It’s Christmas!
Not really, but it feels like it! After arriving at the station at 5.40am (ugg!), we had an hour’s drive up the mountains to the small town of Sa Pa, where we’re going to spend the next 5 days. We’re 1,000 metres high here and it’s misty and cold – a very welcome relief from the humidity we’ve experienced lately. All over the town people are roasting chestnuts on small open fires, and some of the local tribal people wear hats that look just like Father Christmas hats – so it feels really festive!
Sa Pa is famous as it sits in the mountains surrounded by lots of villages, each inhabited by a unique tribe, with its own dress and customs. Every weekend people gather from all of the villages for the market to sell their handicrafts – it’s amazing to see all the different types of people. Not only do they wear different traditional clothes, but they come from different ethnic groups, so they look physically different too.
We spent today wandering around the town, which feels like a Swiss ski village! Lots of the buildings look European, and there are loads of pine trees - combined with the chilliness and mist it’s an amazing, and surprising sight. We actually had a Vietnamese lunch next to an open fire in a log cabin – what a culture shock!
We also spent a lot of time walking round the market and chatting to the locals, who are all really friendly. Yes, of course they chat to us because they want us to buy their goods, but unlike some areas of Vietnam, they’re not pushy, they’re actually very polite and very funny – some of them just walked along chatting with us for an hour, and were quite happy when we bought some small embroidered purses off them for only £1 each - we didn’t really want them but didn’t mind as they’d really entertained us!
The town has loads of great bars and restaurants including an English pub, so we’re going to spend the next few days hiking to the surrounding villages during the day and hanging out in town in the evenings.
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