Monday October 14 Sa Pa

Monday October 14 Sa Pa

We did a trek this morning. I lasted three hours. Netsy and Larry are still out there. Through the hotel we hired a local Hmong guide just for us three. She's probably around twenty, in traditional dress, English speaking to an extent. This mountain is 1800 meters high. We started down the road, steep, uses thigh muscles, works the knees. Then we hit the steps. OMG!  I bought a walking cane about half way down. It was a challenge. 

Hmong homes, terraced rice plantings, shops, farm animals, women offering to sell jewelry, fabrics, bags, clothes lined the walkways.

 We visited a few typical homes open to trekers  to show the way of life. Rice, beans, corn drying, fires inside for kitchen and blacksmithing; weaving, sewing and spinning. The flower Hmong we saw yesterday practice ancestorism, the ones today, black Hmong (for the colors of their clothes) describe themselves as shamanists.  It was very interesting and very beautiful. Of course I have questions about what keeps them so poor and what choices do they have besides tourism. But we haven't come across anyone with an interest in exploring that. We know the government provides free schooling and healthcare for the many minority tribes we learned about in the ethnology museum. And the government owns the land they cultivate.  We may meet again in Hanoi the American guy who has been working here four years. Maybe he'll be able to say what conflicts and contradictions exist about minorities in this ostensibly communist country. 

Getting back to our trek, I kind of petered out towards the bottom of the mountain. Our guide arranged for me to be picked by a motorcyclist who thankfully brought me up on the very steep, windy road back to the hotel for $3. I would never have gotten back on my own. 

So here I sit, on a beautiful patio terrace, facing the highest mountain in Indochina, quite content to be writing to you guys.