A Sapa Christmas

The night before Christmas we venture into Sapa. The layer of fog gives the city a mystic feeling, as if everything is moving slower and calmer than the reality of flashing lights and unending requests to “Buy from me now”. We stumble into a Christmas Eve market piled high with Asian tourists and raw meats and, Lindsey’s favorite, a snow machine. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Christmas Day is spent between Trip Advisor’s #1 and #2 recommended dining options: Hill Station Deli and Hill Station Restaurant. There is a brief interlude at Cat Cat Village, a museum meets real life tour through the lives of the tribal people. Every souvenir we buy is proclaimed to be a Christmas gift. We finish the day with a trip on the Polar Express, otherwise known as the Sapaly overnight train back to Hanoi. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

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A night in a local home near Sapa

An overnight train combined with hours of carefully teetering over rice fields in the mountains of Sapa left us exhausted. Sam led the way up one last hill in the village of Ta Van to our home for the night. We’d opted to stay in a local house, but didn’t fully understand what that meant until we arrived.

“Hello” was one of the few English words our host spoke. Sam motioned to us to remove our boots and put on slippers as to not get the house dirty. It was dark except for the fire pit in the kitchen. Our host squatted back down over the fire, stirring the vegetables we’d soon eat. The house was large, but empty. The kitchen had only a few low stoops for sitting, a trash can filled with rice, a wooden table for meal prep, and a cabinet with small bowls and chopsticks. A waterspout in the corner was used for washing dishes. There were five red plastic chairs and a folding table that moved from room to room depending on the need. The living room and two beds were not separated by a wall. Behind the TV there was a ladder to the loft where we found two hard mats and a thick blanket: our bedroom. The bathroom was outside and the porch had the most magical view overlooking the village.     

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Sam joined our host by the fire. A little boy wandered in watching videos on a cellphone, the only other light in the room. We drank Coca-Colas outside and listened as the oldest of her three sons motioned to us to come and eat. On the folding table was now a spread of chicken with onions, pork with carrots, tofu with chilis, greens, and a mound of white rice. We scooped rice into small bowls and picked at the rest with chopsticks, watching as her sons ate quietly and quickly, eager to get back to their friends in the living room still watching TV. Our host’s husband came home just as we were finishing and insisted on sharing shot after shot of homemade rice wine served out of an Aquafina water bottle.  Not long after the power went out, the boys scattered, and everyone grabbed their headlamps. One single candle was lit in the center of the table.

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We slept so well that night, waking early to the sounds of roosters spread across Ta Van. Ducks wandered quietly into the kitchen as we sat outside drinking coffee. They were shooed away, then fed dried corn off the cob. Our host went back to cooking the pig breakfast. We felt so well cared for in her home. We were struck by the obvious: This is very different, but how different was it really? Little boys still watched TV, played with cars, and made swords out of bamboo. The family ate dinner together, talked late into the night, and took care of one another. Even in seemingly tougher areas, home is still home.

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Surprises of the Hmong

The Sapa Sisters tour that we took while in Sapa is run by local Hmong women. Sam was our wonderful guide!

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1.) As recently as 20 years ago, the Hmong women got married at just 14 or 15 years old. A man would decide which woman he wanted to marry, then find 10 friends to help him kidnap her at the market. (We’d hoped kidnap was a more playful term here, but it isn’t.) He’d take her to his house for three days and rape her, then bring the child back to her parent’s home. Her parents, fearing she’d be pregnant, would force her to marry the man, meaning she’d move to his village and spend the rest of her life caring for him and their children.  The practice was officially banned when women started committing suicide as a result.  However, this still happens some today, but less and less.

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2.) The Hmong continue to put a wonderful energy into making their local clothing when western style clothes have become cheaper and more plentiful.  To begin to describe this process, the Hmong women start with hemp, patiently turning that into string during a 3 to 4 month process.  They dye it a deep blue from a plant, leaving the skin on their fingers permanently a greenish-blue. They weave the string into fabric with a loom and then very carefully hand-stitch together many delicate patterns and designs into the fabric. The Hmong women are supposed to make one outfit for every member of their family every new year. Making these clothes is so clearly a labor of love, pride, and appreciation for their own culture and tradition.

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3.) Most of the Hmong people practice a religion described as shaman. When you get sick, it means your spirit has left you. You go to the shaman, a very old woman, and she tells you how to get better. If you have a headache, she prescribed boiling water applied to your forehead for 20 minutes. If this doesn’t work, you go back and the shaman gives you a silver bracelet. If, after a few days, this still doesn’t work, you go to a new shaman.

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4.) Hmong parents want sons. Though daughters may help them with housework, a son will care for them when they’re old. Often, women will have 3 or 4 girls, hoping the next will be a boy. Sometimes, they’ll buy a boy from another family who has a few or whose parents are addicted to opium. If a woman produces no sons, she stands the risk of her husband divorcing her. Women, on the other hand, would have a very hard time divorcing their husbands, even in situations of abuse or alcoholism.

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5.) Dozens of little girls ran to us along our hike, selling bracelets for 10,000 dong (equivalent to 50 cents). We had to decline though, in the hopes that their parents would begin sending them to school instead of off to work. It wasn’t until recently that the Vietnamese government helped to build schools, dotting every village in yellow buildings. Sam, our guide, never saw the inside of a classroom as a child.

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6.) Our Hmong guide seemed so satisfied and fulfilled.  It is so easy for us coming from our western ways to pass judgment on what success should look like, or on what everyone should be striving for in their life.  Sam, our guide, however, seems to have life more figured out than most of us.  She loves being a guide, and she hopes her daughters also get to be guides when they grow up.  When asked where she would want to visit or travel, she said to a beach.  Not somewhere too far or too foreign, just something a little new.  Sam is in the process of building a wonderful and simple new home, which she was so proud to share with us.  She sends her daughters to school every day, takes care of the home, spends days at a time with tourists sharing her countryside with them, and just has a zeal for life that was contagious.  Thank you Sam for sharing a piece of your world with us.

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