Chiang Mai: temples, shopping, and livestock

So we planned to spend some time in Chiang Mai in part because of rave reviews from some friends, and in part because it's supposed to be one of the shopping capitals of Thailand. I don't mean designer-label shopping, I mean night markets and handmade crafty things - I'm not precisely in the market for Prada, but we saw lots of "Prado," "Leevis," and the ever popular "Dolce & Gabanna" (various spellings of this one available). Even the water bottles are knockoffs, mostly of Aquafina. We found similarly-logoed "Aquapura," "Aqua Fina," and "Aquatic" water bottles. None of them made us sick, so I guess that's OK!

We visited some old Buddhist temples - Chiang Mai apparently has almost as many as Bangkok, despite having something like a fourth or fifth the population. Our taxi driver spoke English (he had a book full of testimonials from previous tourists, so we chose him despite his incredibly ancient looking Toyota - the A/C still worked at least!) He showed us some temples, then drove us out to the handicraft district where we toured another silk shop, a gem/silver shop, and a rug/antiques shop. The gift shop at the silk place was enticing, and we could've blown the rest of our budget there, but I made the tough decision to say no to the awesome red & black silk cocktail dress. Yes, it made me look slim and almost curvy, but really...how often do I wear a cocktail dress? OK, never. We also didn't have enough time for Scott to get his custom-tailored suit (even at this pricey place, the cost of the fabric for a suit ranged from about $180-220. We asked how much for the tailoring, and got a blank look. All the sewing is free, apparently, if you buy the fabric! Poor Scott!)

Our taxi driver was at least honest about what he got out of the deal - apparently these shops give him coupons for free gasoline, as long as his customers spend a minimum of 5 minutes in the shop. So each time, he clarified that we needed to spend 5 minutes there, even if we didn't buy anything. Kind of an odd working model, but he was upfront about it, and only charged us $3 for the entire 5 hours he drove us around, so we couldn't complain.

The Sunday evening market in Chiang Mai is the climax of the weekly social scene, both for locals and tourists. The market takes up the main street all the way through town. It's packed with people to the point of claustrophobia at some points, but we had great fun. Street food up the wazoo...we only tried the normal looking stuff, I have to admit; we avoided the fried/steamed bugs (silkworms, crickets, and enormous cockroach looking things called "mackerels" were available), and we didn't partake of the black herbal jello (they grated the jello, mixed with sugar - I think it was plant-based and probably very good for you, but smelled unappealing compared to the fried bananas on a stick, dim sum on a stick, sausage on a stick, chocolate strawberries on a stick, chicken on a stick, pineapple on a stick, and grilled nameless meat on a stick that we did try. Yes, sticks are big at the market. Trash cans are not - we couldn't find one the entire night.

The hotel with many names

Arrived in Hanoi earlier tonight for our brief stay ahead of catching the hydrofoil to Cat Ba for the start of our cruise tomorrow. We've had pretty full itineraries for a while now Sore butts from riding elephants. More later!

Lions and tigers and snakes, oh my!

Keeping on with the livestock theme, today was random zoology day. We started off (again, with our useful taxi driver) heading to "Tiger Kingdom." It's not exactly a zoo nor an animal sanctuary. Instead, tourists fork over money to cuddle/pet/play with large cats. We chose the baby lion/adult tiger package, 15 minutes apiece.

Pretty cute. The baby lions were only a month old, and just slightly larger than a large housecat. After we washed up and disinfected our hands, we got down on the floor to pet 'em. One tended to get a bit snarly if we picked him up, and when he growled, the zookeeper/assistant guy who was in there with us gestured to us to leave him alone. The other, though, was pretty cuddly if sleepy, and snuggled up nicely on Scott's lap. He didn't seem to like ME as well. Sigh.

The grown-up tigers were another story. A little bit scary (and thoughts of insurance issues were running through my head the whole time, naturally). The three tigers were in a large outdoor area, fenced in but grassy with a pond, trees, etc. They also had three handlers in there with us, armed with something approximately as dangerous looking as my mom's old spanking paddle. Hrm, yes, that makes me feel safe.


No worries, though. Our tigers were so lethargic they were practically comatose. (I wondered if they were drugged, but as soon as we left the enclosure, they all got up and started playing and sparring with each other, so maybe they were just playing possum, like, "if we're boring enough, maybe these tourists will go away and leave us alone.") We were told to only approach them from behind (so they wouldn't think we wanted to play), and were not allowed to touch their heads or front paws. Still, we got some good hugs in. One was wet from the pond, so I smelled a bit tiger-ish the rest of the day. Their paws are a bit smaller than my hand, with impressive claws (we played with them - Look, mom! Claws out! Claws in! woohoo!) And yes, their skin is striped just like their fur.

Next we headed to the snake farm - kind of podunk, and not too impressive compared to a snake house at a US zoo - but then, we got to HOLD these snakes. The non-poisonous ones, that is. Then "Mr. Snake Man" did a little snake show for us, kissing cobras (we got to pet them, and then he showed us how to milk the venom), picking up these speedy jumping rat snakes (I think that's what they were called) with his teeth, and diving in a pool to "wrestle" with a large python type thing. The show was narrated by a younger Thai guy, in the manner of a dubbed movie - hilariously corny, with a background track and everything. Mr. Snake Man was missing a finger from a previous cobra bite (very reassuring), but he explained that they were only five minutes from a hospital that had all the antivenoms. Sounded like he knew THAT routine pretty well.

Mahout-for-a-Day

One of our splurges was a full day at an elephant camp, where they trained you to take care of and command your elephant. A lot of elephants in Thailand are exploited pretty badly, so we tried to do some research and avoid the ones where the elephants are worked long days or made to do weird stuff.

At the beginning of the day, we and the eleven other tourists in our group hopped in the van to the camp, changed into ugly but durable denim uniforms, and got our first lesson in the commands for an elephant: "pai!" (forward) ,"toi" (back), "kwaa" (right), "sai" (left), "jut!" (stop!), and, for mounting the elephant, "sok kaa" ("lift your leg up") and"soong" ("higher"). Mr. Thom, our guide, explained what elephants like to eat, how to feed them, how to climb up and down them, and how to use the elephant hook (vicious looking metal tool for guiding them, but not meant for hitting. He demonstrated its lack of sharpness on himself; apparently we're not the first tourists concerned about the welfare of the elephants.

Then we got to meet the elephants; stuffing them full of bananas and sugarcane is apparently meant to reassure them that we're friends, not to mention that it's a pretty fun job if a little slimy. Some elephants had been previously owned and taught tricks, so they demonstrated (one played harmonica, one tambourine, one "danced," most could trumpet on command. We got some sticky elephant kisses too!



Next we practiced climbing on and off (easy on the smaller ones, a bit challenging on the largest; I was one of the taller women and I still had to jump-and-scramble after climbing up to the elephant's thigh.) We also practiced our commands, turning the elephants in figure eights, backing them up, etc.

After lunch, we got our elephant assignments. Ours was named Phim - the only male in the group, about 9 years old, so still on the small side. He was a bit feisty, and WAY too interested in the females of the group. (I tried to ask if he was neutered or not, but couldn't make myself understood without getting graphic.) Scott and I loaded up, him taking the driver's spot behind the ears, and me on the middle of the spine.



OK, so riding an elephant has to be the LEAST comfortable activity in the universe! People pay for this? Our elephants spine stuck up a good four inches from his back, and straddling that, even on a blanket, was sheer misery - even worse than spinning class.

But still pretty awesome, admittedly. We took a trail ride up to the top of a hill, elephants stopping to browse for food on the way. Then switching drivers, we headed back, and ended up at a nice shady pool in the nearby river.

Then we all took off our shoes and, scrub brushes in hand, headed into the river to bathe our elephants. As a precautionary measure, the assisting mahouts had all the elephants lie on their sides in the water, and we were warned to stay away from their feet, just in case. After a thorough scrubbing on both sides, the elephants stood up and we finished the day with a water fight, humans versus elephants. One elephant, Faa, was trained to slap the water with her trunk; the others did the whole trunk suck and spray thing. Eventually, we figured out that we could seize their trunks and use them like water cannons to spray each other, which was WAY fun.

The world's smallest airport? well, prolly not.

Leaving Ko Chang ("Elephant Island" - where we saw no elephants. Maybe island is shaped like elephant?) was sad, to say the least. Our beachside bungalow...the deserted sands and bathtub-temperature water...and all the little beachside cafes where you sit on cushions on the sand by lantern light...yeah, we could have used an extra day here. Or a week. Idyllic.


I don't know why, but we (for some reason) decided to fly to Chiang Mai (via Bangkok) from here rather than take a bus to Bangkok for our flight, which would've been dirt cheap and taken maybe 3 hours longer. Anyway, this airport has three regularly scheduled flights per day. One runway, and the terminal (clearly labeled as such) doesn't have an indoors, per se - it's all open air. There is one baggage scanner (no durian fruits allowed, and after your baggage goes through, the employee puts a sticker on it and hands it back to you, so you can go check in! Convenient, if not perhaps TSA-approved. There's one check-in line, one runway...you get the idea. But the airport was beautifully landscaped, had free internet terminals, free juice/water/coffee/pastries...really, far nicer than anywhere else we'd been. Strange dichotomy.





Regardless, we and our baggage made it safely to Chiang Mai (northern city in Thailand, near the border of Burma.) We're still sunburned, and I'm starting to itch/peel. It's so exciting to see clouds of little dead skin flakes "poof" into the air whenever I take off my shirt. Well, OK, not really, and I can't change my clothes without help. Bah!

Score: SPF 50 - 0; Lat 11°N - 1

Holy cow are we sunburned.

Snorkeling the coral forests around the islands in the southern Thai archipelago today. Emily and I slathered on huge quantities of our waterproof, fit-to-keep-babies-bums-white super SPF 50 sunblock, which is like Elmer's glue going on. And you have a visible oily sheen when you are done, like you've dipped your face in Canola oil. Yum. Unfortunately, either its 'waterproof' marketing is a bald lie, or it is not up to sub-Tropic of Cancer sunpower. Because we are toasted.

We'll post pics when we get home. Emily's back looks like it was slapped (repeatedly) with two huge red kidneys, or maybe clothes irons. Scott is blotchy all over the back, and both hands are the color of dragonfruit (our new favorite) skin.



However.



The snorkeling was tremendous. Corals of all shapes and sizes - brain-looking ones, big leafy things, mushrooms, labyrinths - unimaginable variety. I couldn't help thinking about Genesis' account of the fifth day: God creates the creatures of the water and commands them to be fruitful and multiply. "God spoke: 'Swarm, Ocean, with fish and all sea life!" as The Message puts it.



And in most every nook and cranny - between them and within - of these fabulous corals, there were little creatures carving out their niche in that ecosystem - anemones, sea cucumbers, live barnacles, and dozens of other things we couldn't even recognize.



Some of the corals were even a little drab by comparison with some of their hangers-on. From the surface (where unbeknownst to us, the tropic sun was slowly roasting us), they looked like grey-green rocks studded with huge gemstones of every color - bright blue, neon green, orange, yellow. But when you get down to it, the creatures - as bright and flashy as they are - pale next to the fractal complexity of the coral, with spines upon bumps within ridges running through crevasses. You look and look until your lungs pound and your ears throb, and then you rush up for air just to come down and look again.



And the fish! Some were under an inch long and the color of the ocean itself - only visible as shadows as they darted in schools of hundreds. Others were over a foot long, and every shape and size you could think of in between. Pink finny ones, thick yellow-striped clown-fish looking ones, small very striking electric-blue ones.



On the slightly dangerous side, there were an impressive number of sea urchins. Black, menacing looking ones that look like something out of the Matrix maybe. Some were small, fitting in between massive corals the size of boulders. Others were enormous, with spines 10", maybe even a foot long! Em got one in the tip of her finger by accident. Our not English-speaking guide said, "We should cut it off!" Or so translated a nice bilingual co-tourist. We're still not sure if he meant the spine or the finger. I had a near brush with a back-full of them when, sitting on a rock in a shallow, a wave surprised me and pushed me back into a coral gorge. I righted myself and spun around to see a mess of the little monsters that had been lying in wait for me. The rock was obviously their trap - devious little buggers.



Amazingly beautiful, all of it. Even the urchins.



Sadly, our camera is not waterproof, so we don't have any underwater pics to share for this part of our adventure. But trust us, it was quite an experience. If you do ever get the chance to snorkel in this part of the world - take it!

Angkor Wat

Largest religious building in the world. Can I say more?

So since we lost a full day of touristing, we have to change our plans a little bit. We opt to book a private, English-speaking guide for the day of temple touring, so we'd get the most out of it. And boy, did we!

We all took a tuk-tuk out to the temples, arming ourselves with insect repellent and our very expensive Ex Officio insect-repelling clothing. We're still taking our malaria meds, but much of Cambodia is still malaria territory, so long sleeves/pants are recommended.

The Ex Officio clothes, by the way, don't seem to work, nor does our insect repellent. At least, Scott didn't get bitten, but he never does. I have red ugly bites all the way up and down my legs. Sigh. Maybe it would've been worse without bug spray, at least.

Our guide, named So Pengthai (I think) tells us to call him Thai. Easy enough. He is a wealth of information, about the temples, Cambodian history, religious beliefs then and now, art, current events, politics, inter-country relations in southeast Asia, social mores and customs today...anything we want to ask about, which is awesome! We get SO much more out of the carvings at Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom/Bayon than we would have otherwise. Fascinating! We all drive back to town for lunch at the Butterfly Garden (restaurant within a butterfly sanctuary, but we don't actually see many butterflies, disappointingly enough). Then more templing in the afternoon, ending at Ta Prohm (the mostly ruined temple with all the ginormous tree roots growing all over things - you've seen photos).


We take tons of photos, which I'm sure will never be quite as good as the ones we've seen at art fairs. But that's fine. Not too many tourists around really - Thai says this tourist season has been really down, which is bad for income in this town, but nice for us! Also, it's unseasonably cool - probably only about 80 or 85, which with the humidity is still plenty warm for us, but nowhere near the 95-100 degrees we'd been expecting.

In the evening, we head off to the (touristy) Apsara Dance Evening. It's a large buffet of mediocre Khmer food (lots of variety though, including about 16 types of those gelatinous desserts I never liked even as a child). Seriously, have I EVER been to a buffet with no desserts I liked? It's very out of character for me. And then an hour of classical Khmer dance - pretty costumes, and a couple of the dancers seem pretty good, while others don't seem as unison/rehearsed as I would have expected. Anyway, we would have enjoyed the dancing more if we could have understood the narration, but it took about 30 minutes before we even realized she was speaking English, and even then we could only figure out about one word in ten.



Very tired, Scott still a bit tummy-ish, so we head home.

From mulberries to scarves

So while Scott was indisposed and napping (or trying to), I took a tuk-tuk to the National Silk Centre. What a totally cool tour!

I hop out of the vehicle, say hello to the clump of orange-shirted guys, and one of them disentangles himself and tells me to follow him. I guess he's the designated English-speaking guide.

This is a training center for disadvantaged/poor youth, where they spend a full year learning the entire process of silk-making, and then get certified in it and apparently can now earn good wages as skilled artisans.

So I see where they grow mulberry trees. Then I meet silkworm eggs, see moths mating (they're allowed 5 hours for this), newly hatched worms, older worms, caterpillars starting to weave their cocoons, and finished cocoons drying in the sun. Fascinating. Apparently they allow about 20% of the cocoons to hatch into moths, and kill/dry the rest for the silk. The guide cuts a couple open, dumps out the worms, and gives me them to keep. The female caterpillars make roundish cocoons, while the long thin cocoons are from male worms. Why am I so fascinated by this?

Then we move into the very hot hut where they boil the cocoons and a woman pulls off the threads and twists them into thread and winds them onto a big bobbin. All this is by hand, and looks very sweaty. Did you know that raw and smooth silk aren't the same thing at all? Raw silk is the outer third of the cocoon - thicker fibers. The interior, hard part of the cocoon becomes smooth, fine silk. It takes 45 cocoons (1 fiber apiece) to wind into one fine silk thread. All by hand, inch by inch. The boiled caterpillars can be eaten, but the guide doesn't bother offering me one of those.

He shows me the various dyes they use. The threads are threaded (again by hand) into a fine-toothed metal comb thing, and then a machine (the only electric thing in the place) winds them onto bobbins to prep for the long threads (warp?) on the looms - I guess counting out the appropriate number of threads (5000 if you want a meter-wide fabric) and then keeping them from tangling so they can be loaded onto the looms.

If you want soft silk, you have to bleach the silk (which in Cambodia is yellow; Chinese silkworms make white cocoons). If you want tougher fabric (like tapestry/upholstery) you don't bleach the silk before dying.

They do a sort of tie-dying thing here, terribly complicated, but all these women count threads and tie them together, they dye one color, then tie some more and keep dyeing. My guide says this is the most difficult/advanced job in the process.

The weavers also look hot. These are large wooden looms with foot pedals - probably no different from what they might have used hundreds of years ago. It's like the Industrial Revolution still hasn't hit here. The women weaving solid colors look a bit bored; one has an iPod knockoff she's listening to. Some are weaving patterns and textures, which looks incredibly complex; I'd love to understand the machinery, but I can't make them stop work so I can take a loom apart!

Anyway, the tour is free but dumps you in the gift shop, and after seeing the amount of work it takes to make this stuff, you do feel a bit guilty for thinking it's expensive. It is probably priced similarly to what you'd pay in the USA for machine-made stuff - gorgeous scarves are between $35 and $170, etc - so I don't buy much. Silk fabric is $20-$25/yard. I fall in love with one pattern, envisioning it as drapes, but they don't have any more in stock. The store manager (all THESE employees speak impeccable English - high end wares, high end English?) would be very happy to do a custom order for me. If I want to buy 15 meters ($300), they could make that for me in about a month. Boggle. What is that per hour? She gives me several email addresses so I can contact her from the States to order, if we want.

AAAAANNNDDD...Montezuma takes his revenge!

Yes, poor Scott got hit hard. Spent a full 24 hours in our hotel room - thankfully air conditioned and with a private bathroom. I ran errands to buy water, rehydrating solution, and scrounge extra toilet paper.

I am still disgustingly healthy - lucky for me, at least.

Once Scott was able to keep some liquids down, we pulled out the Immodium and ciprofloxacin. He's feeling fine now, though without much appetite. I'm hungry as ever, so it's a little embarrassing to head to restaurants where I order twenty-seven items, and Scott has some dry toast.

In search of Bon Chow 2

So the Hanoi airport is pretty dead. We buy some "fruit chips" (fruit apparently includes yam and taro, as well as banana, pineapple, and some less recognizable things). Straightforward flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Oddly, Vietnamese Airlines (the only ones that do this flight, and WAY overpriced) serves meals and free beer even on this 1.5 hour flight, and then gives us survey forms to fill out, rating their service, courtesy, and....attractiveness of flight attendants? What? Hair and makeup, to be rated poor to excellent? This would TOTALLY not be kosher in the US.

Siem Reap (the town near the Angkor Wat temple area) is booming, and looks a little bit like Las Vegas. We're in the middle of jungle, with cows grazing freely along the roadsides and rice paddies, and these enormous, brand new hotels start rising out of nowhere. And there seem to be hundreds of them. We, of course, are not staying in one of those. We're at the Mandalay Inn, whose motto is "Looks expensive, but not!" For $18/night, we get A/C, but breakfast is not included. Very nice and helpful Burmese owners.

We go to one of the recommended traditional Khmer restaurants, and after perusing the menu, I ask our young waiter for "bon chow and naim" (actually probably more like baan chaaeuw, but these are traditional Cambodian foods that I remember from our days of living in Long Beach with all the Cambodian refugees, and I want to share them with Scott.)

Our (15-year-old?) waiter cracks up. He finally cannot restrain his giggles, and passes us off to another teenage girl. I don't know if it's my terrible accent, or if I inadverdently said something scandalous, or what. She says they don't have bon chow, so I order something else. The food is all great, but our evening is overshadowed by the five or six waitstaff (all teenage) who spend the rest of the night giggling and saying "bon chooooowwwww" in various exaggerated accents. I still don't know what was so funny.

Finally, our waitress explains that our waiter is from Thailand (or his parents are or something) and he doesn't really speak Khmer well. But then it seems like she's just teasing him because he LOOKS Thai (to her, not to me), or maybe he has a Thai accent - she says my accent is much better than his, which even I know is rubbish. Later, the woman at our hotel said that they were probably just astonished that a tourist would ask for something like that - it's street-market food, and it's very odd that we would know that it exists, let alone the name.

Anyway, the next day I do find my bon chow and naim...at the street market. For 50 cents. And it's even better than I remember.

In search of Bon Chow

Another night train back to Hanoi, and we're dumped in the city at 4:30 am.

What do tourists do at that time of day?

Not much. We found a free bench (lots of them) on the north end of Hoan Kiem Lake and watched the sun rise. Good photos. Around 5 am we noticed that locals were starting to congregate around us. Mostly older people - older as in between 40-70, I'd say - and they start engaging - in unison - in this odd sort of Communist calisthenics program. I don't know if there is a leader or they just do this routine every morning, but it involves gentle twisting, arm swinging, slapping, etc. Not aerobic per se, but rhythmic and very...I don't know, Communist-masses looking. One tourist tries to join in, but she looks so foolish we don't bother. Instead, we buy an overpriced chocolate bun (like cinnamon roll but with chocolate crumbly stuff instead of cinnamon).

Then a lady switches on her boombox and the masses (or some of them) clump together and start doing what we think is Tai Chi. Graceful, stretchy (though some of them are significantly more graceful than others).

Around 7 am things start to open up. We take a cyclo (bicycle-driven rickshaw type thing for 2 skinny people or one fat one) to the "Temple of Literature." Beautiful old temple-y building, the first university in Vietnam, dedicated to the study of Confucianism. More good photo ops. It's still cool and a bit rainy - so far, it has not been nearly as hot as we predicted, and I'm wearing my one long-sleeved jacket a lot.

We're very proud of ourselves for successfully finding an address in another part of town and managing to book minibus tickets all by ourselves for our future trip to Halong Bay (at end of vacation, just before we fly back). HA! We didn't need a taxi!

So we're flying to Cambodia this afternoon, and trying to find the airport bus. Can't find it. We do find a public bus heading roughly the right direction, or so says the one kid who thinks he speaks English.

An old lady on the bus gestures to the empty seat next to her, and I sit down. Very nice lady. No one on this bus speaks English, but I write the number of the bus and the words "Noi Bai?" (the name of the airport). This brings on a flurry of discussion around us, apparently about the best bus route to take to the airport. The lady points out the window, writes number 17 on my paper, says something urgent to us, and we get pushed off the bus.

Hmm. OK, so back a few hundred yards on the road are some more buses. No number 17 though. We keep walking, and see more and more buses. Finally I see a bus station, where the traffic-directing cop guy asks us a question. I show him my paper with "17" written on it, ask "Noi Bai?" and he points us to a bench where, indeed, there is a sign with Bus 17 Noi Bai written down. Hooray! From here on out, it's easy. The locals make SURE we get on the bus. And off. This whole trip, we're the only non-Vietnamese we see. Awesome!

The best (touristing) day ever

So we the jetlagged, hot, ankle-swollen, and direly in need of a shower, hopped on an overnight train to the Vietnamese mountain village of Sapa. We were grateful to share a sleeper cabin with a very nice retired French couple - who didn't mind that we were probably smelly and wanted to go to bed early - rather than overly energetic partying backpacker types. Thanks, Lord!



Arrived around 6 am, and hopped onto another minibus for an amazing ride...scary winding mountain roads along steep cliffs, a minibus driver anxious to get us there FIRST, apparently, as he kept passing other busses and vans on this narrow road. I spent the whole ride gawking out the window at the mist-shrouded mountains, with the terraced rice paddies, palm trees. It was like a jungle moment from a book, or something you see photos of at an art show but know you could never take a photo like that. (And sure enough, our photos don't look nearly as cool as the real scenery does!)



Sapa...was everything a tourist could possibly want. Our mini-hotel, called "Baguette and Chocolat," was started as a training grounds for disadvantaged students to learn hotel-management and French cooking. Nice clean quiet room, hot water (yay), and the most amazing food ever. It's actually quite cool in Sapa at night - maybe in the 50s? - so I'm glad I brought a jacket, but we ate a lovely continental breakfast on their sunny and breezy patio. I don't know how you squeeze orange juice like this, but it just is not the same as US OJ, and I mean that in a fabulous way.



People come to Sapa for its hilltribe trekking - i.e. taking day trips or longer, hiking to see local minority ethnic groups in their villages (mostly Hmong and Dao (or Zao)). The tribal women show up to the Sapa weekend markets in full traditional costume, carring their babies wrapped on their backs, and boy is there pressure to buy their handwork (textiles and silver jewelry, mostly). "You buy from me? You buy now?" It takes a LOT more than a, "no, thank you" to get rid of them!



Two young Hmong women latched onto us and wanted to take us trekking to their village, which was exactly what we had wanted (wanted to avoid organized tour groups). We clarified that they didn't expect payment for their services (see, we ARE learning!) but that they expected us to buy souvenirs at their village instead. OK, fair enough, I guess. They told us it was about 6 km away, which sounded about right, as we were still pretty tired from the night train and all the flying.



So we walk.



And walk.



All downhill, we notice. Uh oh - are we going to make it back? One woman's husband stops by on his motorbike (moped, I would call it) and she passes her 9-month-old off to him. He ties it onto his back and bikes off. Eek!



Finally we veer off the paved road, and we figure, this is good, we must be almost there - it's been probably about 3 miles, and we're getting tired and hot, and we now realize they must have underestimated the distance. The women clarify that we can get a motorbike ride from their village back up the hill to Sapa, so we relax a little.



News flash: this is not their village yet! We are going to climb down the entire valley, apparently! We pass water buffalo and lots of livestock, and Scott insists on taking photos of ALL of them. He argues that if we didn't want photos, why did we buy a new camera? I argue that we HAVE, after all, seen pigs and chickens before.



But we haven't seen a throng of young Hmong boys herding goats on the steep hills. Or men in traditional costume, plowing their terraced rice-fields with their water buffalo (buffaloes? they actually look more like cows with weird horns) knee-deep in water. Or little girls whipping the (apparently very docile) water buffalo along the road to better grazing. Or 5-day old piglets running around inside the houses.



We hike ALL the way down the cliffs to the river below - very steep, narrow paths. Scott and I are embarrassed to note that these three young women are wearing what amount to jelly-sandals, and are still helping us (with our Keen hiking sandals) over the steep and difficult spots. Sigh. My knees start to rebel.



Hey, we see a village! Hooray!



Oh, this is not THEIR village. This is the same ethnic group (Black Hmong), but their village is a little farther. There is a nice waterfall near their village they will show us, but first we will go to one woman's house and eat lunch. OK, we've been snacking on fruit and water as we walk, but are getting a bit peckish. Also need a toilet.



This is hard to communicate. Finally, they get the idea, and we backtrack a little ways to a hut where a Hmong woman is selling water, soft drinks, and snacks. We walk through her house to the toilet area in the back - a squatty potty with no TP, but we're not complaining at this point - at least the room has a door! We buy some more water in thanks.



We pass through about seven more villages. All are picturesque, in an incredibly poverty-stricken way. But none of these villagers seem to have any kind of self-pitying attitude. They take turns bragging about their possessions: "I have 3 chickens, 2 geese, 1 pig, 1 buffalo, and 1 motorbike." A motorbike, I think, is not just a sign of wealth, but a significant source of the family's income.



It's funny, but all the Hmong seem to have learned their English conversation skills from each other. Universally (and we had maybe 20 of these conversations) they start out, "Where you from?" USA, we answer. "How old are you?" I'm 31, Scott's 31. "You have babies?" Yes, we have two children. "Boy or girl?" One boy, one girl. "Ah, very good, you lucky." We agree. Scott at one point tried to talk to them about the concept of adoption, but that was (perhaps fortunately) too complex for our shared English.



"How long you stay?" We have to leave tomorrow, we explain. "You stay in hotel Sapa?" Yes, we're staying in Sapa (many tourists opt to do tribal village homestays, but we didn't have time or the appropriate luggage for this). Then, typically, they try to sell us something.

After walking through 9 or 10 villages (average house either made of wood planks or something that looks like woven bamboo strips, openings for doors, and about 6 inches of airspace between the open walls and the packed-dirt floors, I think for air circulation), we turn off the path and start walking straight uphill. THIS is the village. Or, more accurately, this is Kuu's village - the other two women, Baan and Pang (spellings as phonetic as I can manage) live down the road a bit more, and are enthusiastic to have us see their houses/children as well. Kuu stopped to buy a few packages of what looks like ramen, some eggs, and tomatoes to cook for lunch - she ascertained with each one that we could eat it, wanted to eat it, OK? You eat OK? OK.

We walk through one house - Kuu's parents' house, apparently. The next one over is hers, which her husband and a bunch of friends built when they were married (average female marrying age is 15, they say, certainly before 19, and 30 is...well, not marriageable here. Having met one 30-year-old woman, whose skin and teeth made her look more like 45 or 50, I guess I understand. The house is not small - has about 3 rooms on the bottom floor, plus a loft over most of it where they sleep. There are very low stool-things to sit on, and the girls get going splitting bamboo and building a fire in the room. Smoke just goes up through the woven roof. Children start showing up to stare. Kuu's daughter (about 3 years) has no pants on, which we discover is normal for non-potty-trained kids - there are no diapers. Her 8-year-old son seems to be in charge of the one-year-old boy, carrying him around on his back and entertaining him.

I look around and notice there's no bathroom or latrine or anything to be seen. And we still haven't seen any of the girls drink anything at all, let alone pee. And we never do see them do either, though we're chugging our water like crazy. They keep offering to carry our food/rice/waterbottles in their backpack basket things, which we try to decline, figuring that we're twice their size and they already have a heavy load in there. They win. Later, we notice that empty water bottles appear to be prized, and they request that we leave them ours. Hey, there's no recycling here, but re-using seems to be happening!

I get a little worried when I remember that we can't drink local water, and what precisely are we going to eat for lunch? Over on the fire, though, pots are boiling furiously, so we figure that much boiling must make things OK, right? We hope.

Lunch is rice, ramen noodles in sauce, scrambled egg, and stewed sliced tomatoes (they don't cut off any part of the tomatoes, so I try eating the green stemmy thing and it's actually edible). We're urged to eat more and more, and then, when lunch is over, they sit us down in the room and say, "OK you buy now." We knew this was coming.

The problem is, there are three women, and we need to spend about the same amount with each of them, right? We don't particularly want souvenirs, but we calculate that the day of entertainment, food, hiking, and three private guides is totally worth something to us. The women start out asking about 100,000 dong per item (an outrageous price of about $6 for a hand-embroidered bag or pillowcase). We tell them that we don't have a ton of money with us, but we select a few things to buy and offer them each 200k VND total (about $12). They agree without much trouble - we know perfectly well this is way too much, but $40 for a full day including souvenirs is about half what organized tours would have cost, so we're happy. They seem happy too, because after we pay, they each give us each a hand-embroidered ribbon bracelet - for free! Whoo-hoo!

Next we hike off to Baan's house, to meet her kids and apparently the rest of the village. We snap tons of photos, and every person wants to see himself or herself on our little camera display. We notice that, in each house, there is a framed collage thing of photos, almost all in formal dress, posed. Each woman has maybe one or two photos of herself, usually at her wedding. None of the children yet. We give out some chewing gum and kick ourselves for not having brought any little gifts for kids. Next time we'll know better, right?

Then Kuu wants to take us on to the waterfall, very close. We're exhausted, but it does sound cooling and relaxing. Then she points to it. Across the valley, maybe 2 more miles. OK, no. We tell her we're tired, and would just like to motorbike back to Sapa now, please. So we find their husbands with motorbikes, and pay them the outrageous sum of $3 apiece for a ride back (which we're totally thrilled about). Heartening discovery: they actually have helmets for us! I feel awkward sitting behind a skinny Vietnamese guy who probably weights at least 40 lbs less than me, and worry that I'll upset us somehow on this bike. It takes us about 25-30 minutes to get back to town, uphill all the way. So we're thinking, definitely not just 6 kilometers. Their odometers and speedometers are both broken, though, so the closest estimate we can come is about 10-12 miles.

Footsore, we walk back (uphill) to our delightful French hotel (did I mention the food?) Scott falls asleep three times during dinner, and neither of us is a stimulating conversation partner. We crash hard that night.

Intro to Vietnam 101

So...we're here. And tired. And flying by air may be more comfortable than many options, but not when you're on the inside and the guy in the aisle is large, ancient, handicapped (as in can walk, but barely barely), and sleeps the WHOLE trip. My small bladder wasn't overly thrilled about that, and we did have to wake up the poor guy a couple times, but tried to suffer in silence for the most part.

Getting through immigration wasn't actually as bad as we'd have thought. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam, but the airport is tiny, and there were only bored soldiers at the exit, no machine guns in sight. And the female soldiers were wearing heels with their uniforms! Which seems to be typical of urban Vietnamese women, but a bit startling nonetheless.

I think we missed the "official" airport bus to the city, and landed in an unofficial one, but it still got us there uneventfully, aside from a GIANT bug (do cockroaches fly?) thwacking us in the backpack and freaking me out a little.

Hanoi is pretty stunning, with its heavily French-influenced architecture and food. Also stunning how many people are so ready to take your money. We keep hearing, "hey you, motorbike? You, where you go?" The economy is booming, and everyone working hard to market their skill (driving/cycling) or product (knock-off name brands, photocopied books, and fantastic fruits).

We had a true tourist rip-off experience with our first taxi driver, who tried to charge us 830,000 Dong (about $60 US) for a cab ride that should've been about $6. We argued to no avail, so finally just got out of the cab, handing him a bill that was too large (but he wasn't about to give us change!) Now we know (from other tourists and locals) that only certain brands of taxi have "real" meters!

We also got dumped in the wrong part of town by another taxi driver - he took us to the address we had written down for a massage school for blind underprivileged kids (got good reviews!), but we never could find the right place, so ended up wandering around in the rain in the diplomatic quarter of Hanoi until we finally found another cab. Now we know we should call first for directions!

We also managed to eat fantastic food squatting at low tables in a hole in the wall place with no Westerners in sight. However, after the lovely meal of "bun cha, we noticed our sullen waitress taking our leftover greens, and dumping them back into the big bowl where she'd gotten them from! How many people had already been offered these particular leaves, I wonder? Now we know to maybe observe a little closer first!

So far, Montezuma's Revenge hasn't hit us yet, though we have our Immodium and antibiotics packed and ready...