Among Hmong

Sa Pa, Vietnam

So yesterday I took the night train from Hanoi to the far northwestern side of the country, right on the Chinese border.  The night train taking process itself was a bit complicated, as the state railway service runs three trains a day out to the border town Lau Cai (or Cau Lai, I always get it confused), each of which leaves within 10-15 minutes of each other, making it a trial and error process as to which train you should get on (third time's the charm)

 

After that it's a short bus ride through the mountains to Sa Pa, the tourist hub.  It's famous for its mountain scenery (the highest peak in vietnam, Fan Si Pan (3000m), is a short bit away.  You know I was going to climb it, but apparently it's a miserable wet climb and the view is only good if the weather is (it's been overcast since I got here), so I think I'm going to honor my Borneo pledge and not bother.  Of course, it's probably going to gnaw at me incessantly that I'm right next door, and I could theoretically take down Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia & Thailand's highest peaks in the span of a few months, so I may think it over.  (of course, the peaks, like the people, aren't exactly towering giants, but still....)

 

Sa Pa and the northwest region generally is the  home to the minority peoples, who I plan on visiting and fashioning into a private army with myself as their god-king a la Col. Kurtz in apocalypse now.  Or just buying some handicrafts, as if I don't have enough of those after 4 months here.  You actually don't even have to go out of the city of Sa Pa to do so, the place is loaded with ethnic Hmong in exotic traditional dress selling stuff up and down the street.  Of course the first one I ran into yesterday tried to sell me opium, some things are not so exotic.

 

Speaking of such, let me say life as a lone traveller is somewhat boring, but damnif I'm not offered drugs or women every 15 seconds, far more than I could possibly ever hope to consume - I would have to bring in John Belushi, Jim Morrison, and the young George W. Bush for back up and still don't think we could do all this stuff.

 

On a few more general things: the "hello, moto-bike" call is as persistent here as it was in Hanoi, and even less useful insofar as the town is the size of a postage stamp.  Another thing I noticed is that when a moto driver wants to get your a attention, he usually hoots with a "whoo!" which I guess is like a Vietnamese "Hey!"  It took me a few days to figure it out, I kept hearing the "whoos" thinking that Ric Flair was goingto jump out of an alleyway and start forearm chopping me.

 

I'm unsure as to wheteher I've written on the next subject before as things tend to run together after awhile.  But in Asia, especially in hotels/restaurants/airplanes with delusions of/actual grandeur aimed at upper crust travelers and local wannabes, there is an unhealthy obsession with blaring Muzak.  Really unhealthy.

 

I think there's like one set of tracks for all of Asia, which was playing the day I walked into the first hotel in Beijing and will no doubt be playing BKK in December when I leave.  There are some subtle regional variations, for example here in Vietnam, Micahel Bolton has won more hearts and minds than LBJ and Gen. Westmoreland could have ever dreamed of (and with his luscious locks and soulful lyrics, I would think it is more hearts than minds).  I'm not sure what to make of this anomaly, and whether to blame us for exporting it or them for importing it - suffice to say that the next time I hear an instrumental version of "Take my Breath Away" I'm going to stick a chopstick in my eye.