Visiting Hill Tribes in Sapa, Vietnam

Staying in one of the Zay tribal homes for an evening was a special experience.

Hill Tribes of Sapa

By Danny Spitler

February 7, 2006

Once we managed to get our old Russian jeep moving we began the ascension up the mountain. The road was is in pretty good shape, obviously fairly new, but it was narrow, and our driver barreled around the corners using his horn to alert any oncoming traffic that we were coming. I always think to myself, “What if the driver coming from the other direction is honking his horn also, and neither driver can hear anything but their own horn?” I added that thought to a long list of things over which I have absolutely no control, and therefore, it would be a waste of time to worry about.

The higher we got the thicker the fog became, and the more the horn got used. Mr. Lu assured us that the views we were missing were very nice. I would have been perfectly happy with a view of the road that was more than twenty feet ahead, but we finally arrived safely in the picturesque city of Sapa. We checked into a one-hour hotel room (always an old fantasy of mine), but it was about 36 degrees, there was no heat in the room, and Pam had on six layers of clothes. “Forgetaboutit.” Actually the room was just for us to freshen up and rearrange our baggage again, packing just what we wanted to carry in a backpack for the next several hours of trekking and taking only what we needed to get through the night.

We ate a butter-soaked Asian version of an omelet at a local café while watching rain come down and wondering how good an idea it was to be hiking in fog, rain and cold, when the whole idea was to see some beautiful views. We finally mustered up that most beneficial of travelers’ attitudes. It is called –“Oh, what the heck.” We grabbed the rain gear and our backpacks and crawled back into the jeep. After five more minutes of trying to get it to start we crawled into another jeep. Thirty minutes later we were dropped off at the trail leading down into a beautiful valley of terraced rice fields, and we started our trek. The rain let up and the fog lifted enough for plenty of visibility. As we moved down the trail we congratulated ourselves for not giving up on the day.

We hiked down the trail and through the villages of the ethnic tribes, and along the way we were met by women and children, usually dressed in their colorful native clothing, hoping to sell us some of their locally woven fabrics. We managed to resist all the offers, but one little 6-year-old girl, by the name of Ju, walked beside us for over a mile practicing her English and exuding such charm that we finally gave in and bought a $3 bracelet from her (most likely made in China).

We continued our trek passing through the villages and farm fields. It would appear that the farming methods, along with home construction, had not changed much in the last thousand years, but there was the occasional school, built with more modern materials, and sometimes we would notice a home with a cement floor. Of course there were plenty of satellite dishes here and there. The essentials of life throughout the world are food, clothing, shelter, and access to a soap opera.

It was late afternoon when we arrived at the home of Mrs. Zom. She is a member of the Zay (pronounced Zah) Tribe. She has been widowed for 14 years and has two teenage children. Her house consisted of one large room with a cement floor. Three areas with beds were sectioned off from the main room with curtains. On one side of the house was an additional room used as a kitchen. This had a hard packed dirt floor other than one corner section with a cement floor, which was used for washing dishes, clothes, and probably also for bathing. The room was open to the elements at the roofline on both sides so that the wood fireplace could ventilate. The toilet was in a little room out back.

A wooden ladder led to a loft attic where there were numerous mats on the floor, each with mosquito netting. This was her guest quarters where we would spend the night, sharing the space with about 20 large bags of rice. While Pam has never been a “5-Star Hotel” kind of girl, she did give me one of those looks that indicated that I had pushed the edge of the envelope a little with this particular reservation.

Since we were both chilled from the long cold hike we climbed the ladder and crawled under one of the heavy blankets to take a short nap and get warmed up. Surprisingly enough the newspapers on the wall did a reasonably good job of keeping the cool wind from blowing in through the spaces between the wooden boards making up the walls of the house.

After a short nap and feeling a little less chilled we ventured down the ladder and into the kitchen to observe meal preparation. Mrs Zom and our guide, Mr. Lu, were in the process of making what Lu smilingly referred to as “Freedom Fries.” Apparently the whole world hates arrogant, rude French tourists just as much as we do. We watched with continued amazement as one course after another was prepared and stir-fried over the open fireplace. It was a 90-minute operation, but when we finally sat down to dinner it was a delicious feast.

Not long after dinner we felt the effects of the large meal, a day of hiking, and lingering jet lag (not to mention a couple of obligatory shots of rice whiskey poured from a plastic water bottle), so we climbed the ladder again, crawled under two of the colorful 25-pound cotton-stuffed blankets and slept cozily through the chilly night.

The rest of our visit to Sapa was a little more conventional. After Mrs. Zom prepared a breakfast of banana and chocolate crepes we hiked out of the valley, met our jeep and drove back to town where we checked into the luxurious (by comparison) Victoria Hotel. We had a leisurely afternoon eating a late lunch and exploring the market place in town. Since we were catching the night train back to Hanoi the following day we arranged for a late check out, found an HBO movie, and broke out our trusty jar of peanut butter for dinner in our room.

The following day I woke up early and realized that, even though it was Monday morning, it was still Super Bowl Sunday in Detroit. I have never been much of a football fan, but I thought it would be interesting watching the Super Bowl live on top of a mountain in North Vietnam at 6:00 AM on a Monday morning. Pam woke up and we watched the first half. By then breakfast was a higher priority. Lu picked us up after breakfast and we spent the rest of the morning hiking up the mountain behind our hotel. We hiked through some interesting gardens and up to a viewpoint where a group of young people performed a show demonstrating the music and dance of the local ethnic tribes. After the show we came outside to see that the clouds had lifted for the moment and given us an opportunity to see some of the spectacular scenery we’d been missing.

After lunch we drove to another trailhead not far from town and hiked into another valley were the Cat Cat Tribe lived and farmed. We hiked along a river in the bottom of the valley and passed a small waterfall called Cat Cat Falls. We returned to the hotel in time to pack up, check out, and head down the mountain back to Loa Cai. We stopped in the city to look across the river at China. We knew that we were in the far northern part of Viet Nam, but did not realize that we were sitting that near the Chinese border.

We ate dinner at one of the local restaurants near the train station where we mingled with some of the locals while they practiced a few English words, and I negotiated a 67-cent shoeshine for my muddy boots. At 9:00 Lu helped us load our gear onto the train and find our sleeper berth. We had a private berth with only two beds (to our relief). We settled in for the long ride back to Hanoi, thankful that we had decided to be a bit adventurous. Riding on a night train and an old Russian Jeep, trekking in the rain, and sleeping in a Hill Tribe attic with rice bags probably qualifies us as “travelers” rather than just “tourists.”

We were scheduled for only a few hours in Hanoi before heading out on our next adventure, which was to spend two days and a night on a Chinese Junk in Halong Bay. Getting to visit this World Heritage Site was expected to be the highlight of our time in Vietnam.