Christmas Eve at the Bac Ha Market.
This was the place to be on Sundays. Bac Ha. It's a 3 hour drive from Sapa, and the place that everyone goes on Sundays. The market draws in crowds of locals who set out on foot well before dawn, in order to sell and buy the household items they need for the week. This market has everything.
Wandering through the droves of fresh fruits and vegetables, my eyes roamed the strange foods, like a kid in a candy shop. Dragon fruit--a funny shaped red skinned fruit with narrowed almost flame shaped points that were tipped in green. This fruit was sweet like melon, served with the skin removed exposing the white flesh speakled with black seeds. The texture reminded me of kiwi fruit back home. The oranges were green here. The grapefruit with a 2 inch thick rinde. There were a million types of potatoes. A woman told me that the reason why Vietnamese families are so big is because of the sweet potatoe. In the winter there are only a few ways to keep warm, eating sweet potatoes and going to bed under layers of blankets. So when the sweet potatoes run out....well, you know....you go warm up under the covers. During the years of poor potatoe crops in Vietnam, there is a rise in the number of children born in the fall, many families having up to 10 children. This old wives tale gave me quite a giggle. And my giggle turned the heads of many others who giggled back.
You could buy anything on Sundays. It was the day to got your tools sharpened, buy the chickens and cattle, and horse, and dogs for upcoming meals (live of course). You could buy clothes and yarn and threads for making clothes. Shoes, and bags, and toiletries. You could buy tobacco or sit a stand smoking the local batch all afternoon until your eyes rolled back into your head. Restaraunt bars were set up, cooking the fresh picks into an afternoon meal. And then of course were the tourist booths full of blankets and clothes and scarves and anything else a tourist might want to take as a memory. Prices were automatically doubled for tourist faces and negotiations were stiff. But still a great experience, with nothing more than $20USD. The packed little lanes between stands were a maze of eye candy. So much to take in. So much to see. So much flooding all your senses. The smells pungent with pepper and ginger. The sounds loud with shouts of "buy something from me". A day of exhaustion. And at dusk, everything is packed up and the deserted streets clear out. It was Christmas Eve for us tourists. And the hustle and bustle of the Bac Ha market winded down the day.
This weary traveler walked a million miles today through the Bac Ha market. I spent the next hour sitting in a leather armed chair placed in a sunny breeze-way, sipping a Vietnamese tea and recieving the best lower body rub to date. My aching feet and fatigued legs were still recovereing from the steep slopes of Sapa trekking. Pure bliss. With my wallet a mere $6 lighter, my body seemed to be floating above the pavement. With a hot soak in a tub afterwards, I was ready for the evening meal. And even a little reminder that today was Christmas.