Sapa, by train

Posted under Southeast Asia 2009

As passengers on the “Night Train” from Hanoi to Sapa, we were entitled to our own sleeping compartment. Well not really entitled, I guess, but if you paid a little extra you could have your own compartment. Have you ever watched those old “classic” movies  –the black and white kind where something untoward is going to happen on the train? Well we lived the feeling. I kept looking in the hallway for Alfred Hitchcock, I didn’t spot him, but I’m certain he was there. We arrived at the end of the line at 5:30 A.M. Now this is even before my breakfast, but we manage to extricate ourselves and our “way too much luggage” out of the train and into our car for the hour drive to Sapa.

 

Very hard to say too much about Sapa, from a scenic standpoint, but suffice to saw it was awe-inspiring. This is an area in the northwest of Vietnam that has historically been inhabited by the hill tribes, and there are many. The ones around Sapa are primarily Hmong or Dzao peoples, and they are evident by their costumes. Having very little to do, the women of these groups while away their time by harvesting hemp fiber and weaving it into cloth. They then have only to dye the cloth and cut and sew it into clothes. To counteract the drabness, they can then hand embroider elaborate designs on the new clothing, with threads that they have also dyed. Of course, as the dyes that they use are all natural, they get to harvest the necessary plants for the required dyes. Any extras, they can take to town and try to sell to the tourists. This may give them a few coins to purchase possibly a piece of meat for when they get to make the evening meal. Now I possibly make this sound as though they must do this every day — and this is not really the case, for in the planting and harvesting season, they must attend to the rice fields, and some days they must gather firewood and so don’t have to go to market. This is in addition to having their obligatory child per year.

 

 Bonnie and I visited one of the mountain villages and had a guided tour by some of the women folk. These were more the elderly, who spent most of their day with embroidery and tourists. One of the more “chatty” of the ladies looked to be well into her nineties — she was fifty-two. It must be that the clean mountain air is not all that good for you after all.

 

It probably sounds as though the women have to do it all, and this is not really the case. The men, for the most part, have to make the rice paddies and prepare the fields for planting. They do this with the help of a water buffalo, if they can afford one. Now making a field in mountain country “ain’t no easy chore”. The solution here was to form a retaining wall from rock, and fill the formed area with the soil that you scrape from the area where you got the rock. You then form a new area from the lower level of the rock retainer. Some of these retained areas are no more than five or six feet wide. The end result is a terraced mountainside of arable fields. These fields, of course, had to be both level and parallel, as they had to be able to hold water for the rice paddies. The men also had to tend to the tobacco crops and manufacture and distill the rice wine. The rice wine is actually more like vodka, and is mostly for the men. The tobacco is also only for the men. I guess that the women could join them, if they would ever hurry up and get their work done.

 

In truth, the mountain area is very beautiful and the hill peoples are very friendly and although they have very little, appear to be quite happy. I guess that we sometimes lose perspective of what is really important.

 

As their entire existence relates to farming in mountainous country, I was going to offer them another solution for land preparation. Now I am unable to take credit for this, as it was actually put forth by my old buddy Art, and he came up with the idea without the benefit of even a degree in engineering. He surmised that if one were to take a D8 Cat and knock the tops off the mountains, you could push these mountaintops into the valleys, soon having a nice flat field. I was going to pass this information on, but I could not see a single D8 Cat in the entire area.

 

Next — back to Hanoi for a couple of days, our final days in Vietnam, and then over to Bangkok.