September 11, 2005

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  SAPA
  

  
  

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  Picture 1.  I am standing at the balcony of my hotel Bamboo Sapa and facing the Fanxipang with the highest peak about 3143 meter.  Click on the pic. to enlarge it you will see some multistory houses equipped with water tanks on rooftop because water pressure in the public water distribution system often is not enough to reach higher floors.  The rooftop water tanks are popular throughout Vietnam.
  
  Picture 2.  Large bamboo bush covers a house.  Far away is a step field on which planting is alternately one season of corn and one season of rice.  Lustrous green everywhere are vines of chayou, a popular indigenious vegetable.

  
  

  Picture 3. Deep in the valley is where the H’Mong or other VN minority people live.  Most of them are poor farmers.  Many of their huts/houses are still made of palm leaves and mud.  Some of them enhance their income by trading and peddling with tourists.  They sell souvenirs such as embroidery bags, quilts, and silver products.  The houses near town have electricity, TV, some other appliances, and even motorbikes.

  
  

  Picture 4.  Most farming works rely on water buffalo on muddy field, or ox on other.  Farming method traditional for thousand years is employed with a man standing on a single-prong plow pulled by a buffalo or an ox.  And even only well-off farmers can afford their own water buffalo.

  
  

  Picture 5.  I came to Sapa with the imagination of a knight on high horse resting at a spring so the horse could take a drink and my knight would look up to the moon and let out a sigh with a few verses of poetry.  I asked Truong, my tour guide, if the H’Mong still use horses.  He said that they may only in very remote location, deeper in the forrest.  Now, they use motorbikes to go any where there is a rideable path, or walk where there is not.  Actually in Sapa you can see so many Mercedes minivan which are used to transport tourists.  During my trip as I went down so deep in the valley to visit indigenious people, I got one of these Mercedes to pick me up and drive me back to town.  Just a short time going up the hill even with the marble rock stairs built for tourists is enough to drain a very fit person with 7 miles walking, 5 sessions of 45 minutes work out including kickboxing and aerobic dance, and 5 hours ballroom dance each week.  It’s me.

  
  

  Picture 6.  I woke up early in the morning to see the magnificient nature.  The peak of Fanxipang touches the sky and fog covers the valley like a milky river.

  
  

  Pictures 7, and 8.  We walked and climbed long hours to see the waterfalls and the springs deep in the valley.  You can see in the picture “cây gai,” which the H’Mong use as raw material for weaving and dying into fabric, indigo or other colors.  The fabrics are air dried in pic 10.

  
  

  Picture 9.  Step fields where the H’Mong and Red Dzao plant herbs, corns (popular stable), and rice.

  
  

  Pictures 10 and 11.  Bridges in Sapa.  I am obsessed with bridges due to my current employment.

  
  

  Pictures 12 to 17.  Take them from a park on Hàm Rồng or Dragon Jaw, which is the highest place in Sapa.  In picture 17 you will see a catenary pole, an evidence of technology in the wild.  The pole is for radio, television, and telecommunications (e.g., cell phone).

  
  

  Picture 18.  H’Mong people sell things in Sapa.  They dress in black with leg warmers.  They mostly walk about town, but once in a while you see them riding on bus or motorbikes.  They carry materials in their cái gùi, traditional backpack made of bamboo.

  
  

  Picture 19.  Sapa market.  This place had been a “love market,”  where H’Mong and Red Dzao not only traded their materials but also used the market as a social gathering location to make friends, to date, to woo lovers with instrumental and vocal musics.  The H’ Mong husbands totally owned their wives for life.

  
  

  Picture 20.  Displayed are six traditional dresses of different minority people: (H’Mong, Thai, and others unknown to me )

  
  

  Picture 21.  Dzay women sell trinkets in Hàm Rồng.  They are distinguished with other minority by the colorful turbans.  It is noticeable that in Sapa all peddlers of any minority people are female.

  
  

  Picture 22.  The Red Dzao farmers in Tả Ph́nh are going home after a workday.  Many walkways are paved with concrete or brick to accommodate motorbike traffic and tourists.

  
  

   

  • 10:14 am
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