27 July: Sapa

Today the big trek started, it had rained the night before, but now there was only a light drizzle. We got up and headed to the market for breakfast, where we met John and Barbra, sitting at our veg & tofu soup lady's stall. We chatted for a few minutes, before walking across from them to our breakfast restaurant for Pho Bo. We had very limited time to have breakfast and collect our bags before we were off on the trek. We met our guide at 09h30, there were two others who would join us, but they were only walking for one day. We had thought based on past communication with our guide that his English was reasonably good, we were wrong. Few of our questions could be answered which led to inevitable frustration.

Our route led us out of SaPa, heading down to the valley, as we walked an ever increasing number of trekking groups joined in. By the time we were out of SaPa there were almost 60 people on the road with us. We walked a little faster than them, allowing us to be in front of the crowd and have unrestricted views of the valleys below and hills above. We were followed closely by two traditionally clad ladies who wanted to sell us souvenirs, they were so persistent that they followed us until we reached our halfway house at lunch! About 3 km outside the town there was a dirt road turning off the tar road, we asked our guide whether we should follow that route, his reply was more of a question than a response and we deduced that we needed to keep on walking ahead.

We had walked quite a few kilometers on the tar road and tried to convey to our guide that we didn't like walking on a tar road, rather we wanted to do some trekking, but trying to communicate the message was near to impossible. Frustrated that our expensive hiking trip was a glorified walk down the tar road, we decided to leave it and see what happened. It was only after we had walked another 2km and could see that the majority, if not all, of the people who had followed us had turned off on that dirt road. Our guides reply was that people doing a 1 day trek follow that road, this was the one we had asked earlier if we could rather turn off. We had walked at least 8km, before turning off on a dirt road walking down to the river below.

On the way down we passed a small house where a woman was spinning traditional cloth material with an old machine, they even dyed the clothing with extracts from plants which they could show us. Leanne tried to do some spinning, but the communication gap was to big to really understand what she was supposed to be doing and in the end she gave way to the Japanese man, who broke one of the pedals. A distance further we spotted an interesting gadget, a wooden beam which was suspended in a balancing act over another one. The front part was hollowed out and looked like that of a spoon, on the rear section a cylinder shaped piece of wood was attached at a 90 degree angle. Water would flow into the spoon shaped part weighing it down and allowing the rear part to lift up until the water washed out and the rear of the beam would come crashing down on a bowl filled with rice. The cylinder would mash the rice into fine particles, the rice could then be separated from the inedible parts which would be fed to the chickens.

We walked on a little further until we crossed the river to a halfway house were we would eat lunch. We arrived there at the same time as our 4th member, a Dutch man, who had decided to take the other route down the mountain through the rice paddies with the magnitudes. The halfway house was filled with Westerners and hordes of locals who wanted to sell their goods to them. It was here that we lost our followers after they learnt we weren't going to purchase anything. For lunch we had 2 minute noodles and an egg and shared a litchi drink. We rested for about an hour before setting off for TaVan village, another 1 ½ hours walk away, still on a wide dirt road, but at least here we were walking through the rice fields with water buffalo and children playing along the road.

We reached the homestay and sat down for tea with another guide, his English was a lot better than our guide's and we could get quite a few answers to our questions. Although some were a little funny, for instance the clothing is made from either cotton, silk or marijuana plants... After a nice long rest, we went walking through the village, our guide didn't want us walking alone so he joined us. He couldn't really show us a route so everywhere we would have to ask, "this way?", his reply would always be "okay, yes", in the end we walked were we wanted. We walked quite a distance through the rice fields, before turning down towards the river. The river was flowing very strongly, but made for a relaxing rest. Leanne even took off her shoes to enjoy the cold mountain water.

Walking back through the village we were encircled by children wanting to sell us trinkets, some of them were able to communicate very well in English. We made a stop on the way up at a community center where a swing had been built from bamboo and children were walking on sticks like the acrobats in a circus, we tried but with no success. Heading back we stopped at a lady's house where we enjoyed tea and asked questions about all the different pop star posters in the kitchen :-)

Back at the homestay we met up with 11 new travelers from all across the world, 2 from Oz, 3 Ireland, 2 England, 2 Switzerland, 1 America and another 1 from Holland. They were playing all kinds of drinking games with beer, we decided not to join, but chatted to the Dutch woman while amusing ourselves watching the rest. We had some good laughs as the penalties were distributed. Later our guide came to ask whether we wanted to eat with the family or outside with the rest, we decided to stay where we were. The food came and we were amazed at how much and how nice it was. Everything from Tofu, beef, chicken, pork and vegetables, rice and then of course the rice wine and shot glasses. We really packed in to accumulate some energy for, as our guide put it, the difficult day tomorrow.

The rest of the evening was spent around the table singing different songs, led by the the American with his guitar. The Irish trio were also brilliant at remembering words to different songs and the rest filled in what we knew. Then came the part where different anthems were sung and Leanne and I patriotically sang ours. After the anthems our guide came to join in and sang a song in Vietnamese, quite good. The host also tried, but that really was an ear sore. Everyone slowly but surely headed to sleep and we followed just after 23h00.