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| sapa - vietnam |
Choice views of Fansipan are the prime commodity on sale in Lao Cai's signature destination,
Sapa, a hill station high in the mountains which is a vestige of the French colonial era.
Before the French came, Sapa was home to several ethnic minorities, and
now that the French are gone — they're still there. Dzao, Red H'mong,
and particularly Black H'mong have adapted to the tourist trade with
considerable zeal, and their notoriously aggressive sales techniques
should probably be attributed to how poor the region is, and how hard it
is to eke out any kind of a living.
Sapa ranks along
Ha Long Bay and
Hoi An
in terms of attracting tourists solely on the merit of its natural
beauty and surrounding attractions. It's particularly rich in
opportunities for treks, homestays, and (on clear days) the kinds of
panoramic views that leave travel writers searching for fresh
adjectives.
Mountaintop
Sapa began life as a hilltop retreat for French
colonists desperate to escape the searing heat of the Vietnamese plains.
They chose the lofty cool of Fansipan's surrounds, and it's easy to see
why — the humidity of
Hanoi peels away as you ascend the mountain peaks skirted with finely-sculptured, emerald-green rice terraces.
If you're only in Sapa for a few days, be forewarned that the views do not come with a money-back guarantee.
The 'best' time to visit Sapa is in the summer months of August to
December, when skies are more likely to be clear. These months are
rainier but they are also warmer, and sometimes you can't beat a nice
summer rain for atmosphere — showers are typically brief, but it pours
in buckets. Winter can be cold, foggy, and rainy, but every three or
four days, the weather clears and the views are more gorgeous than they
are any other time of year.
No matter what time of year you arrive, Sapa has its drawbacks and
advantages. Your top priority when selecting a room in January and
February should be heat. Some places have electric blankets or heaters
built into the bed frame, but that means the rest of the room is going
to be freezing. Electric space heaters are better, and best yet, many
places come with wood-burning fire-places. Make sure the fireplace works before you hand over your passport — some we saw were only ornamental.
Here you can come into close contact with a multitude of ethnic minorities. Chief among them are the Black Hmong,
so named partly because their dress is black, ornamented with colourful
brocade and silver jewellery, but mostly because of their black,
fez-like headgear. The Red Hmong dress in black as well, but the women wrap up their hair in a red scarf bedecked with silver-beaded tassels. The Dzao
also have distinctive headwear — a pile of coiled, braided hair, with
an elaborate, rectangular ornament of silver metal sticking out of the
top. They will happily remove their headdress for tourists to show that
it's just a hat and not their real hair.
Since the advent of tourism these tribes have reinvented themselves as hawkers of handmade trinkets
and textile goods. They are the genuine 'native' inhabitants of the
area, and they clearly regard all of the political nonsense that has
been going on for the past 1,000 years as background noise. People
invading and leaving. Governments coming and going. Many tribes straddle
the border with China, which they ignore, circulating freely on both
sides. As far as they are concerned, the lowland ethnic Vietnamese who
have shown up in recent years to make a buck are simply arrivistes.
Sapa is sharply stratified — almost all the businesses in town
are owned and staffed by Viet Kinh, and the only trade the tribes do is
on the streets in the form of handicrafts, fruits and vegetables.
The fact that the tribes continue to live a very basic existence is
partly economic and partly cultural. To them, a rice field, a garden,
some cattle and a stilt house are all the prosperity they ever hoped
for, going back countless generations. Homestays in these same stilt
houses are very popular, of course, though some villages are more
'authentic' than others. The most-easily accessed destinations feel more
like 'theme resorts' for tourists, where they get to rough it
local-style, though technically they are real villages. But if you
venture to the more remote hamlets, they offer fascinating glimpses of
lifestyles seemingly stolen from history.
Life is probably better for the tribes than it once was, but it still
takes all day to make a few dollars profit. Despite the steady flow of
tourists, supply far outweighs demand. You may notice that if you
wander beyond the last tourist-oriented business on any street, there
are precious few businesses thriving on local dollars alone. In a sense,
it's not really a town at all — the tribes live elsewhere and come into
town to do business — often trudging along on foot for hours — or
nowadays just as likely to jump on the back of a motorbike . The ethnic
Vietnamese, for their part, are from other cities in Vietnam. Many live
in cheap, shabby rooms but it still takes a lot of postcards and sweet
potatoes to make the monthly rent. And there are few other options:
other than family farming, since there are no major industries in the
area aside from tourism.
To describe Sapa as 'over-touristed' is a bit beside the point, since that is the sine qua non
of its existence — something to think about when you are having brocade
thrust into your hands or being dragged against your will into a shop.
Visitors are often surprised by both the ruthless selling prowess and
candour of the minorities. If you feel you've just been cursed in Hmong
after refusing to buy, rest assured, you probably have. But their
cunning and sales routines come just as naturally as their giggles and
smiles. The Hmong in particular are as tough as they are sweet and naive
as they are savvy. Patience, curiosity and a sense of humour are
requisite attributes for all visitors.
The Russian 
