Trekking through the mud is not most people's idea of fun, but, as my mother will attest to, I have always been something of a peculiar character. I managed to convince Aashika to join a 2 day trekking tour through the terraced rice paddies of mountainous northern Vietnam, starting in a little town in the border of China called Sapa. Doubtless Aashika imagined a green paradise, ripe rice waving gently as butterflies swirled around our heads, but reality looked quite different. We arrived in the muddy season between harvests - rice planting was another month off, and the rice terraces were dull brown with churned earth. Nevertheless, we had the time of our lives.
We were given a local woman as our guide, a Hmong woman named Su. There are 5 indigenous tribes in this area -Hmong (also spelled Mong), Xa, Tay, Dao, and Giay, each with their own language, culture, and dress. Our guide spoke 4 languages (Hmong, Xa, Vietnamese, and English) and read none; she left school at the age of 10 to help her family, and had learned fluent English from talking to tourists (no classes -amazing!). She was 28 years old and had two children, a 9-year-old and 3-year old. She, like most Hmong women, was married at 16. Her story was similar in this respect to many others I've heard while traveling: her parents had many children (13!), but she and all her siblings have only 1-2 children themselves. A birth rate drop this dramatic, and within only one generation, must be the study of many academics. I can imagine the factors - reduced infant mortality, urbanization of jobs (ie less need for farm help), etc - but nonetheless the rapid reduction is astonishing.
Below: Su and her adorable daughter
Su also told us that most of us rice paddies we saw were owned by local families; every family has rice paddies to sustain themselves, and not necessarily for selling produce. Her family has a plot of land where they grow rice, and they eat rice every meal.
Anyhow, we started out trekking on a road, but quickly veered off into rice paddies territory, which was...well...basically just mud. Two Hmong women followed us, intent on selling us homemade goods when we would stop for lunch (this is normal). Now, I'm very familiar with falling down, generally from my own clumsiness and obliviousness to my surroundings. Aashika, on the other hand, is far more graceful than I, and altogether unused to the undignified tumble. She crept down the hills of mud, clutching the hands of our guide and the two Hmong women, while I charged ahead unheeding of my tenuous footholds. Of course, I slid right down one of the steeper hills on my butt, while Aashika remained clean and secure. After this incident, every local who passed me chuckled at the mud smears running down my pants.
Despite the mud and fog, the views were beautiful. Rice paddies scalloped every hill, and when the fog cleared we saw all the way down the valley. We trekked through villages and across great hills.
Below: rice paddies, trekking, sugarcane snack
Our two Hmong sellers bombarded us at lunch with offers of overpriced handmade item. Partly to thank them for their help getting us through slippery mud and partly because they had lovely items, we had determined to buy one item from each lady. We ended up with a total of 6 items between us -oops.The area is famous for handmade stitching from hemp - they had pillowcases, wall hangings, purses, and the like - and a cloth dyeing technique called Bathik.
Below: Hmong jackets on women right & left. See the embroidery on the sleeves? That's what we bought on wall hangings and pillowcases. Image stolen from Google.
Around mid -afternoon we stopped for our own Bathik class. Bathing is the traditional art of dyeing patterned cloth with indigo. First you take hot wax with a pen-like tool and draw the wax on the cloth.When your design is complete, you dye the entire cloth with indigo; the wax protects the cloth from the indigo, and the waxed parts remain white while the rest becomes a rich purpley blue. Our teacher was a seasoned old lady who was very specific about the design you were to follow: she carved the design into the cloth, and if you deviated (as the creative Aashika did, to try her own design), she would point and give a toothless chuckle at your non-traditional Bathik. She also laughed at my design, not because I tried to be creative but because my execution was so poor.
Below: Bathik in progress, wax complete, final product
That night we stayed with 5 other travelers at a homestay in Ta Van, a small village. Our host fed us delectable Vietnamese food and, surprisingly, French fries (fried with garlic -amazing!), and our guides regaled us with stories of their lives. We asked about the practice of bride kidnapping - did they know anyone who had been kidnapped? "I was kidnapped," replied one girl, "but not too far." As if distance from home is the issue when you're kidnapped!
The practice is that men kidnap women they want to be their brides. Sometimes it is their girlfriend, but it can also be anyone the man takes a fancy to, even if they've never spoken. ("you never know who will kidnap you for marriage," explained our host.) Once you are kidnapped, you have to spend 3 days with the man and his family; you don't sleep with the man, and the whole time they try to woo you with sticky rice and the like. After 3 days you have the choice to marry or not, but in some more traditional communities you may be the subject of gossip if you say no, since you already stayed at his house. Regardless, if you say no too many times to kidnappers, you will lose face and it will be difficult to find a husband. Sometimes men accidentally kidnap married women (there's no obvious difference in dress or marriage symbols), and then they have to pay the husbands a large fee and return the wife. One man had to pay the husband a whole oxen for capturing his wife! There are other methods of marriage too (parents arrange, love match), but kidnapping was the most unusual method described. The host also told me that husbands complain that their wives are "too skinny," and that my chubbiness would be considered "tasty" by Hmong men. If only that were the case in the States...
We met two other groups of travelers in our homestay: a Taiwanese couple, and a Canadian family with an adorable 7-year-old named Josephine. They had taken Josephine to Hong Kong Disneyland prior to Sapa, in part to show her the contrast of lifestyles; instead Josephine was entranced with Sapa life because her guide's family had 2 dogs and lived in a "treehouse" (a tall rickety house made of wood). Oh, children.
Below: Our group
Our host plied us with stories and homemade "happy water" (clear alcohol made from rice, stored inconspicuously in water bottles) all night, and sent us to bed warm and fuzzy. All the guests slept in a loft in the house, and we woke very early the next morning to incessant dog barking, babies crying, and the host chattering as she prepared breakfast. Even so, the two days trekking in Sapa were perhaps my favorite of the whole trip.
We were given a local woman as our guide, a Hmong woman named Su. There are 5 indigenous tribes in this area -Hmong (also spelled Mong), Xa, Tay, Dao, and Giay, each with their own language, culture, and dress. Our guide spoke 4 languages (Hmong, Xa, Vietnamese, and English) and read none; she left school at the age of 10 to help her family, and had learned fluent English from talking to tourists (no classes -amazing!). She was 28 years old and had two children, a 9-year-old and 3-year old. She, like most Hmong women, was married at 16. Her story was similar in this respect to many others I've heard while traveling: her parents had many children (13!), but she and all her siblings have only 1-2 children themselves. A birth rate drop this dramatic, and within only one generation, must be the study of many academics. I can imagine the factors - reduced infant mortality, urbanization of jobs (ie less need for farm help), etc - but nonetheless the rapid reduction is astonishing.
Below: Su and her adorable daughter
Su also told us that most of us rice paddies we saw were owned by local families; every family has rice paddies to sustain themselves, and not necessarily for selling produce. Her family has a plot of land where they grow rice, and they eat rice every meal.
Anyhow, we started out trekking on a road, but quickly veered off into rice paddies territory, which was...well...basically just mud. Two Hmong women followed us, intent on selling us homemade goods when we would stop for lunch (this is normal). Now, I'm very familiar with falling down, generally from my own clumsiness and obliviousness to my surroundings. Aashika, on the other hand, is far more graceful than I, and altogether unused to the undignified tumble. She crept down the hills of mud, clutching the hands of our guide and the two Hmong women, while I charged ahead unheeding of my tenuous footholds. Of course, I slid right down one of the steeper hills on my butt, while Aashika remained clean and secure. After this incident, every local who passed me chuckled at the mud smears running down my pants.
Despite the mud and fog, the views were beautiful. Rice paddies scalloped every hill, and when the fog cleared we saw all the way down the valley. We trekked through villages and across great hills.
Below: rice paddies, trekking, sugarcane snack
Our two Hmong sellers bombarded us at lunch with offers of overpriced handmade item. Partly to thank them for their help getting us through slippery mud and partly because they had lovely items, we had determined to buy one item from each lady. We ended up with a total of 6 items between us -oops.The area is famous for handmade stitching from hemp - they had pillowcases, wall hangings, purses, and the like - and a cloth dyeing technique called Bathik.
Below: Hmong jackets on women right & left. See the embroidery on the sleeves? That's what we bought on wall hangings and pillowcases. Image stolen from Google.
Around mid -afternoon we stopped for our own Bathik class. Bathing is the traditional art of dyeing patterned cloth with indigo. First you take hot wax with a pen-like tool and draw the wax on the cloth.When your design is complete, you dye the entire cloth with indigo; the wax protects the cloth from the indigo, and the waxed parts remain white while the rest becomes a rich purpley blue. Our teacher was a seasoned old lady who was very specific about the design you were to follow: she carved the design into the cloth, and if you deviated (as the creative Aashika did, to try her own design), she would point and give a toothless chuckle at your non-traditional Bathik. She also laughed at my design, not because I tried to be creative but because my execution was so poor.
Below: Bathik in progress, wax complete, final product
That night we stayed with 5 other travelers at a homestay in Ta Van, a small village. Our host fed us delectable Vietnamese food and, surprisingly, French fries (fried with garlic -amazing!), and our guides regaled us with stories of their lives. We asked about the practice of bride kidnapping - did they know anyone who had been kidnapped? "I was kidnapped," replied one girl, "but not too far." As if distance from home is the issue when you're kidnapped!
The practice is that men kidnap women they want to be their brides. Sometimes it is their girlfriend, but it can also be anyone the man takes a fancy to, even if they've never spoken. ("you never know who will kidnap you for marriage," explained our host.) Once you are kidnapped, you have to spend 3 days with the man and his family; you don't sleep with the man, and the whole time they try to woo you with sticky rice and the like. After 3 days you have the choice to marry or not, but in some more traditional communities you may be the subject of gossip if you say no, since you already stayed at his house. Regardless, if you say no too many times to kidnappers, you will lose face and it will be difficult to find a husband. Sometimes men accidentally kidnap married women (there's no obvious difference in dress or marriage symbols), and then they have to pay the husbands a large fee and return the wife. One man had to pay the husband a whole oxen for capturing his wife! There are other methods of marriage too (parents arrange, love match), but kidnapping was the most unusual method described. The host also told me that husbands complain that their wives are "too skinny," and that my chubbiness would be considered "tasty" by Hmong men. If only that were the case in the States...
We met two other groups of travelers in our homestay: a Taiwanese couple, and a Canadian family with an adorable 7-year-old named Josephine. They had taken Josephine to Hong Kong Disneyland prior to Sapa, in part to show her the contrast of lifestyles; instead Josephine was entranced with Sapa life because her guide's family had 2 dogs and lived in a "treehouse" (a tall rickety house made of wood). Oh, children.
Below: Our group
Our host plied us with stories and homemade "happy water" (clear alcohol made from rice, stored inconspicuously in water bottles) all night, and sent us to bed warm and fuzzy. All the guests slept in a loft in the house, and we woke very early the next morning to incessant dog barking, babies crying, and the host chattering as she prepared breakfast. Even so, the two days trekking in Sapa were perhaps my favorite of the whole trip.
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