What Happens in Sapa, Stays in Sapa

Yesterday was a REALLY big day!

We got married!

            Well….. kinda/sorta …

                        More on that a little later

            Our goal for the day was a town way up north, close to the Chinese border. The town is Sapa and we will be here for a few days. It is a “resort” town, far up in the hills. We are to meet some of the Hill Tribes up here, who are vastly different from the folks we met the other day. These Tribes have their own languages, some based on Mandarin, but they cannot communicate with each other as they are still so different. That shows how far back the heritage of these people goes, back when they migrated from further into ancient China. For practical reasons, they do speak the local Viet language, but their local dialects are still identifiable with this region.

            On our way up there we stopped at a local cinnamon farm. One of the aspects of traveling with O.A.T. is their desire and capability of bringing us into the lives and business of the local population where we get to sit and converse, not just breeze through and end up at the gift shop. And the size (small) of our group allows us to get off the beaten path, you know, the one that the large tour busses follow. Our bus is this cute thing that holds maybe twenty-four but we’re only fourteen so we are all quite comfortable 😊.

            Being the big drinker that I am I was pleasantly surprised to experience a tradition of having a shot of whiskey (be it rice, grain, or apricot (?) at our introductions! Along with the accompanying toast of “Zoo!” (Cheers! Salut! Prost! etc.) I can guarantee you that I have consumed more liquor in the past few days than I have probably had in a few years! (Maybe that helps explain the beginning of this Post!)

            Back to the cinnamon…. so, cinnamon comes from the bark of the tree, and it needs not be a hundred years old to produce it. Six or seven years old is just fine so sustainable growth is quite easy…. At least the sustainable part, you still have to farm it and that takes laborious labor! We drove for gazillions of miles surrounded by cinnamon forests. That is good because cinnamon is my favorite spice and now, I don’t have to worry about it going away!

            After the cinnamon farm we drove about another hour to the border city of Lao Cai where we had a delicious lunch and visited the Crossing. Here we could see China on the other side of the Nam Thi River. Here we watched members of the P.S.A.C.V. (Professional Smugglers Association of China and Vietnam) whisk their ill-gotten booty across the border with nary a whimper of protest. The reason for this dates back to Biblical Times when Noah and his crew bought off the guards on Mount Ararat in order to get the animals off the Ark without the proper permits and vaccinations. Today we call it Graft and Corruption. But you can pick up a microwave for a song!

                        We exited the Walmart of Border Crossings and headed out to our destination, Sapa, elevation 5,413 feet. We needed to climb up one of the windy roads that never seem to end or stop having curves. This is no deterrent for our illustrious bus driver (or any of the other drivers for that matter) as passing routinely goes on whether you can see around the blind curve hovering above the precipitous drop-off……. or not. Passing slower vehicles and hugging the rails is quite normal and it all seems to go just fine until the roads get too small for our “smaller” bus. We finally had to transfer to a cozier van/bus in order to proceed.

Here is where we met out Local Guide Mei (May). She is from the Ta Phin village, one of the Red Dao People. This is another part of the puzzle that O.A.T. puts into place…. Local Guides. It would be like a group of foreign tourists coming over to the USA and I was their Tour Leader (our Phil), but we were going to spend a day in Brooklyn. Now I’ve been to Brooklyn, but wouldn’t it be better to have Vinny hop on with us and bada bing! really show us his homeland? “Hey! I’m walkin’ here!

You betcha!

                        We arrived at the point where our new driver needed to put the vehicle in reverse and back up probably a quarter of a mile on a muddy, non-paved road because there was no room up above to turn around. Did I forget to mention the weather? Well, it was damp and foggy…. really foggy! And this maneuver needed to be done precisely so we did not get all verklempt and get stuck. As an aside, maybe it was a good thing that it was foggy because we could not see over the side of the cliffs that we were navigating and see down into the abyss below.

Maybe.

            We arrived at Mei’s home to meet her family and have some (hic!) more whiskey. This is when the fun started…. it was all quite innocent I can assure you. The conversation revolved around growing up here, the arranged marriages, dowries, and just general living. Mei had on traditional clothing as did her mom and relatives. We were informed that the girl needs to be able to make her own wedding dress and when we asked to see it, it was proudly brought out for all of us to admire.

The embroidery was just magnificent, and the patterns are traditional from family to family. Mei offered for the women to try on her headdress and the ladies in our group jumped at the chance for this fun photo-op. I got up from my stool when it was Paula’s turn and took a few pictures of her and that’s all I remember. The next thing I know is having Mei putting the male version of the headdress on me, wrapping it around my head and then leading me over by Paula. We were instructed to do some bowing in several directions (to ancestors and the like) and then to each other. Next thing I know Mei pronounces us married.

                                    I swear that’s how it happened.