Vietnam in a week. Part 4: Sa Pa

(Jump to previous episodes in this Vietnam anthology: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)

Sa Pa was the highlight of our time in Vietnam. For me an ideal vacation needs to include the right mix of unique experiences, the kind of stuff that make for great stories (or mediocre blog posts). But also enough relaxing down time that you can actually soak in an appreciate where you're at and what you're doing. Sa Pa had that balance. Mostly. What I don't like about vacations is buying souvenirs. I'm psychotically opposed to buying souvenirs. And Sa Pa has heat seeking souvenir dealers who will trek 15km with you just to make a sale. If everyone had their work ethic and unrelenting persistence, we'd have cured cancer a decade ago. They were annoying, but also make for great stories.

Our first afternoon in Sa Pa called for a trip to a really cool pretty neat mediocre waterfall. It was fine, but honestly any waterfall I see now gets unfairly compared to Igauzu. And come on, no one can compete with that. It'd be like if your wife told you she dated Brad Pitt in college. You'd be forever living in Tyler Durden's shadow.

Like I said, totally unfair.

The mountain roads to and from the waterfall had some spectacular views. We asked Sung (our tour guide, if you missed part 3) what the mountains were called and she told us "Fancy Pants" Mountains. Which is definitely the greatest name for any mountain range ever. Even if we later learned that they were actually called Fancipan, I'm sticking with our original interpretation.

Keep in mind that during our first day in Sa Pa, we still hadn't really slept for a while. As we discussed, the overnight train ride was more on the "experience" side of my experience/relaxation vacation partnership. So the waterfall and beautiful views were cool, but they were experienced in the haven't-slept-in-a-while haze. We were about to get abruptly shaken from that haze with our next adventure though.

Sa Pa is a super small town. The area only opened to tourism in 1993 and only really got going in the last decade or so. It's nothing like the organized chaos of Hanoi. Surrounding the town are lots of even smaller villages inhabited by several ethnic minorities. The villages are effectively only accessible by foot or motorbike (though we did see a full sized bus attempt to navigate a road that was about half the width of a full sized bus), which would make them feel really quiet if it weren't for the swarms of little old women trying to sell you stuff.

We were engulfed by these little old women (LOWs) as soon as we stepped out of our van a couple kilometers from the first village that we visited. And we definitely weren't expecting the insanity. They were the motorbikes of Sa Pa. If motorbikes spoke broken English.

Don't let the babies on their backs deceive you, they're as tenacious as a pack of honey badgers. And I don't think honey badgers even hang out in packs because there wouldn't be a way to measure that level of tenaciousness.

I thought the juxtaposition of the LOWs and the ducks was funny. Heh. There were all sorts of animals running around the villages, waiting to be eaten. Well I guess they didn't know they were going to be eaten. From their perspective they were just chillin' on the farm. But yes, they all get eaten. Even the puppies (foreshadowing for part 5!). They probably live much better lives than most of the stuff we eat though, so I actually didn't feel to bad. Except for the puppies.

A typical conversation with an LOW goes something like this:

"What's your name?" "How old are you?" "How many kids you have?" "You buy from me?" "Maybe later?" "You buy from me?" "You buy from me?" "You buy from me?" "You buy from me?" "You buy from me?"

Multiply that by a gazillion and you have our first trek through a local village. Eventually I learned to answer the "maybe later?" questions with "no, never ever ever" which was only mildly effective. If you do make the mistake of buying something form one of the LOWs, it sets of a shitstorm with the rest of them.

"Why you no buy from me?" "Why you only buy from her?" "You buy from me?" "You buy from me?" "You buy from me?" "You buy from me?" "You buy from me?"

Notice the subtle difference in the introductory inquiries before breaking into the chorus of "you buy form me"s. They try to make you feel guilty. Ruthless. When they finally break you and you do buy something, they give you a free bracelet. Which is clearly just a way to flag you as a sucker.

I want to be clear, I had a strange respect for the LOWs. In spite of their obnoxiousness, they were fascinating. I would totally read a Malcom Gladwell book that studied the groups of women selling crap to tourists in and around Sa Pa. Surely some are more profitable than others -- what techniques do they use? Would it be beneficial for them to unionize? Maybe have the better crafters stay at home and knit pillow cases while the top saleswomen focus only on suckering in tourists. Honestly, someone has to write a book on this. Someone get in touch with the guys at FiveThirtyEight, this seems right up their alley.

When it was all said and done, we'd trekked about 4m into the valley, through the village, and then up to meet our van on the other side. And some super skilled photographer took a panoramic of the route.

(click on it for a bigger picture)

It was a fun, full day but we when it was done, we were ready for some food, wine, and relaxation. The next morning we had a 15km trek planned, and at the time fully expected to be fighting off LOWs the entire time. It didn't turn out to be quite that exciting, but was still more action-packed than The Hobbit. But just like The Hobbit, I'm going to split this story into way more movies/posts than it needs to be.

Click for part 5!