Day 36. Sa Pa to Hanoi.

I arrived back in Hanoi at 5:30am this morning. My bunk mates last night were a couple from Vail, Colorado and a young gentleman from Kyoto, Japan, who is now living in Hanoi. He was quite concerned about my relatives in Tokyo! Mike, kai and natsu, i hope you are hanging in there! The couple were on their way to Halong Bay next and then to Bali. Bonnie and I had done Halong Bay on our trip here, where we sailed around the bay in one of those sailboats with the big orange sails. They cooked us a fresh fish and shrimp lunch right on board the boat, as we anchored amongst the giant limestone rocks. It was a remarkable experience (although, as Bonnie would attest to, it was a bit cold).

Yesterdays trek through the village was wonderful. The fog cleared up barely enough for me to capture some nice photos of the countryside.









While they usually do much of their field work with buffalo...


...many of the buffalo died last year during a very harsh winter, and they are forced to doing a lot of the field manually...





...while others watch the children....





This man was making an irrigation pipe....



...while this man makes stone souvenirs..this is of course one of the bigger ones!


I had the opportunity to chat with these four "friends" while I strolled through the village. The one to the far right spoke very good English (better than my educated male guide from Hanoi :-).


They were all married, including the very young girl on my right. The girls generally don't go to school...only the boys. These women considered themselves lucky, because they had very good husbands, who do not have mistresses, as many men do. (hmmm, men are similar around the world, hey?). I of course bought a few trinkets from them, which is what "friends" are for :-).

After leaving the village, I went back I to the town of SaPa for lunch, and a stroll around the town, during which I came upon a funeral procession.....






Also walked through the market...



But as you can see, it started getting foggy again, so returned to my hotel for tea.

Will spend a half dY at the spa today, before flying to Myanmar (Burma).

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Location:Đông Du,,Vietnam

Day 35. Last day in Sa Pa.

I had a great day. We "trekked" (more like "strolled") through a village. I got to meet some of the women there. Then I had lunch back in the town of Sa Pa and walked around the town for a couple of hours. I will write more later when I have time. I may have wifi access tomorrow in Hanoi. After that, I am not sure about access during my five days in Burma. I will arrive in Hong Kong on April 15, so if you don't hear from me before that, I will catch up then.

Back to catch the night train back to Hanoi.

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Day 34. Sa Pa. Flower H'momg Market.

Headed out early to get to the market for the Flower H'mong tribe which only happens once each week on Thursday. It was a looooonnnnnngggg drive along the snaky, bumpy road...about 2-1/2 hours to get there. And it was foggy again, which made the drive less interesting. However, I could see many rice fields, as well as other crops....corn, pineapple, tea, etc... all planted precariously on the hillsides. As well as many interesting sights of the people in the fields, carrying pineapple in baskets on their backs, etc. When we did see these sights, I couldn't get photos as there was no room to pull off the side of the road....it seemed only wide enough for about 1-1/2 cars :-). Although we did manage to squeeze by a truck or two. Phew!!

When we arrived, it was a colorful sight to see!


The flower h'mong are called that because of their multiple-colored outfits...








...compared to yesterday's tribe, the black h'mong, who wear more predominantly black...some of their tribe was also represented at the market...


The people were friendly, but shy, and so didn't want their photos taken. So had to just snap away and hope for the best without the opportunity to set up any shots. So, have tried to share what I think were some of the best shots I was able to get. Hope you enjoy them!


























After enjoying the market, we headed back for the loooonnnngggg drive back to the hotel. We stopped halfway back in Lao Cai for lunch and I had one of my favorites, chicken hotpot, which I shared with my guide, Nam. They give you a pot of boiling broth and you dip chicken, veggies (mushrooms, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, etc., etc.) and noodles into the pot to cook and then eat. Very fresh and good and healthy.

Tomorrow, we go to one last tribal area before heading back to Hanoi (on the night train again) for a half day of spa treatments before heading on to Myanmar (aka Burma).

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Location:Near Lao Cai, Vietnam

Day 33. Sa Pa

(posted on day 34)
I checked into my "luxury" train to Sa Pa at 9:00 last night.

And found out that "luxury" meant sharing a four person cabin.


I guess the non-luxury is regular train seats? As I waited for my other three bunk mates, I wondered who I'd be sleeping with :-).

It ended up being a delightful family from Korea, who are now living in Hanoi...a couple and their son. They also had a daughter on board, but the travel company had put her in a different berth. They were very interested in the fact that I had no husband and no kids and was traveling on my own. (then when the husband went to the restroom, the woman told me that she envied me :-). That she hopes her daughters will enjoy that kind of independence--she has another daughter who is studying in Quebec (by the way, she was 10 years younger than me).

Once the train left the station at 9:50pm, on the dot, it was curtains drawn and lights out. I slept ok...for some reason the train kept stopping (cows on the track?:-), and that kept waking me up. The Korean gentleman, who knew trains (his dad had worked for the railroad, which was something we had in common), said that the tracks were so narrow, that the train had to go very slow.

We arrived in Lao Cai at 6:30am, and drove to Sa Pa to have breakfast and a rest at my hotel. Unfortunately, it was foggy, and so only got brief glimpses of a beautiful valley as we proceeded along the winding road. It was only about 30km from the train station, but took us about an hour because of the narrow road and fog.

After my rest, we headed to Cat Cat Village, which is inhabited by the black h'mong hill tribe people. They are mostly decendants of Chinese who migrated across the Chinese border, which is very close to Sa Pa. It is hard to pick which photos to share with you. Many had their handmade items displayed for sale along the way...






It was still foggy, so couldn't get a clear, crisp photo of the hillside village...






This was a typical house, with a stairway carved out of a log...



There were people working...


Planting seeds along the hillside...





....and children playing...








And the beautiful Silver Falls, feeding fresh water to the village...


When I returned to my hotel, there were people in the hotel in colorful dress...


And weaving ...



Then time for a Vietnamese dinner at the hotel....not quite as inexpensive as the meal i had a couple of nights ago in Saigon.

Tomorrow I will have the opportunity to visit the marketplace where they all congregate in their colorful tribal attire.

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Location:Sa Pa, Vietnam

Day 32. Leave Saigon for Sapa, via Hanoi

I had a nice rest by the pool yesterday, and finished reading "Stealing Buddha's Dinner". I enjoyed it very much. Kind of along the lines of Amy Tan's books. So now I will read "Moscow Rules" by Daniel Silva...one of those espionage, KGB kind of books. I also downloaded Tolstoy's "War and Peace" as I don't think I ever read it. But we'll see if I get to it, and if I can get through it. On the plane yesterday I watched "The Last Station" which is a movie about him. I enjoyed what I saw of the movie (I kept dozing off, as I had one of those business class seats that converts to a full bed--way cool...first time I'd had one of those). Back to Tolstoy, there are at least a couple of museums in Moscow about him and Chekhov, who was also featured in that movie (played by one of my favorites, Paul Giamatti--he was in that movie about wine....I forgot the name of it).

After finishing my book, Sue's housekeeper (hmm, I'm not sure that's the right term for her....more like an aunt/family...she has been working for Sue for 16 years!)..... Anyway, she took me up the street to an authentic Vietnamese restaurant in the neighborhood. We ate and ate, and the total bill, for both of us, was $10. (Bonnie, didn't we pay $4.00 one time for lunch for both of us?). I came home from my last trip here just loving the Vietnamese food....even threw a dinner party where I served loads of it (for those of you who might remember that :-).

I am off later this afternoon on a flight to Hanoi, where I will catch the overnight train to Sapa, where the Vietnamese hill tribes live. I am really looking forward to this four day excursion into that region!

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Location:Saigon, Vietnam

Day 31. Saigon (part 3)

(posted day 33, yippee, part 2 posted after much coaxing....here goes with part 3 of day 31)

Walking around, seeing the difference in dress and the decrease in bicycles, etc., I felt very lucky to have been to a lot of countries, such as Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Bhutan, Uganda, Morocco, Kenya, etc., when they were not typical vacation spots. And to now get to see some of these places again, with considerable changes. The ads for new resorts in Vietnam in the airplane magazine were staggering to me, as there was only one resort that we saw on the beach in Nha Trang which was just opening the day we were there. They are even building one on one of the islands in Halong Bay.

Significant change was also evident to me when I went to China for the Olympics in 2008. When I had gone to Beijing in 1990, there were hardly any cars, thousands of black, government issued bicycles, and everyone was wearing gray mandarin attire, and the hotel where we stayed was the biggest building around, and was on the fringe of the city. In 2008, there were hundreds of thousands of cars, and an occasional bike, everyone was wearing jeans or other fashionable clothing, and I had trouble spotting that hotel amongst all of the huge, new, high rise buildings. Anyway, a bit of nostalgia! I'll have to see if I can do some photo comparisons when I get home (although that was before digital!)

Now it was time to have the jeep pick me up from central Saigon and take me to Sue's for a rest by the pool. When I called it her oasis in the city, I didn't know just how true that was.....what a wonderful place!!-



This isn't even the main house....we would maybe call this the carriage house in the US...



This is the inside of the main house....






So, time for a dip and maybe some reading.

Day 31. Saigon (part 2)

(posted day 33...when I tried to post this, it reposted part 1 and deleted part 2, so had to start all over...let's see if it will work this time--still can't download all of the photos so there will be a part 3 to day 31)

More market photos...


What are these?


Bonnie, remember all of the little bananas we ate...that one day they saved us while we waited for our driver to stop for lunch...although afterwards, the place he took us was well worth it...


...and other street scenes...





There was an occasional conical hat, although not as many as I would have thought...








Still some cyclos around, although not as many. (we probably have more in NYC now!). I just walked around instead of catching one myself...


(to be continued)

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