A walk-a-bout--Me and the Black H'Mong

After the near fatal Bali volcano hike, my desire to scale Mount Fanispan--Vietnam's highest mountain-

was quickly depleted by the knowledge that snow is up there, and it is much harder than the pleasantly pushing tour operators would have one believe. Actually, I am much more the type to sit at the bottom of it and stare into the wild then to conquer nature's gifts. Henceforth, I was pleased to have found a hotel perched on the side of the cliff, one street removed from the restaurant/backpacker strip and tour bus highway. $7 a night got me a mountain side view of Fanispan's towering heights and the town below from the peace and calmness of my personal balcony. Ahhhh-life :)

One thing I have learned fairly quick is~when hungry, go to the market. Munchin on the grub the Black H'Mong tribe seemed to prefer, I found some of the best pho yet. The little 8-seater market stall was filled with Black H'mong ladies, arriving and departing on their daily business duties. That's when I met the sweetest lady yet. She was 48, and offered to take me on a trek to her village the next day, to eat lunch with her family and explore the countryside. Most places in Sapa offer treks from town and through the surrounding hill tribe villages. Instead, I followed my instinct, and met my friend and her sister the following morning for the 12km hike down the hot highway, up the steep dirt and bouldered road that followed the creek's bends. Trotting up goat paths, waddling through tea trees, surprising villagers' trouser-less children, and spotting water buffalo tilling the rice paddies, off to grandmother's house we went. And what an experience! It was straight out of a movie I had seen about a Mongolian family's simple (but back-breaking) life. In fact, I think my friend and her sister were more tuckered out than I was! They trekked the 12km just for me...they usually prefer to motor bike the fast way (a mere 3km from the other side of Sapa).

 

One step into their barn they call a home, I collapsed onto a plastic stool. My counterparts took to washing themselves in the bathroom, which was also the makeshift kitchen. It was on the other side of the gigantic rice pot hovering over a wood stove the size of a campfire ring in the Bighorns. Yep, just there. I quickly realized why so many of the tribe's peoples up here wear leg warmer-like wraps—so much hiking up and down these hills day after day has a tendency to make one's lower calves swell. Like Ted hose from my nursing knowledge, I imagine these wraps help circulate lymph and blood from swollen feet and ankles back up to some of the sweetest hearts known to the human race. Let it pump!

My friend had phoned her family earlier from town (quite a site to see her all dressed up in her regalia, with a cell phone stuck to her ear) to warn them of my arrival. And, sure enough, as they washed and I recuperated, the family was busy tending the multiple dishes over the campfire “stove”--a few bricks pyramided above a wood fire, with a bamboo stem to usher air from outside to fuel the heat. And then the feast began. What a feast! I was surrounded by all of the women in the family, including 15 year old mothers (common), 35 year old grandmothers, great-grandmothers (such as my friend and her sister), aunties, and orphans. Not sure where the men were...

 

Such sugary sweet people--they neglected to tell me their home-made rice wine they kept pouring and toasting me with would make me do silly things... :)  BTW--I had to flash a big smile while taking the teenagers' pic in order to break their stoic photo pose with straight faces--and I had to wait for 5 minutes for them to stop primping! Golden.

Lunch ended too soon, as usual. Yet, with their home-made rice wine ever-flowing, I was afraid they would get me drunk enough to be forced into staying there overnight. Not that that wouldn't have been amazing. The great-great-grandmother of the village kept insisting in H'mong that I sleep there. VERY difficult to turn her down.

A buzzed Jen and two drunken sisters later, we relieved ourselves in the wilderness, and set off for the short return hike back to town. I couldn't resist buying a handmade, hand embroidered, hand woven hemp vest upon our return. What an amazing experience! The next day, I found the sister's house and delivered a CD of images I had stolen along the way. One of my most fond experiences in Vietnam.