strollin' through sapa solo

so john and the swedes are out climbing fansipan mountain (the tallest mountain in vietnam) for 3 days and all i can say is, im glad im not. a super dense mist and light rain has descended upon sapa and ive got a couple hours to kill before meeting someone for dinner so i thought id post something. well im having a fantastic time in sapa and being by myself, ive met tons of people (so no worries mom, i havent even had to eat a single meal alone) and just in general im having a blast!

well the overnite hard seat train was a total nitemare. attempting to sleep on a wooden bench is just as horrendous as one would think. actually it was worse and the only time i got a little bit of sleep was when linn slept on the floor and i could curl up semi-fetal position on the bench. anyway we arrived saturday morning and im at a nice hotel my adopted german dad from the hanoi hostel recommended and for $4/nite i get a tremendously great view of the mountains. (although i will say, i cannot actually recall the last time i had a hot shower. fuck.)

anyway, the first day everyone else rested up for their big mountain trek and in general, i dont need sleep so i just explored around sapa, took a nice little walk with a new zealander and just generally chilled out.

oh and i met this old man who gave us plum wine that he'd made himself and he really took joy in kicking everyone's ass at a wooden version of connect-four and chess:

and then yesterday, i went to the sunday market in bac ha (3 hours outside of sapa) which is where the flower h'mong come decked out to buy food, clothing, whatever. they had the most beautiful clothing that's just insanely colourful and of course, embroidered with lots of flowers. the women are just so beautiful that i went a little more camera happy than usual...






back in hanoi we met cedric, a swiss guy who's so madly in love with sapa he's been here a month, went to hanoi, detested it and immediately booked a train ticket back to sapa for the next nite. he showed me pictures of his best friend up here, vu, and ive just been running into her all over the place. shes black h'mong and they all wear beautiful clothing that the women dye using indigo.
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this little flower h'mong girl was pretty feisty and running around like mad in her village in bac ha. i think she absolutely loves attention and so decided to climb into a tree and vogue for all the tourists. ok she didnt vogue, but she was lookin' good.

at nite, there's not much to do here cause the town literally shuts down at like...11 pm. as in everything's closed, the street lights turn off and the streets are deserted. i was out at one of the bars with a couple of guys i met up here and though the sign said "open until late" we got booted out by 12, and i was locked out of my hotel. so basically, ive been catching up on my sleep here.

today i went on a trek to 3 villages- vunh ho, lao ch'ai and ta' van. it was a lot of fun i had a guide who, though he could speak english, insisted on trying out my french skills since im canadian. i was also with a cute vietnamese married couple and a guy from thailand and we just ripped it up on our trek! ok we didnt really but we had lot of fun. we encountered quite a few black h'mong girls on the way, some wanting to sell us jewellery and some following us just for kicks. (by the way, some of these girls are the most ingenious salespeople on the planet. they know how to work it like no one else i swear. my first day i asked a girl if i could take her picture and she shoots back, "you buy from me, then you take a picture". or last nite i was walking around with this canadian guy and one girl was like "you buy from me for your girlfriend and your girlfriend kiss you long time!")

but this 12 yr old girl, mau, was adorable, didnt try to sell me anything and was with us for most of the day:

all day we were walking amongst magnificent rice fields. all the rice had just been harvested but it was still quite a sight. i felt very national geographic today. anyway im losing momentum so im just gonna post a whack of pictures now:












oh and i thought the clothing of the dzay people was very interesting because it resembles chinese clothing (since the proximity to china), but NEON. this lovely woman had a baby strapped to her back and invited us in for tea.


speaking of clothing, i just want to note that i have fully reinvigorated my wardrobe here in sapa, as you may have noticed in my pictures. nowadays i walk around wearing a netted bandana, a $1 t shirt with a map of sapa on it (that in fact, the locals also wear underneath their traditional garb, oh ho!), shawls, and drawstring linen pants. im so much hotter than i ever imagined i could be.