Yesterday we went to Bac Ha Market, which is about 4 hours drive from Sapa. What a cool place.
We spent the day with Nancy, an American med student we’d met on the bus up to Sapa.
All of the village tribes come down from the mountains to exchange goods – anything from shoes to pigs.
We’ve got some awesome photos. One man has a wooden cage on the back of his scooter with about 8 pigs inside. One that we didn’t get was a scooter with a full grown pig strapped to the back! His front wheel was pulling up as he set off up the hill!
After the market we went to visit a mountain village, but it was a little bit Disneyland stylee as there were bus loads of tourists trapsing through. Plus we’d had our fill of tribal villages on the Sapa trek.
On the way back to the train station we stopped at the Chinese border, which was kinda cool. The others on the tour were fairly excited and an Aussie girl pushed her luck a little and got told to step back … we’ll be doing the real thing in about 4 months or so!
We ended the day drinking beer and playing cards at a street cafe with Nancy, whilst waiting for our sleeper train back to Hanoi.
It’s 6am and I’m sat in an Internet cafe in an eerily quiet Hanoi.
We’ve just got off the night train from Lao Chi (nr Sapa) and I’m not too sure which way is up!
We shared a cabin with a Vietnamese couple and I got talking to Mr Hien Duy Le. I was drilling Hien for more facts (we’ve done the museum circuit in Hanoi already) and his opinion on the past 100 years or so of Vietnamese history. All very interesting, and disturbing. They’ve had a tough century or so (the French, the Japanese, the French again, the Americans, the Kamher Rouge), but as my man told me it was nothing compared to the 1000 year war with the Chinese.
Hien said that Vietnam, especially Hanoi, is changing daily. It really started to change in 1990 and has been changing with pace ever since.
(The girl next to me at the Internet cafe is listening to Hotel California – what is it with that song in Vietnam!!)
Hien was interested on the book Laura is reading – River of Time – about a journalist posted in Vietnam during the war with America. I have his address and will send it him when I’ve read it. The least I could do in exchange for my private history lesson!
Righto, dawn is breaking and my stomach is grumbling.
