This morning we met with Jeff the French Canadian over a leisurely breakfast. Three blokes at the end of a great adventure, feeling more than a little sorry that it is all over now.
What to do?
I had already been about town earlier, bought some hill-tribe craftwork for Christmas presents back home, and pretty much seen all I needed to see. Sa Pa is very much geared up to cater for tourism, and boy, do the locals have their routine together. The surrounding hills are home to predominantly H’mong and Dzao people, and they send all their women and girls into town, dressed to the nines in traditional garb, to relieve the tourist of their Dong. I was cornered by a gang of old H’mong women and they take no prisoners. They were selling ethnic garb and jewellery, and set about decorating me like some kind of Christmas tree. It starts with a hat placed on the head. I smile and reach up to take it off, and then like handcuffs they clamp chunky bracelets to my wrists. My attention temporarily diverted to those, they slip a bulky metal necklace around my neck, and for good measure, replace the hat. You must understand, there is always much humour during the proceedings, and it is fun, but I was starting to look like one of those travellers who have been on the road way too long. Extracting yourself from the hard-sell H’mong hustlers is a lengthy process. Each time you remove one item from a limb or the head, something else appears on another unguarded one. It is like some kind of puzzle you have to work your way out of, eventually getting the correct combination in the right order, and you are free to leave.
The younger girls are very well versed in dealing with the foreigner, and many have a grasp of English and French. Their business strategy is slightly less subtle and usually begins with the offer of a handshake. Should you offer your hand, they instantly withdraw it and thumb their nose at you. As Dan remarked, some wise-ass tourist taught them that a while ago, now we are all paying for it. Sometimes they will quickly snatch something of yours, like a hat, and hold it ransom until you buy something from them. Unluckily for one girl, she had grabbed my pith helmet, which I was not planning to keep anyway. Tourism can and does bring many benefits to communities such as this, but the reverse is also often true. Never is it more apparent than when a fourteen old girl is offering a choice between opium, marijuana or sex – or all three.
We all discussed the female strong-arm tactics over breakfast, and agreed that in fact, Sa Pa, after a journey like ours, was rather an anti-climax. It is a town where tourists and travellers with little time to spare, can be in the hills and feel they have “experienced” an ethnic minority. It is a distilled and distorted version of the real thing, conveniently located outside the hotel or restaurant. During the last week, we have spent time with all the various minorities to be found in the north. We have visited their villages, eaten their food, drunk their tea or wine, and smoked their pipes. They have been kind, friendly and dignified – a world away from what we find here in Sa Pa.
With a day to kill, rebels no longer with a cause, we decide to follow some random dirt tracks and head into the hills. Jeff takes little persuading to swap the pedals for an engine, and hires a motorbike.
It has been a week or map reading, plotting distances and planning, so today we simply follow the first interesting road we find. At length, we reached the bottom of a wide valley, and found we could ride across a rickety bridge. From there, we followed a rutted track strewn with boulders up the hillside. It snaked its way back and forth, always upwards, slicing the rice paddies in two. Where irrigation water ran across the track, there was deep glorious mud, and I was loving it. The Minsk however, was having a very bad day. Though it possesses plenty of grunt for speeding along the roads, it is decidedly lacking in low-end power for slowly negotiating tricky tracks. I need ample speed to keep balance, but enough time to pick a line least likely to separate me from the bike. On the numerous steep and rutted sections, even in first gear, if I had to slow down for something, the thing would not have the guts to speed up again. It would stall, and I’d be left on a precarious slope, usually at an odd angle, propping the bike up while trying to get it started again. Several times, I fell off altogether and had to wrestle the machine back onto two wheels. But then it would not want to pull away. Any normal right-thinking person would, at this point, decide it was time to give up. I found progress was possible only by revving to levels usually reserved for learner drivers, and riding the clutch; two practices guaranteed to cause a breakdown by the end of the day. Meanwhile, Jeff and local folk sailed by on their quiet smokeless scooters.
By mid afternoon, we had cleared the top of the mountain and passed through into a remote valley full of verdant terraces. The track deteriorated to a condition that was beyond both our equipment and our riding skills, and a bright blue sky was fast giving way to an ugly black weather front, coming from the higher mountain peaks. If we had not booked and paid for our train tickets tonight, this may well have been the start of a fresh adventure. The way ahead promised more encounters with interesting people and incredible vistas, strange meals and hairy moments on (and off) the bikes. I deeply regret having to make the decision, but for us it was time to turn back.
We had one more triumphant road stretch to cover, the 40km to Lao Cai, where we would load the bikes on the night train. With Dan’s lights still out of action, we opted to head off before dark and enjoy the final couple of hours of blurry scenery whizzing by. I was purposely running my fuel tank low, so was pleased that at least 20km of the route was steeply down hill, enabling me to free wheel at speed.
Lao Cai is the border town with China, and was mostly levelled during the 1979 Chinese invasion. It was reopened to foreigners in 1993, and is now a popular border crossing for folk going to or from Kunming in China. With a wry grin, I note that after over two weeks in this country, I am now further north than when I entered – that southerly route to New Zealand continues to evade me!
We had to find an office away from the station to validate our own train tickets, then another to buy them for our bikes. Once we had completed an armful of paperwork in front of the unsmiling cargo administrator (what is it, with women and railways, they are always really miserable), we had an hour for a feed and a very well earned beer.
And so finally, after eight fun filled days, approximately 811km by road from our start point, the adventure of a lifetime was almost over. My yellow Minsk has been friend and foe, but tonight it is definitely the former, and it feels a long way from me at the end of the train in the cargo carriage. I hope they strapped her down well.
This trip has, I think, been the most exciting, interesting and moving part of this entire journey. Eight days ago, there was always a niggling thought that this could end very badly indeed; a road accident could have cut short my travels or worse. My sketchy research had hinted at an interesting journey with beautiful scenery, but it would prove to be so much more than that. While those things were better than I dared hope for, it was the people we met along the way that really made this trip. The rich and diverse cultures, expressed in the clothing, the food and the landscapes, have given us a glimpse of a part of this exciting country that is largely unchanged by tourism. I am not for a moment daft enough to think we are the only ones to do this trip, far from it, but certainly, the numbers of foreigners passing through are so low, that you are guaranteed to feel as if this is so. For the adventurous, there are innumerable opportunities for diversion along the way. It took us three days longer than planned, and without a doubt, we could have taken another week at least. Unmarked side-roads lead to far-off villages and hidden valleys or rivers, in every settlement you are almost certain to be invited to eat and drink, and as with us, even to teach a class of school kids.
Whether ethnic Vietnamese or members of a minority culture, everyone we have met has been generous, often beyond their means, and incredibly friendly. They are dignified people, jovial, and proud of their way of life and pleased to share it with an outsider for a while.
As I drift to sleep on my birth, I think back over the days, each one packed full with memories. They will stay with me for a lifetime - I wonder what on earth I can do next to beat this. |
