Peeking through the mist at the beauty of Sapa

Sapa, Northern Vietnam – 42 days on the road, and the final venue is three days in the mountains up in the north-west of Vietnam, in what the French termed the “Tonkinese Alps”, right on the Chinese border. It’s remote, and the only reasonable way to get there is the overnight train from Hanoi. Surprisingly, we slept fairly well, no doubt enhanced for me by the complimentary beer; nice touch - British Rail? We were woken abruptly at 4:30am by a strong rapping on our cabin door – “Lao Cai! Lau Cai!” One of the few times you don’t celebrate a train arriving an hour early. From there it’s an hours drive through winding mountain roads, made more atmospheric by a total cloud whiteout and torrential rain.

And so we arrived in Sapa – WOW! It’s a rich tribal area, largely untouched and untroubled by the emerging 21st Century, with time honoured customs, folklore, stories and a wonderful sense of tradition. The recent influx of tourism to this remote region is changing things, albeit slowly, and in many cases unfairly. The hotels (even those based on so-called “Social Enterprise”) are syphoning profits without significant investment in the local culture. Hmong and Tzao people are used to travelling significant distances to tend their crops, search for firewood, gather water, attend the local market… yet now an additional journey, to Sapa, basket strapped to your back, filled with handicrafts to sell to tourists. “Why you not buy from me?” is a VERY valid question, yet an unanswerable one too when its repeated with each footstep.

I found Sapa to be a place where you question the Western right or morality in deciding what’s best, how a culture should develop, what is the nature of wealth. Is progress a satellite dish? Strangely the one beneficial technology norm is the ubiquitous mobile phone… Sapa is a place where by many definitions, people are INCREDIBLY poor. Extreme Poverty is often defined as living on less than $1/day; the hill tribe people of Sapa live on far less – but still they have adequate housing, generally plentiful food (it’s such a rich agrarian landscape), make their own clothing from hemp, have access to education (but generally shun it)… it’s a very hard life, but one that has been resistant to change. So what is poverty? And what right does a Westerner have to either define it, impose it, or explore whether “progress” is appropriate?

May, our guide, is from a Black Hmong village ~18km from Sapa. She grew up with 8 brothers & sisters (the “law” in Vietnam is two children maximum) in a very rural community where as children you were expected to search for firewood, collect crops, sew and harvest rice… the immediate “child labour” view is of a childhood lost, yet the attraction of an incredibly simple lifestyle with its ingrained traditions did often shine through. Arranged marriages are the norm, but not in the sense of interviews and pairings, but more of a “supermarket”. Parents of young men seek brides of the age of 14+, where the only qualification is availability and dowry (chickens and pigs); most families are started before 16. May didn’t marry till 18, and as is traditional went to live with her husband’s family. She has a four year old son who she is incredibly proud of. Yet the story from there develops in a way that is all too familiar elsewhere. A male dominated culture, where women are expected to do most everything, including the heavy manual labour. The men spend time together, drinking the local rice whisky, come home and if you’re lucky sleep it off, if not violence is not only normal but a male right. May was gracious and careful when I asked was her husband a good man, but she has managed to step forward. As an un-educated person, she taught herself English by speaking with tourists and working on a local market craft stall. She has been a tour guide for five years now, a “salaried” position (except we would call it freelance; no clients, no pay), and is much in demand as her intimate local tribal knowledge and familiarity with the landscape allow her to show an extra dimension beyond the tourist centre of Sapa.

We spent three days in this mountainous and scenic gem. May led us on treks through remote villages, to local markets which have likely been the same for centuries, and through the wonderful landscape of terraced rice fields. Yet we will have to return… not only because it was a place that captured us, but because the continuous fog with less than 10m visibility didn’t allow us to wonder at the panorama of peaks and crags; it was the third day before we realised there was a lake and Catholic cathedral right next to our hotel. Yet still it held a charm that resonated in a unique way…

Sapa was extra-ordinary, but mainly because its people and landscape are quite simply that. Beautiful!