🙂 Teeny tiny villagers. Colourful traditional clothing. Sights, smells, sounds…food! Authentic.
🙁 Animal welfare.
Phoy collected us at 20h30 from our hotel to transfer us to the station and assist with our tickets and boarding. We bought some red wine from a tout on the platform. Our cabin was a 4 berth luxury cabin for the 4 of us…which was great as we could put our backpacks on one bunk! We booked our tour directly with Sapa Sisters – an amazing organisation who supports all their ladies. It is best to try and arrive on a Tuesday so that you can take advantage of the Coc Ly market nearby. We opted for the 2 day trek to include the market and a homestay – the homestay is really key to immersing yourself in the area and the culture. They also arranged our VIP train and transport to and from the train station.
Our VIP train was comfortable although hot.
We were collected by our Guide called Little Mo on arrival.
Our drive to the market was 1.5hours … very distressing to see pigs trussed up in plastic bags and unable to breathe… There was not a tourist in sight – a trylu authentic market.
The local tribe is the Flower Hamong. We had Pho for breakfast – delicious!
After breakfast we continued exploring… Charlotte bought a traditional skirt… we were immersed in another world – fascinating.
Thuoc Lao is a popular, historical form of smoking in Vietnam. The extremely potent leaves of Thuoc Lao or Nicotiana Rustica form the main ingredient in this Vietnamese tobacco.
We just could not stop taking photos! The colourful clothing…the amazing smells… the sounds – an unmissable experience…so pleased that we had factored this in and relieved that it was truly a part of their weekly lives….amazing. The older generation were absolutely tiny – I felt like a giant towering over them!
Thuoc lao literally means “drug from Laos”. This traditional Vietnamese tobacco can be either smoked or chewed. A common proverb in Vietnam said that a piece of betel is the beginning of the story … In order to smoke it you will need a dieu cay – a pipe made from bamboo or plastic, a ball of Vietnamese tobacco, a match to set the fire. To experience pipe smoking, you can simply go to every drink stall on every street. Order a cup of green tea, pack up a tobacco ball then put it into dieu cay, burn the tobacco, wait for a second then blow the ash out of the pipe, take a deep toke from the pipe together with drinking some tea, let the smoke get out from your mouth, and apparently you will feel extremely “phe” – the word Vietnamese people use to describe the high. You should ask someone sitting behind to catch you in case you may hit your head because of getting too high….if that floats your boat – not ours – cannot think of anything worse! But it is a common sight.
Once we had explored the market we were transferred to a small local boat and we enjoyed a scenic paddle down the river. It was very beautiful until we got to an area which was being excavated for sand as the Chinese are building dams throughout Vietnam to enable power which is destroying the local fish, birds – all wildlife – very sad to see.
After the boat trip we were transferred to Sapa and stopped off at the bridge crossing over to China – there were so many people dragging enormous heavy loads over the bridge!
Go to: Vietnam
We stopped at a shrine where people gave thanks and then we headed to the Sapa Sisters office to drop off our bags and commence our trek.
Go to: Vietnam
Go to: Sapa
Go Back to: Halong Bay
