When we got into Lao Cai the other day en route to Sapa, my ride escorted me to a restaurant down the street from the station to wait for the others. You know, one of those hellish places in every tourist junction around the world. English menu, food served clean, with forks instead of chopsticks. Every seat taken by dreary-eyed white people and barking Chinese tourists. Uh, yeah, F that.
With a couple of hours to kill I walked around and stumbled into an open air cafe for some real coffee. People were pretty surprised a white dude would sit down with them so I had some instant friends. I eyed one of those bamboo bongs I've been seeing everywhere (for tobacco) and began inquiring. Before I knew it, I was holding a packed bong with a lit match in front of me.
Jiminy Christmas talk about going to the dome. It felt like someone slapped Nicotine patches on my temples. I gave the universal cross-eyed, "I'm one and done" face and everyone had a good laugh at my expense.
We then took a couple hour bus ride to Bac Ha market, an open air market in the mountains every Sunday where local tribes (different Ha'mong peoples) gather to sell veggies, meat and handicrafts. Again, the "lunch included" was at a clean, white people only restaurant where you had the choice between chicken pho and beef pho. Hrmm, not my style dude.
I ambled over to the market where local women were cooking over wood fires and men were hunched over hitting their bongs in ways that would shame Cheech and Chong. I sat down and just said "one please". She brought over a great tasting noodle soup, with what I later learned was horse meat and liver. Heh, tasted like pork to me!
We then went on a 12 mile hike through the mountains of Sapa with majestic views of terraced rice paddies. Since it's the off-season for farming, we had a bevy of Mong ladies follow us the entire way, chit-chatting, until we got to our rest stop when the realllll fun started. They were relentless in hawking their knick knacks and I almost pulled a Billy Bob in Bad Santa and yelled, "I'm on my FUCKING lunch break!!!"
But it was all good. We ended the hike in a village nestled in the hills and stayed at a family's house. We got to put our feet up and cracked open some beers. Then they brought out a feast for us accompanied by housemade rice wine. ooooooweeeeee. They just didn't let us stop taking shots of that swill. After a whirlwind of drinking I was having trouble seeing straight. I asked for the time. 7:45pm. Oh dear God. The men in the village drink this stuff for breakfast. Maybe that's why they have so many kids running around.
I crawled my way into bed around 9 I think and we slept dorm style in a glorified barn. Actually much more comfortable than the train, though it might have been because I couldn't feel anything. We hiked throughout the next day and spent some time in Sapa town before hopping on the train. I tried grilled sparrow, which tasted like tires marinated in motor oil. I wouldn't recommend them.
Gotta kill some time today, probably with the help of $.20 draft beers, and then hopping on a boat to Halong Bay manana.
Hasta pronto,
mdm
No comments:
Post a Comment