Sapa Tour - Pick Your Own Weed!
After our transfer from Lao Cai along the "exciting curvy road" (with some whinging Americans who'd clearly been staying at the Hilton and didn't understand that we had to go around Lao Cai picking up packages from every uncle and his mother before the transfer) we set out on our hike with Sho our tour-guide, a Petr and Eva from Prague and a band of little girls who made horses and headdresses out of the long grass for us all.
After buying a Kangaroo-sounding piece of metal passed-off as a musical instrument we began our descent into the beautiful steep-sided valley of the Red River terraced with rice paddies. In his daredevil fashion Martin crossed the stream of doom without hesitation.
Shortly after we got to play in one of the coldest mountain rivers of the tour so far where we particularly loved our water-nymphs look with our headdresses!
Lunch was a pretty substantial picnic of sarnies and beer - half of which was not enough to make the pig drunk!
Leaving Elingho Village we headed by way of the school at Lao Chai and on to our homestay in the same village. After Martin's and my unsuccessful spear and net fishing trip with the little boy from the homestay we had a great dinner, including spicy chicken bits - bits being all the awkward joints from which it wasn't easy to pull out the meat. Nice taste but probably a bit of a celery effect - you use more effort getting the food than the nutritional content gained. Dinner was promptly followed by our pick-your-own hemp (left growing freely in the fields around Sapa), dried over the fire and smoked through a H'Mong water pipe.
Beers were drank (as is their purpose), then we headed by way of the Blair Witch field to a showof H'Mong dancing and music. Naturally when the pink scarfs came out Martin and were filled with a burning desire to join in. Oh how we made it look good! The highlight of the event was definitely not the man with his whining, warbling, going-nowhere ukaleili music. After months of hearing this I still cannot fathom the appeal. I'd prefer Adrican, Latin or North American or European folk music anyday! And then there's the Backstreet Boys - all the girls here still love them (bad taste continues)! So the rest of the evening was spent chilling with Sho our tour guide, Lyly a tour guide who's birthday it was, and a random selection of Scottish, Germans and Quebecans...whilst being brought back to school disco days with the Backstreet Boys karaoke VCD! Occasionally we got to stem the flow with a bit of Daddy Cool!
Lunch was a pretty substantial picnic of sarnies and beer - half of which was not enough to make the pig drunk!
Leaving Elingho Village we headed by way of the school at Lao Chai and on to our homestay in the same village. After Martin's and my unsuccessful spear and net fishing trip with the little boy from the homestay we had a great dinner, including spicy chicken bits - bits being all the awkward joints from which it wasn't easy to pull out the meat. Nice taste but probably a bit of a celery effect - you use more effort getting the food than the nutritional content gained. Dinner was promptly followed by our pick-your-own hemp (left growing freely in the fields around Sapa), dried over the fire and smoked through a H'Mong water pipe.
Beers were drank (as is their purpose), then we headed by way of the Blair Witch field to a showof H'Mong dancing and music. Naturally when the pink scarfs came out Martin and were filled with a burning desire to join in. Oh how we made it look good! The highlight of the event was definitely not the man with his whining, warbling, going-nowhere ukaleili music. After months of hearing this I still cannot fathom the appeal. I'd prefer Adrican, Latin or North American or European folk music anyday! And then there's the Backstreet Boys - all the girls here still love them (bad taste continues)! So the rest of the evening was spent chilling with Sho our tour guide, Lyly a tour guide who's birthday it was, and a random selection of Scottish, Germans and Quebecans...whilst being brought back to school disco days with the Backstreet Boys karaoke VCD! Occasionally we got to stem the flow with a bit of Daddy Cool!
Labels: Vietnam
posted by Ian Matthias at
11/18/2006 03:54:00 am
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