Ta Van or Bust!

Yesterday was another great day spent mostly with another one of the Hill Tribes, the Black Hmong. While these folk are only a few miles away from the previous day’s village of the Red Dao, they speak entirely different languages. The only common language is that of Viet, the national language. I’m sure that you can spot one of the other differences between them and that would be how Black became part of their names….. just check out the traditional clothing.

            This was another three hours spent walking the roads and trails that link the sections of their home village, Ta Van

            We were met at our drop-off point by a group of several of the women who would accompany us for the entire time and became an integral part of this experience while patiently waiting for the opportunity to sell us some of the embroidery that they had created. This is one of the areas that we must be careful in, that of trying to help a local economy (which is one of the missions) and being assured that the goods acquired are authentic. Nothing worse than getting that beautiful piece and discovering the “Made in Jersey City” label concealed inside! So far, this practice of being “patient” has been successful on all fronts. One of the things that Phil and Mei have stressed is that while supporting the locals is good, wait until the end and they will give us time (and help us bargain). This allows us to concentrate on the program at hand and learn as much as possible without constant distractions. The ladies that accompanied us knew their time would come and so instead of pestering us all the time, they engaged us in as much conversation as they could and made friends with us. We learned about them, their kids and anything else that would be of a conversational topic.  This seems to be a policy of O.A.T. and it is a nice compromise for both sides and it also seems that the locals know this and do not hound the O.A.T. groups as much as they may another. It is as if they have been trained over the years to do it the way that the Tour Leaders want and just be patient. Just an observational theory.

            Our hotel is way up top in Sapa (or Sa Pa, as the outside world has taken to combining the names of places such as, Sai Gon [Saigon] or Viet Nam [Vietnam], making them just one word.) where the day dawned with incredibly blue skies and abundant sunshine. A far cry from the day ‘s before experience of wet and dreary cloud filled foggy treks. The big, billowing clouds pouring over the mountains to our south was quite a sight!      

                        Unfortunately for us, these clouds continued their tumble-down and firmly ensconced themselves in the very area that we were going to, the valley floor. Oh well.

                        This Trek was strategically designed so that our initial drop-off point was nicely placed at an elevation that was higher than our pick-up location (mostly!) having the Group (whose average age is probably 75…. don’t we all look good 😊) being able to avoid doing their best Sir Edmund Hillary impersonations!

                        The rice paddies were in several levels of preparation for planting, mostly all dormant for the next few weeks. The frequency of water buffalo sightings were significantly higher than the previous days. Kept unchecked, these big guys will wreak havoc anywhere they can but are quite the necessity when it comes to farming and sustenance.

                        Halfway through our trek we stopped at a nice outdoor café which had what are termed as “Happy Rooms” or Western style bathrooms. I’m not sure who came up with that term, but I will endeavor to find out! Here we had a sit-down with one of the ladies that had been accompanying us from the start. She was “interviewed” by Mei who not only can speak her own Red Dao language, but also the Black Hmong, Viet, English (superb!) and Chinese. This was an eye-opening experience centered mostly around arranged marriages, “kidnapped” girls, human trafficking, and the modern ways that are changing some of their customs.

                        I’ll do my best to sum it all up.

            Arranged marriages are still normal and require dowries.

            “Kidnapped” means that a girl is taken by surprise and held with the boys family for a random amount of time where she becomes part of that family whether she likes it or not, sometimes has sex with the boy and/or father/brother whether she likes it or not and can at the end of that period can decide not stay with that family. It’s far more complicated than that but it would require me writing a Term Paper on it for you.

            There is human trafficking that goes on, I got the impression that while it is still here, the instances are decreasing. This may be because young folks are deciding that they do not want to stay around and they leave for what may be thought as a better life elsewhere. Media exposure to other ways of life seems to be the chief reason why that decision is made.

            On the brighter side, education has made incredible strides as compared to just a half generation ago and the percentage of young people attaining higher and higher levels of education is rising steadily.

            All of this was quite sobering. Knowledge is power and thinking that it will just go away is not the answer. As these folks have discovered, schooling is ultimately good for them and raises their quality of life albeit a slower pace than some would like to see. We will be visiting a school today so I will have more info on that subject in the future.

                        We arrived back in Sapa for lunch and our group went their various ways, some up to the top of the local mountain Mt. Fansipan (over 10,000 ft) others back to the hotel, and Paula and I went with Mei on a visit to the local market which is a cross between a giant produce/meats/and fish store and a souk. The girls wandered around while I stayed at one of the stalls, borrowed a stool from them, and in payment for the stool I helped them shuck whole walnuts and harvest the meats inside. Very light conversation ensued.

                        Sometimes I feel like we’re all at Camp, Phil is Camp Counselor… we have our Daily Program, and instead of Bug Juice at our meals we get the local whiskey! It is fun and interesting to watch Phil and Mei (and even those Black Hmong ladies) watch over us. We are obviously in their care and it make sense for them to protect us, but it is still amusing in a way watching as we cross the street (which borders on another art form here) to keeping to a side of the road so the scooters can scare the life out of you, to helping us old codgers up and down from time to time. Some of it is just pure self-preservation …. “Nobody dies on our watch!” but the rest is that we are definitely their elders and that is all that matters here in Vietnam….. the land of treating senior folk with the utmost and sincere respect.