We left at 7am for the 4 hour ride to Sa Pa in the mountainous area of north western Vietnam, famous for its trekking and its cable car up a 10,000 foot mountain. Sa Pa is a much busier town than we expected and there is a ton of construction. You pretty much have to be a mountain goat to negotiate these streets. We have never seen anything like them. It is 100 feet straight up from the road to our room at the hotel. The steps are grueling.  But we wanted some down time and we got it! You have to want something really badly to go down and up those stairs!

You really have to be a mountain goat to live here!

We ate a disappointing dinner at a H’Mong restaurant that was very pretty and modern. But the food was pretty gross: the dried buffalo was like beef jerky (even tho the waiter promised us it was not dry), the soup had weird fish head parts in it and was tasteless but the Banana Flower Salad with peanuts was delicious. Practically every serving dish was chipped, even the beer glass but the beer was an IPA, the first one in about 6 weeks so Buzz was happy. And we had the exact opposite experience for lunch. We stopped into a restaurant close to our hotel called “Good Morning Vietnam”, very tiny but crowded. We had the best spring rolls ever! And the duck with chili and lemon grass served on a sizzling platter was fantastic! We will be going back there again before we leave.

There were some interesting items on the local menus:

The photo on the left is a frog Hot pot. We also saw dog and porcupine. Didn’t try any of them!!

Unfortunately, the mountains were socked in all of yesterday except for a few hours. We are hoping that some of the next 48 hours they will clear. The cable car ride is quite expensive and we don’t want to go up there to see nothing. But even in the clouds, it is a beautiful scene.

Well, time for dinner; gotta negotiate the steps again…..arrgghh!!

PSU was playing Ohio State this morning at 7am and Buzz was up and trying to connect at 6:50am. We did pretty good until the electric went out and then our nephew, Jeffrey, and John Hargleroad texted the plays to us! Thanks Jeffrey and John! Would not have wanted to miss that glorious win!!

We checked out of the hotel we spent the last two nights. It was nice enough but a killer…we had 75 stairs straight up to our room. They did not have room for us for the third night so we found another place, got a ground floor room, and our room is beautiful and large. Should have stayed here all 3 nights…oh well.

Vietnam is also a land of contrasts; we have to walk up a hill that has mud running down it and there is a huge pile of wood and scraps across the street that look horrible. The streets are very narrow and very hilly, many with water eternally running down them (not gray water) and the traffic is pretty bad. Because of the hills and stairs built everywhere, the cars have to take a long way around to get anywhere. But they are building here like crazy. Hotels are going up by the dozens, literally. Yet, we feel that the infrastructure will not be able to handle it. The electric went off many times today. What happens when they have dozens more hotels and hundreds more people? We are glad we came here when we did but wish we had come 2 years ago. I hate to think what this town will look like in a few years. Total gridlock!

The town has a pretty lake with the mountains surrounding it. The whole area is terraced rice paddies. They are so cool looking. We missed the season by just a bit; the rice was harvested and they had started burning some of the fields which added to the mountain always being socked in!

They have a huge “rink” type space with stone stadium seating all around. On Saturday night, there were thousands of people hanging out in the area,some playing a kind of hackey sack game, some riding those 2 wheel hoverboards, entertainment on stage, it was crazy. The H’mong teens did a dance with the girls swirling under umbrellas and the boys playing a  “khen”, a flute type instrument but with all the crowds the sound was lost. The guy at the restaurant gave us a story about it being a pre-marital ceremony but we could find no reference to that and they basically danced and collected donations. There was a true night market going on next door but the lighting was too bad to see anything.

I had booked a batik class for the afternoon through a fair trade organization called Indigo Cat. We rode over unbelievable rocky dirt roads (even worse than Indian roads) after paying a toll of $150,000VND ($6.72) to ride these horrendous roads. We were dropped off 30 minutes later in Ta Van, a H’Mong village, one of 5 indigenous tribes in Vietnam. I attended the batik class and Buzz cruised the village.  He ended up having beers in a “Local Bar”, becoming Facebook friends with the owner!!! I spent about 100 minutes hand drawing a design on a piece of muslin with hot wax. This area is a big draw for trekkers and home stays. At one point, I had about 15 people surrounding me and taking my picture. Between the crazy lady who kept hitting my shoulder and pointing and grunting, a crying baby who at times was banging on my artwork and a dog fight, I was amazed I got anything done. The design was then going to be soaked 5 times in a vat of indigo and dried overnight and I will pick it up in the morning.

One thing that really bothered us was the fact that all the babies in the tribe that we saw were carried around by the teenagers and younger children. We saw a little girl who could not have been older than 4 with an 18 month old baby on her back. The baby was almost as big as she was; she could hardly walk. Many of the children are filthy and spend their day begging and trying to sell trinkets. It breaks my heart; we wanted to buy all the trinkets these children had so they could go home but our suspicion was that they would be sent out with more merchandise and start all over again. There are signs in Sa Pa asking you to not buy from the beggars so we complied and bought from more legitimate vendors. At one point in negotiations, I was surrounded by vendors trying to show me their wares…pretty funny experience. I ended up getting what I wanted at a fair but negotiated price.

Tonight dinner was at Red Dao which is another hill tribe and their venison and fish with tamarind and butter sauce were also great. The apple wine was pretty good too….first buzz on the whole vacation!!

The final day of our stay the mountains were socked in again. The front desk person has a friend who worked up on the mountain and she said don’t bother coming; the mountain was completely socked in…so we saved $60.

We spent the day just walking around and having a coffee to warm up and stay out of the rain. The ride back was fine. We grabbed a taxi outside the bus station and rode to Dong’s home stay. When we got there, Buzz asked me if I had the computer; I didn’t. Apparently when the cabbie unloaded our luggage, the computer didn’t make it out of the trunk. Buzz went back out to the street to see if he saw the taxi. We called the bus station and asked them to keep a look out in case the cabbie brought it back. We are not holding out much hope and we still have my computer. Lesson learned; don’t hurry.