I spent the past few days in Sapa, Vietnam. This is an old french hill top town that has been taken over by tourism due to the large amounts of hill tribe minority people in the area. From HaNoi, I took an overnight train up to a nearby city of Lao Cai. The train was about nine hours each way. I bought a soft sleeper ticket which meant I was in a small cabin with four others on soft mattresses. I met two guys in Sapa who bought hard seat tickets. Ha. Looking at their photos explains the hard seats. They had to sit upright on wooden bench like seats for nine hours with people sprawled out all around them, on them, under their seats etc. Needless to say, my bed was excellent compared to theirs and I also killed two birds with one stone (over night accommodation and transportation). Very nice!

Once I arrived in Lao Cai, we had an hour mini bus ride up into the hills (they looked more like mountains to me) to the town of Sapa. Our train arrived around 6 am so we were driving up into town in the early hours of morning. The views were marvelous.  As we began to get further up, we started seeing some people from the local hill tribes walking up the roads in their traditional outfits/clothing. We had to slow down a few times for the oxen (or some other large animal – I forget exactly which one) who were being hearded across the streets.

In general, the Vietnamese work harder than anyone I’ve ever seen before. Their manual labor is just outrageous for their small size. Then you enter into the hills and it’s a completely different type of manual labor. Old fashioned plows being pulled by animals, woman and children in the fields with their tools. Four year old children walking to and from school together for miles and miles without their parents anywhere in sight right on the edge of steep cliffs.  It’s just a completely different mentality of openess, community and maybe even a sense of karma.

I spent three days and two nights in Sapa. The first day I simply walked around the small town, wandered through a few markets and got familiar with every thing. As soon as you step off the bus, you have H’Mong woman and children following you. Seriously, one turns into three into five because they all want you to “buy from me, will you buy something from me”.  It’s cute at first and maybe even flattering but it gets old VERY quickly. Everyone wants to sell you something!

Since Sapa is on the top of a hill (huge mountain if your from flat Indiana) there is lots of trekking you can do. I knew I would do a little there but other than that I was honestly going to see if I could exchange my train ticket out for a day earlier. It’s amazing to see all the colorful fabrics, textiles, blankets and people but the town is a bit small and I was getting kind of tired of going back and forth up the same street on the first day. Then I remembered a photo journalist I had met on the minibus ride up into town. He had mentioned he wanted to visit an ethnic market that was about three hours away from Sapa and no tourists really ever want to travel that far. I thought what the heck, I have nothing else to do tomorrow and it’s $16 for the bus and driver we hired vs. the $10 I would pay to trek for the day so I should go.

The next morning I woke up at 5:30 am to be ready for the bus ride at 6:30. It was our local Vietnamese driver, four adults, one teenager son and one 16 year old H’Mong girl named Ha. The drive there was three hours long and filled with simply spectacular views. Sapa is already relatively close to the China border so we were dancing on the edge of it the entire way up. My cell phone sent me a message letting me know I had service in China so I’m guessing we were definitely considered in China at one point or another. Local people would stare at our bus as we drove by because about after an hour of driving, we were basically the only car on the road.

I was beginning to get a bit nervous because the paved road became dirt and mind you we were curving through the mountains. One of the guys got car sick but the rest of us were fine. Personally it was mind over stomach. I was hunkered down just trying not to enjoy the enormous views anymore. Just when I thought I was going to freak out I realized we were there. I quickly gathered my belongings, stumbled out of the van and looked up.

Wow. My heart came alive with the sight in front of me. Not only was I staring at the most beautiful women, men, children, landscapes, clothing, colors, etc but they were all staring right back at me. We were pretty much from another planet. The local H’Mong girl Ha was also a new sight for them because her clothing and skin were also different from theirs.

I almost didn’t know where to start but I followed the other two photographers down some steps. Our timing was perfect and magical. We were smack dab in the middle of the school recess! Now let me remind you I’m not in America, I’m in Vietnam. Never in America would they let two men and one woman with cameras waltz onto the playground to snap photos of children. Thank you Vietnam. It was amazing! These children have never seen cameras let alone what their photo looks like. The trick was to snap a photo and then show them. Most were shy at first but then they loved it. Their smiles and giggles were enough to fill anyones soul. I will never forget it.

Recess was over so we began to walk into the market. Again, so many stares it was unbelievable. Even though we were different and unknown to them we were welcomed and greeted with nothing but huge smiles. We spent a good three hours walking through. It was almost like I made friends with people and children even though we didn’t speak the same language.

My last day in Sapa was spent trekking with Ha in the morning through the countryside and then walking around the town grabbing a few last gifts from the H’Mong women before I departed back for Hanoi. I wish I could better describe my experience in the local market (I’m waiting for the name/location to be confirmed so I can better note it) but as one woman noted something earlier in my trip I believe it left a thumb print on my heart.

Here are some photos below. I’m sorry I can’t rotate them right now and they are small but it took me at least an hour to upload all of these. Hopefully you can begin to see how magical it was!

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