Hangin' with the Hmong

Mark, Niamh (pronounced Neeve), and I headed up to Sa Pa on the night of the 12th to go trekking in the mountains. Niamh is another Irish girl who has been good friends with Sarah for years and traveled with her for much of the time that they were India. Sarah had such a good time with Mark and I that she recommended to Niamh that she join up with us. Niamh works for the Mars candy company doing customer research.

Sa Pa is located in the far northwest corner of Vietnam and is now the tourist gateway to visiting the minority hill tribes such as the Zao and Hmong. The three of us were booked on the night train in soft sleeper compartments. We left the train station in Hanoi at around 9 pm and were supposed to arrive in Lao Cai at 6 in the morning on the 13th. There we were supposed to get picked up by a driver and taken to Sa Pa. As often happens when a person goes traveling, things don't work quite as planned. We awoke at around 7 am in a town called Pho Lu. After extensive investigation and a lot of funny hand gestures we determined from the local train station officials that there had been a lot of rain the night before that there was a landslide across the train tracks between Pho Lu and Lao Cai.

This of course means that there are now several hundred train passengers pouring out of the train station and dozens of mini busses scrambling to pick them all up. There are also of course dozens more people trying to act as handlers and trying to talk you into taking a mini bus to Sa Pa. If they take you up to a mini bus you get charged a higher amount and they get a cut of the price. Pretty much everything works this way here. Fortunately because we had booked our trip as a package tour our company sent the van down from Lao Cai to Pho Lu to pick us up. Unfortunately this took about an hour and we had to endure 73 offers for a ride to Sa Pa. Yes, I counted.

Sa Pa is a small town perched on the ridge of a mountain that has exploded due to the demand for trekking adventures. After a brief bit of repacking of our bags we set out from Sa Pa into the Mung Ha Valley. We began by walking about a half mile down the road leading out of town until we turned off of the main road and descended down to the bottom of the valley. The valley was shrouded in mist so thick that we could not see the mountain peaks. The entire landscape is an incredibly lush green color. Principally comprised of wet rice pond fields. Both sides of the valley are completely covered in them. The terraces are fed by complex water systems and irrigation ditches the collect water from the natural streams that descend down from the peaks above the valley.


The valley is populated by Hmong and Zao people. While there are multiple groups within both the Hmong and Zao people the Mung Ha Valley is made up of the Black Hmong and Red Zao. Small clusters of houses and agricultural fields, and animal pens are scattered across the hillsides. Each family owns the rice paddies around their home and there is no communal ownership of property or livestock. This is a stark contrast from the communist mantras of the Vietnam.


Part of the trekking adventure is the constant bombardment of requests from children for you to buy the handmade goods that the people produce. Mark was particularly good at bantering with them while managing to not buy anything. There are government built and operated schools scattered throughout the valley and attendance is mandatory for children. Going to school is free as well. Because of this many of the children speak surprisingly good english. Many of the crafts they made were ok, but it was disappointing to see that they did not sell anything that they wore themselves. I never saw a single person wearing any of the stuff that they were selling.

After about 5 hours of trekking and a stop for lunch we arrived at a Black Hmong house where we were going to spend the night. We relaxed and played with the family's children and learned the Hmong words for colors, and things like eyes, ears, and nose. Dinner was a wonderful spread of various stir fried dishes that we ate over rice. I was impressed at the amount of food that was put forth. There were beef, chicken and pork dishes as well as numerous types of vegetables. We also got to sample the locally made rice wine. I imagine that it has to be about 90-100 proof. Fortunately were only sipping it out of tiny little glasses.

Because of all of the tourism development has rapidly increased in even these rural areas. Some of the houses had satellite dishes and most of the houses had poured concrete floors,a dn mattresses to sleep on. However, despite the massive increase in tourists the people living in the valley still primarily rely on rice farming as their main form of subsistence.

The next day we hiked for about another 5 hours farther down the valley and eventually made our way back to the paved road along one edge of the valley and caught a jeep ride back up to Sa Pa. We explored Sa Pa for a few hours and then headed back to Hanoi on the train.

We wanted to head south to Hue on the night of the 16th, but is now looks like we are going to have to wait until the 17th because the trains is full on the night of the 16th. This is more time than I really want to spend in Hanoi, but what are you going to do? This is international travel...