Day 3-4 Sapa Part 2

We met up with our tour guide Mu at the hotel and began our trek to Lao Chai village. Just as our journey started, someone grabbed my hand. It was a black hmong woman we met earlier. She seemed to have misunderstood that I promised to go to her village (wherever that is) and was pulling me away from our group. God that was freaky. Luckily I managed to escape.

In no time more and more black hmongs started to follow us. Many of them are from Lao Chai village including Mu.

What they really do is they would ‘mark’ (as my friend puts it) each of you and when you reach Lao Chai for lunch they would start asking you to buy their overpriced products. I was the last to enter the hut for lunch and that made me their first ‘victim’. I bought a small pencil case-like bag for 20000VD (~RM 4) after cutting it down from 50000VD.

Some posing before we cross the bridge to the hut.

And that’s Liu and Lang, the 2 tiny girls that followed us. They’re all tiny for their ages if you noticed (like Mai and Xu).

At the stop along the trek, these helpless foreigners were surrounded by more salesgirls :P

After lunch we continued our journey to Ta Van village.

Finally after a total of about 11km trek we reached Ta Van village where we would stay the night.

This is our homestay.

All our meals were taken under the night sky. Mu is a great cook. I dare say we had ‘nem’ or springroll everyday since we reached Vietnam and hers was the best. In fact the whole meal was the best. What have we been paying in other places?!

Oh and did I say they love to serve fries? Fries are like the second food we had he most to nem. Mu’s fries were different. She fried them with garlic. I don't think I've had fries this way before.

The next morning we continued our trek to Giang Ta Chai or the Red Zao village.

This trek was the worst, sometimes having to go down slippery steeps, sometimes having to walk on an edge where we had to balance ourselves against the strong wind, and sometimes endless climbs. Regardless we arrived in one piece and relaxed at the waterfall while Mu went to prepare our lunch.

Strange thing is we saw no Red Zao around. Maybe their houses are scattered far away from the hut where we had lunch or all of them have went to Sapa.

After lunch we trekked what seemed like an endless journey, probably because we were tired from all that climbing already, to the road where a van picked us up. The van took us back to the hotel in Sapa. After a couple of hours of shopping around and later dinner, a bus took us back to Lao Cai train station.

A couple sat in front of my seat and from the moment I entered the bus, they have been kissing and hugging non stop. My eyes! My eyes! The sky soon turned dark – you know those evening skies, hate them, they make you strain your eyes yet you see nothing – and I felt like vomiting. The couple wasn’t making things any better. After trying to ignore them for like an hour I accidentally saw that they have switched places! Do you call that skill, or what!?

Take a look at the train station toilet. Maybe this is why they say Vietnam is the next China :P

We stayed another night on train and the next morning, it’s Halong Bay for us!

This is our tour guide Mu (holding the umbrella). If you intend on making a trip to Sapa you can directly contact her and not go through a tour agency because that would make it cheaper. You can send her an email (lythimu_laochai@yahoo.com) for further arrangements. Oh and keep in mind that M.U. is not Manchester United it Vietnam. It means “honey”.

If she insists on knowing how you got her contact you could casually mention me…that might probably earn me some discount points the next time I go there…

…I’m joking.