laughed and said I was older than her. I added her how old she was. She said 46. That’s how tough their life is on them. There was no way she looked 46. I know I don’t really look my age either but wow. I hope my age Image problem is the opposite…..we joked about her being my little sister. (Also she couldn’t have been more than 4’10” tall). She has 5 kids all under 17….
We walked a bunch more to the next village. And all I can think at this point is, I hope we don’t have to walk back up that mountain. As enjoyable as the whole thing was, we had walked several km by this point, most of it in the rain and I had some kind of rash, bug bite or allergic reaction to a plant or something occurring on my right shoulder.
But Alas, our taxi driver was at the next village and was ready to whisk us back to Sa Pa. Thank goodness because the hilltribe ladies that had been following us for two hours were pretty sure I was going to buy something from them. But I managed to duck into the car and avoid eye contact while we pulled away. In all fairness, I did tell them “no” from the very beginning. I think they mostly count on wearing you down…..not me. I’d already splurged on my grossly overpriced bracelets from that other lady.
