Day 3: Sapa Part 1

Sapa was an experience like no other so I’m gonna be talking quite a bit about it.

In the wee hours of day 3 our train reached Lao Cai but we had to wait for a couple of hours before our van which would drive us to Sapa arrived. I was pretty sure it was our hotel’s fault for the confusion.

Upon reaching Sapa, the first thing I did was to take a bath (I didn’t take one for more than a sweaty day) and ‘Miss Malaysia no. 2’ subsequently followed. The itinerary was rather confusing and the two Switzerland girls we met while waiting for our van agreed. So for those of you who might be taking the Sapa tour, let me clarify it for you.

If you see your itinerary saying that you check into the hotel on the 1^st day and sleep in the homestay on the 2^nd night then check out of the hotel on the 3^rd day, don’t get confused. This is really what you do. You check into the hotel only to leave your luggage there. Soon after, you’ll be trekking to another village where you will spend the night.

After taking the breakfast provided by the hotel, we went for a walk with Mai and Xu as our guides. Mai is a 14 while Xu is a 16 ethnic girls and they both can speak English like they were from England.

Mai and myself.

It was really a different experience for me; with them ethnic black hmong girls bringing us around. People there are really friendly; they’d just walk up to you and start a conversation. Of course we soon realized that most of them follow you around with the hope that you would buy something from them.

A Red Zao woman selling handicrafts.

The Red Zao-s shave their eyebrows and the front half of their heads bald and wear a red headdress as you can see on the picture. Our tour guide explained why they shave their heads but I guess I wasn’t storing it in my long term memory so…I don’t know why!

Mai and Xu took us by the lake where they made flower crowns/bands/whatever-you-call-it for us.

I’ve never picked public flowers, especially not by the lake, especially not with so many friends, and especially not with ethnic people. See why I say this was an experience like no other?

Xu devotedly ‘weaving’ the flowers. I asked her to teach me how to make one myself because just two pair of hands (hers and Mai) can’t make so many flowerbands for all of us.

Everyone’s almost done!

We attracted a lot of attention while we were by the lake; Vietnamese tourists, foreigners, and even the black hmongs themselves!

She did not pose this way intentionally. We swear! Maybe that’s how she sits all the time. Maybe she’s contemplating marriage, or the problems of the world, I don’t know.

Who’s cuter?

The answer’s pretty obvious right? Someone might kill me if he sees this.

After we took more group pictures with our flowerbands over our heads, we rushed back to the hotel to meet our tour guide Mu. On the way, Xu say a love song which I must say, I fell in love with. I asked her what the title was and she said ‘Tiger’. I hope she knew what I meant by ‘title’. According to her, a Tiger sang this song to his lover.

And thus, at 10 AM, we leave Mai and Xu in Sapa and began our trek to Lao Chai village. Note: Lao Chai is a village whereas Lao Cai, the place our train arrived at, is a province.