Day tripping through the Hmong villages

January 28th, 2002 at 12:00am

Central heating has not made it’s way to Sapa. I am huddled by the fireplace in my room again, sucking the warmth from the cinders before I make the break for the bed…even though it’s only a few feet from the fireplace the temperature difference is like night and day. I don’t think I can really explain how cold it is here especially with the freezing rain and no heat. I have filled 3 water bottles with hot water for my bed and I’ll sleep with 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of pants, 2 shirts, 1 fleece, and a hat in a sleeping bag with 2 duvets on top. And I will STILL be cold in the morning.

Anyway today the Swedish girls (Anna and Jessica) and I walked down to 2 Hmong villages from Sapa. We were able to arrange a local Hmong girl (Dom) as our guide and she took us to her family’s home for lunch before coming back to Sapa. It was a great experience to walk through the fields and villages and to witness life in the Hmong tribe. The weather was complete crap though – mist, rain, cold all day, and the trail was a muddy, wet, slippery, disgusting mess. If only we had some better weather and views of the mountains we would have been thrilled! Oh well, we got our northern Vietnamese hill tribe cultural lesson of the trip. They really were very kind, friendly, and generous so it was good to see and enjoy.

So we had dinner with Alan again and this time he told us the story of how he got started giving medical treatment to the Hmong people 6 years ago. See, Alan isn’t a doctor at all – he’s a retired plumber! But he came to Sapa on the recommendation of a friend and at that time it was an extremely remote place in the world so all of his doctor friends at home loaded up his bag with medical kits and supplies in case something happened to him. So off he went into a village one day and one of the families invited him to stay for the night. When he entered the house there were about 20 or so Hmong people inside and the first thing he noticed was that over half of them had pink eye. ‘Bloody Hell’, he thought,’What’s going on here?’ (You have to imagine Alan saying’Bloody Hell’ every few sentences actually – it’s quite funny the way he tells a story.) So he opened his bag and found some eye drops and gave them to all of the people infected 3 times a day for 3 days and by the time he left they were all fine. On his way back to Sapa he walked up the road and suddenly the Hmong were coming out of the woodwork – he literally had a trail of people coming up to him showing him cuts and burns and scabies and asking for help. And that’s how it all started for him. The rest as they say is history.

So after another good evening of chatting with Alan, Anna, Jessica and I went up to my room and attempted to de-thaw with a nice fire. They are heading back to Hanoi on the day train tomorrow and I will probably sleep in, walk around a bit during the day, and then head out myself on the night train. If the weather was good I’d stay longer for sure but it’s really miserable so I think it’s time to move on.

Irrigation for the rice fields in Sapa, Vietnam

I call this…Timide

A futile attempt to clean the mud off my shoes!

Entry Filed under: Sapa,Vietnam