Sometimes when you go on a trip what you had in mind when planning for it and what you actually experience could be very different. When we planned for the trek to the villages around Sapa, Vietnam, the picture I had in mind was what I saw on photos and on a Travel Channel program about going there: mountains, and green, terraced rice fields with farmers and their buffaloes plowing the field. Well, during our trek to Lao Chai and Tavan villages, we did see those, but the path and the experience was nothing like what I imagined in my mind.

First off, we came during the winter time, so during that time of the year apparently it rains a lot in the area, and there are many days where visibility was close to zero due to thick fog. That’s definitely not the picture I had in mind especially when coming there with photography as one of my objectives. During our hike, it drizzled a little but there were residues of the previous day’s rain, so you have puddles and muddy stretches on the path everywhere. 5-10 minutes into the trek, we pretty much didn’t care anymore about getting our shoes and pants dirty with mud.

It wasn’t completely foggy, but it was definitely cloudy and the fog was there in some areas. So the photos I got were not washed out due to harsh lighting, but at the same time it had the sense of cool, mysterious, place.

At one stretch of the hike we finally saw the terraced rice fields, but they were so far down in the valley that the view was more like a bird’s eye view of the area. And since it was winter time, the fields were mostly brown (not green) as it’s not close to harvest time.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we were also accompanied by an ‘entourage’ of local women who tried to sell their handicrafts to us. Also, since we went through a pretty popular trekking route, there were areas where we ended up in a long traffic as there were other groups of hikers in front of and behind us (with their own set of ‘entourage’).

All in all, it was very different than what I had in mind, but it was interesting experience nevertheless.

The photo below was taken during such ‘log jam’; you can see the people in front of us going down the path to the bottom of the valley. From the clothings, you could tell the difference between the tourists and the local ‘entourage.’

As we were about to start our hike down the valley to the villages outside Sapa, Vietnam, our guide May told us to be careful and take our time during the hike down. She said, ‘The ladies here and I grew up here, so we are used to taking this path. We’re like mountain goats — we can jump around and go down the path pretty easily. A lot of the foreign visitors are not used to that, so be careful and take your time, we don’t want any accident to happen.’ After she said that, I looked down the path we’re about to take. It started with a muddy, narrow path, but quickly becoming more challenging as it started sloping down.

I looked at my fellow travelers. I don’t think any of us were expecting this, but we thought we’ve gone this far, and if these local ladies could take this path (even with basket full of handicrafts on their back), we surely should be able to follow them. We all wore hiking boots, compared to May who wore a pair of canvas shoes that looked like Converse shoes and some other local ladies wearing rubber boots. But quickly I realized that it’s not about the equipment that would help you go through this terrain, it’s more the experience of going through it, knowing where to step that’s safe. May gave Kristi a long stick that she said could be helpful as we hiked down. Dave helped his wife Anna as they followed May’s footsteps. I spent the next few minutes doing the same thing, keeping my eyes looking down and following exactly where May, Dave, and Anna went.

Looking back, I thought it was interesting to compare this path to the hiking trails that occasionally I went through at the Shenandoah National Park near where I live in the United States. At Shenandoah, even the so called ‘strenuous’ hiking trails are typically well maintained, with signage, and even in many places well-placed stepping stones or rails to help the hikers to go through the terrain. In Sapa, the path seemed to be one that probably started as an animal path, or one that someone discovered as a good route to go between places. No one really spent time to maintain the path. In the US, the trail was mostly for recreational use (well-off country like the United States would have funding to preserve lands as National Parks). In Sapa, this was a path that’s used by the locals on daily basis as they go from their village to the town. We as tourists were doing this trek for fun. The locals take this trek as part of their day-to-day life.

On the photo below you see the beginning of our hiking path. Notice the muddy path, the local girl in front of us with the basket on her back, and what looked like a steep drop in front of her.

After witnessing the motorcycle accident at the beginning of our trek to the villages outside Sapa, Vietnam, we continued our walk and before long we reached a side road that looked like the beginning of a trail head down the valley. The road turned from asphalt to gravel, and then it ended at a point where we saw a large group of local women standing around. We had a couple of local women walking with us from Sapa — they were trying to connect with Anna and Kristi and convincing them to purchase the handicrafts, and even after Anna said no, they still continued to follow us.

There were at least 20 of other local women standing at the trail head. It seemed that they knew the tourists would come through that route, so they waited there for the groups to arrive. As they saw us coming, some of the women stopping talking with their friends and started joining our group. So the group that started with five people (our tour guide May, Dave, Anna, Kristi, and me) had more than doubled when adding the local women who went with us.

Anna asked May if this was normal to have such an ‘entourage’ going with the groups, and she said yes. Many of these women came from the nearby villages and compared to the majority in Vietnam, they were quite poor economically. The handicraft business was their way to try to capitalize on the foreign visitor interests in their culture.

The photo below was taken as we reached the trail head. You can see the gorup of women waiting for the hikers to arrive.