Tuesday, June 24, 2008

more on the adventure.....

We arrive in Loi Cho and it is crazy again and for some reason no one can seem to find our driver. We meet with some hotel staff and they tell us that they have arranged a journey to visit ethnic minority villages today. We get into a van with our driver and guide and trek 3 1/2 hours by car to a Flower Hmong market. The Flower Hmong are very colorful and the market was certainly busy. They had everything for sale - crafts, herbal medicines, weavings, Pho' (noodle soup) and even puppies that you could take home and cook up for yourself. We spent some time at the market and I purchased an amazing wall hanging.
Back into the car to make the 3 1/2 hour trek to another village. The roadfs in this region are not very good and in fact are one lane and mostly rock and dirt. We pass by some very colorful villages and scenes. We get out of the car and trek about 45 minutes by foot into another minority village and we are greeted by a local man and his son and wife who invite us into their home where he prepares tea for us and she boils us some peanuts. The son is about 5 or so and very cute and very shy. We really enjoyed participating in the ritual of getting the tea ready.
We set off on foot again to the banks of a very swollen river where we get on a boat for 45 minutes and go down river to a resting point for lunch. Back into the car and off to our final village of the day for a walk through the village. Most of you know that I am not all that fond of walking but I have to tell you that walking in heat and high humidity about did me in.
Finally we trek back to Sa Pa which is high in the mountains. We get to the hotel at 4 p.m. and find that they do not have a room for us. They put us into this room that is under renovation and tell us to wait for them to callus with another room. We get to our room finally around 5:30 and I shower and fall asleep and sleep until 6 a.m. the next morning - guess I was tired!! Oh - did Imention that there is no air conditioning in the rooms at this hotel? Yeah.........
We get up on Sunday and are feeling much better and ready to meet our guide for a trek into 4 - 5 more minority villages. This time almost all on foot. The one village that really stands out for me is the Red Dao village. The women greeted our car with shouts upon arrival and walked with us for miles. They wanted us to buy from them but our guide had warned us not to. So I made the remark -"no buying today. today we walk and tomorrow we are going to the market". I learn that this remark probably was not wise......All of the vilages we go into are so colorful and the people so friendly and they want to practice english.
We get back to the hotel around 1 or so, meet with the guide to plan the student trip and get prices and have an early dinner at the hotel.
Monday morning....
Because we are catching the evening train tonight we decide to keep our room till noon. Right before lunch we decide to go to the town and explore the markets. We walk out of the hotel and there sitting on the curb are the 4 Red Dao women that I told yesterday that I was shopping today. They had walked to town just to meet us. ANd of course to sell us stuff!! They had baskets and baskets of stuff to sell us. I bought some things from them and we head off into town.
About 7 p.m. we catch the shuttle bus down the mountain and get to the train in time for a 9 p.m. departure. This time we a sharing a room with a couple - both Norwegian - she works for the Norwegian Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka. We get into Hanoi at 5 a.m. and after some confusion about my missing back pack we are off to the hotel where we are informed that we can't check in till 10 a.m. So, we sit in the lobby reading, dozing, looking like bag ladies till they give us a room. Finally showered and rested we are off to do one final shopping trip and to meet with the booking manager of the hotel we are going to use with students and hopefully meet with one of the parents of our UWL Vietnamese students.
Our last full day......I have more thoughts I will post later on that.

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