Sapa: Sick of Mountains Yet?

From Hanoi I took the night train to Sapa, which is just about the only tourist destination in northwest Vietnam. So off I went. 

Sapa is a ways away in towering mountains. The best way to get there is by night train, which takes about 12 hours. I was relieved to hear that, as I'd had enough mountain bus trips in Laos to last a few lifetimes. 

When I got to the train station I wandered around a bit looking for the right platform and train. I was trying to ask the station master where I was supposed to be when a tiny, wizened old man ran up to me, grabbed my ticket, and scurried off, beckoning me to follow. I did, all the while impotently insisting that he give me back my ticket, and preparing to tackle him should he break into a run. He took me across a few lines of tracks to my train, then onto the train, where we were met by a conductor. My breathless complaint to the conductor that the little man would not let go of my ticket was drowned out by the thief's rapid-fire Vietnamese, and the conductor just chuckled. 

The little man led me further, to a bunk that looked like this: 

and was pleasingly empty. I snatched my ticket back from him, and he held out his newly-empty hand for a tip. I wheezingly declined.

Good thing, too- after sitting in this empty cabin for a few minutes I began to study my crumpled ticket. It was all Vietnamese to me, but the numbers on it seemed in no way to correspond with the numbers of the berth or the bunks. I ducked my head out the door and showed it to a passing conductor, who laughed at me, and led me to a berth at the other end of the car. It was occupied by three Vietnamese businessmen. The conductor said something to them about me and they all shared a laugh too. Then they laughed again when I clambered up on the only remaining bed, which was a top bunk. I'm very popular in Southeast Asia.

In any case, I arrived in Lao Cai, the unattractive town an hour from Sapa where the train stops, then took a van up into the mountains to the town itself. I checked into a hotel, took a nap (the night train is not incredibly restful) and went to wander the town.

Sapa is a small town perched on a steep hillside in the Hoang Lien Son mountain range, looking out over a terraced valley and misty foothills escalating into steeper slopes.

It is gloriously cool up there at 1650 m. above sea level, which was mostly what brought me there. The town's economy used to be based on small-size agriculture, but that's been taken over by tourism: wikipedia tells me that while Sapa received 4,860 tourists in 1995 that number had exploded to 138,622 less than ten years later in 2003. There's constant construction going on as entrepreneurs hasten to erect new hotels for all the visitors. Standing on my hotel's third-floor balcony, overlooking the main street and watching building in all directions, I couldn't help but feel as if I was watching, and hastening, Sapa's ruin by tourism.

Whoops.  

Sapa's population of 36,000 consists mainly of minority groups, such as the Hmong, which are not such a minority here at 52%. If you come to Sapa, you will meet them, whether you'd like to or not. Walk out of a hotel or restaurant or shop and they accost you with wall hangings and purses and bracelets and headbands and anything else that can be embroidered. Their selling strategy is to follow you and tell you about their lives until it becomes personal, and then follow you some more, until you finally buy something.

It works pretty well. These ladies followed me around until I bought an embroidered headband and several bracelets. 

They may look sweet, but they're...actually very sweet. 

These women spoke excellent English, which they learned completely from tourists. They travel to and from Sapa from their mountain village every day, sometimes by motorbike but mostly on foot, which takes almost three hours. They all got married young (like, 15 years old young) and had a few kids, and were amused to learn that I was 28 and unmarried. They were even more amused by my suggestion that I might come to their village and find a husband there. 

The next day I rented a motorbike and headed out into the countryside. And this is really where Sapa shines. 

Every arable piece of land is terraced and planted. Some of the hillsides have been cut in such a regular, precise, pleasing fashion that the whole hill looks like an ancient step pyramid. Steep, stunning, cloud-veiled peaks provide a breathtaking backdrop, contrasting orderly agriculture with ragged untamable heights.

I spent most of the day on this snaking road, leaning into the mountains, where I saw more cows than vehicles.

 I drove until I was out of the farmland, where the ranges just melted down into the valleys and it was all carpeted with jungle. It made me wish that I had bought the motorbike and taken my pack, and that I could just stay on that road and see where it took me.  

But I'm a much too cautious person for that. In any case, tt was a truly excellent way to spend a day.

Field Trips in Hanoi

I spent a week in Hanoi, strolling around the old city and seeing what there is to see. And there is a lot to see, so this is a long one.

I went to the Vietnam Women's Museum, which focuses on the contribution of women to Vietnam's history and culture. They had some good displays on the cult of the celestial mothers, a belief system revolving around 13 goddesses, and a video about women working as street vendors, which is grueling, dangerous work. They also had a lot on life as a woman living in tribes like the Black Hmong:

One of these displays finally answered why I've met so many elderly women in Laos and Vietnam with deliberately, evenly blackened teeth. I thought that it might be some kind of jungle dental hygiene; turns out it's for fashion. Starting at around 12 or 13 years old girls coat their teeth with tree resin before bed.  It's rare these days among young tribeswomen, but I met a woman in her mid-70s who told me that when she was a girl in the mountains of Northern Vietnam, "no man would look at you if your teeth weren't black". 

There was a room devoted to various tribal fashions:

This one is really wearable, actually.

But the vast majority of the museum's displays focused on the role women took in Vietnam's various military conflicts. The photos and posters on these floors were incredible. 

Nuns and monks calling for the release of political prisoners. 

"Protest against repression". Those women are pulling barbed wire with bare hands. 

The propaganda posters were awesome. 

"Heroic, indomitable, honest, and responsible."

"Protect and control the village." 

"Every person is a soldier." 

That wasn't just talk. People from the north went south via the Ho Chi Minh trail to join the war effort, leaving mostly women to protect their homes and keep things in order. Those women repaired roads destroyed by bombing, worked in medical care, communications, and transporting goods and soldiers. But they were also literally soldiers: in the south women represented 40% of the guerrilla and militia forces.

I probably shouldn't love this, but I do. Look how tiny and fierce she is. 

They were not playing. 

What else did I do in Hanoi? I went to a water puppetry performance, an art form that involves filling a stage with waist-high water and controlling the puppets using wires that extend underneath the water and behind a curtain. Water puppetry dates back to the 12th century and originated in flooded rice fields.

There were some musicians accompanying the show who were perched off to the side on an elevated stage. 

The woman in the foreground of this photo is playing a Vietnamese string instrument called the cong chieng, which was traditionally played only by men. Unmarried women were forbidden to listen as their parents feared that the music would make the girl fall hopelessly in love with the musician (even then parents hated the idea of their daughter with a musician, I guess). The played plucked at it with flighty hand movements, producing a shrill, vibrating, psychedelic sound that didn't strike me as being particularly seductive, but what do I know.

I also took a trip to the Hoa Lo Prison Museum. 

Arial photo of the prison before most of it was torn down. 

This prison was built beginning in 1886 by the French, and housed Vietnamese prisoners, particularly those agitating for independence from French rule. They were held in inhuman conditions and subject to torture and execution. 

Many of the rooms had dummies in them, which will FREAK YOU OUT if you 're walking from one room to another and not expecting them.

Or if you walk up to a cell door like this one and peer into the darkness.

Gah!

Seriously, though, things were bad here. The prison's capacity for inmates was 600 people, but in 1954 the records show that it held more than 2,000 people, including women and their children. 

The subhuman conditions made it a symbol of colonialist exploitation. 

Beginning in 1964, the prison had new inmates: American pilots who were shot down over northern Vietnam. These pilots (among them John McCain, eventual candidate for president) ironically nicknamed the prison the "Hanoi Hilton". While the Vietnamese insisted that the prisoners were being treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, pilots were actually subjected to various forms of torture including rope bindings, irons, severe beatings, and prolonged solitary confinement. The aim of the torture was not to acquire military information, but to break the will of the prisoners and force statements from them criticizing the U.S. and praising the Vietnamese. It worked: almost every American POW made a statement of some kind at some time. They held out as long as they could and then said whatever they needed to to survive. 

The displays on this chapter in the life of the prison are pure, unadulterated propaganda. One video I watched there told visitors that pilots nicknamed the prison the "Hanoi Hilton" because of the excellent conditions there. Another display reads that "During the war, the national economy was difficult but Vietnamese government had created the best living conditions to U.S. pilots for they had a stable life during the temporary detention period (sic)". The photos of pilots staying at the prison showed them decorating for Christmas, playing cards, watching films, and playing sports:

According to the museum, the place was essentially a health club. Standing by these photos I was joined by an American man in his mid-60's, who glowered at them with his jaw clenched and then gritted out, "I don't know who they think they're fooling with this," before stalking out of the room. I don't either. It's not as if these men disappeared; one of them ran for president, and the torture he endured in those rooms was written all over his body. It made me angrier than I expected. 

But let's not end with revisionist propaganda! I also went to the Temple of Literature, because, well, how could I not. 

The temple was built in 1070 and hosts the  "Imperial Academy", Vietnam's first national university. It's dedicated to Confucius, sages, and scholars, and is a lovely refuge from the city humming all around it. 

Here's "the Well of Heavenly Clarity", although it looks more like "the Pond of Sublime Antifreeze".

Massive stalae of doctors laureates were placed on tortoise shells which line one of the courtyards. Students who have better things to do than study come to the temple to rub the heads of the tortoises to pass their exams. 

Some are better carved than others. 

Where were you when I was in high school??

I watched this poor kid get dragged all over the temple by his mother, who made him pray to every possible higher power. 

I guess his interim grades were less than stellar. 

Hanoi: It's Complicated

Why did I like Hanoi?

It wasn't my interactions with the locals- overall they're brusque at best and downright rude at worst, and tried (and probably often succeeded) to scam me at every turn.

It wasn't the weather- it was stiflingly hot and rained cats and dogs for hours in the afternoon almost every day I was there. It became my habit to duck into the most charming cafe in Hanoi, La Place, where the second floor dining room looked out onto St. Joseph's Cathedral from the sidestreet of Pho Au Trieu.

Aside from the lime-mint smoothies at La Place, what did I like about Hanoi? Maybe it was the architecture, a crowded mix of obviously Asian and subtley European.

Maybe it was the blossoms growing in riotous colorful clouds down every street.

Or the coffee shop right around the corner from my hostel that served nothing except for velvety, almost chocolaty Vietnamese coffee and had a small white and tan dog that was always curled on one of the glass tabletops.

Or the songbirds twittering from their cages outside almost every shop and cafe (although they were just as likely to make me sad as charm me), their short songs competing with the strident blaring of motorbike horns.

Or little details, like confused tiles overlaid in an open door into a dark entryway, or arched windows with green shutters opened to dry clothes hung inside.

But I think it was probably what charms me about every city: lives being lived all around that I can't even begin to fathom.

And here, much more of it is done out in the open. Watching it happen is fascinating.

Plus there's the added layer of cultural differences. Why is this woman lighting and fanning a fire on a busy street? I have no idea. 

Besides, how can you not love a city where this is happening?