making up for lost time

an untimely recap of my last week in vietnam. that was over 1 month ago. weird. and now i "live" in china. equally weird. i actually signed a contract on my new apartment yesterday, which, strangely enough, reminds me of exactly the kind of place in which i'd have dwelled in columbia, mo. the perfect little crappy/charming post-dorm life abode. and it has a backyard. bbqs, beer consumption and general merriment shall ensue. this is unheard of round these parts (the yard, not the merriment). i'm muy stoked. visions of unpacking my clothes that had seemed like faraway dreams are now a more than slightly-wrinkled reality.

but back to the last week in 'nam. in short, it ruled. in long...my last full day in sapa consisted of a 7 km mountain trek--uphill, mind you--through a typhoon-ravaged village. strange to be walking over ginormo mud clumps dotted by random upturned grass and the occassional roof bit or beam. "shit, that was someone's dwelling." very real manifestations of how weather/nature can destroy things. i'm lucky to have only ever experienced weather as an inconvenience. being in vietnam was the first time it ever struck me just how powerful mere water droplets falling out of the sky can be. i think i realized that the first time i had to walk home from class down one of the busiest streets in the city in water up to my knees. it was pleasant--one of those distinctly vietnamese moments--but also unsettling in just how quickly the water accumulated. but enough about that.

prior to afrorementioned mud clumps, there were other pleasantries to be had, namely banana pancakes and an early morning swim in a waterfall near the banho village. i'd stayed the night in a bamboo stilt house with a local family of tay minority people. at our dinner table of 10 peeps, i was the only "tourist." sleeping in the same house as some locals seemed to satiate this warped desire for "authenticity." and what is that exactly, authenticity? some [relatively] abstract notion that has managed to saturate my brain during this grand asian adventure known as my life (a notion that i seem to associate with skewed senses of clarity and purity--huh?--along with other equally intangible things that i'll never be able to succinctly or thoroughly explain).

so, uh, yeah. dinner. my guide was a fantastic human, despite his drunken sexual advances later that same evening. so he translated everything for me. he also shared his coagulated duck blood pudding. not something i'd choose for myself, but hey, i tried it. and now i can say i did. it was really nice to sit back and see this large family unit interact, much in the same way large family units everywhere interact. and i felt happy and sad at the same time. hard to explain. the inherent tragedy of life-changing events (the good kind) when you're lucid enough to realize you're in the middle of them. the very transitoriness that makes these moments/hours/days in time so profound. and then it's back to your regular life, and work and obligations and less-than-stellar relationships with most people. ho hum.

moving on to the ascent. saw many an errant water buffalo, along with brightly-clad mountain women and giddy, muddy children picking crab apples when i finally made it to the top of this mountain after sweating my proverbial balls off, i drank a beer in a hut with the crappiest karaoke setup out in the middle of nowhere. but i guess in context, it could arguably have been the best karaoke setup i've ever seen. hmmm...

post-karaoke, had to get back to the main village. and the only way to do that was via motorcycle taxi, my favorite aspect of vietnam. so back over/through the waterfalls and landslides and to the arguably plush hotel i'd been to on the first day. vietnam was a study in contrasts for me. the trip began with the mental taxation and stress of the celta course and ended with the physical exhaustion of my person. and both were equally rewarding. the sort of balance that i sometimes fail to realize i need. i guess not in genuinely exhausting doses, but whether in academics or in physical exertion, it's always nice to realize exactly what you're capable of.

back to this increasingly roundabout travelogue....sapa was at the top of my list while i was still loafing on jules and rory's couch back in july, so it was quite literally amazing to actually be there after all the issues i'd been having with my chinese visa whilst in the 'nam. so i flew to hanoi on a friday afternoon (the second time i'd flown there in 2 weeks. that was some fucking poor planning).

as soon as i got to a random travel agent's office planted down some little back alley in hanoi, i was promptly picked up and deposited at the train station.

i arrived at about 7:45 am in lao cai where it was dumping rain. remember back in an earlier paragraph when i mentioned a typhoon or some other natural disaster? this was the only thought running through my head as i struggled to stay dry. weather had never made me nervous before. ultimately it didn't matter. we tourists were ushered to a vanthat then drove us the 30 km or so to sapa.

sapa used to be significantly less of a tourist trap, but apparently a whole lot of people had the same great idea as me to come to this place. resorts and "pubs" practically popping up overnight, all founded on the intrigue of getting to see local people who come downfrom the hills to sell their traditional wares and give us rich tourists a glimpse of "real" vietnamese culture. it's very cool, but it also seemed to sum up most of vietnam. yes, i know there's plenty of tragic history here that i could touch upon that's about as "real" as you can get, but i'm focusing on my own selfish wants and desires as a tourist.

6 hours of hiking on the first day, uphill, downhill. i think it was about 12-15 kms that day. and all these ethnic women with their braids and their colorful weaving and their large jewelry and their blue-stained hands swarm you--down from the mountain in droves--selling silver, selling handmade bags, selling scarfs. and the setting was unlike anything i've ever seen. a sea of green punctuated by terraced rows of rice. and the fog threading about the landscape only heightened this sense of utter unreality.

the easy trekking was the very basic part of the tour. after lunch on that first day, 7 other people from our group of 9 went back to the hotel. me and one other chick had opted for the homestay in one of the neighboring villages. so we walked there and got to take the coldest showers of our lives. we slept upstairs on mosquito-net shaded mattresses. then we wandered random village trails.

dinner time meant "happy water," which is the 60% rice wine that the homeowner had made, from the rice he'd cultivated with his own hands. good gad. not easy to drink. it was drinking so much of the happy water that led linda and i to sing karaoke (yes, in the village). it was quite expensive because apparently, electricity in a village is really expensive. makes sense, i guess.

woke up in the morning to a variety of noises--all the sounds of a village waking up. ducks, chickens, roosters, cats, and the wailing of one unfortunate pig. i was mildly disappointed that i didn't witness a pig slaughter, but apparently this old girl wasn't quite fat enough. the farmer was just weighing her and lifted her by one ear and her tail.. i'm quite certain i would make such sounds too if some vietnamese villager were hoisting me by my two flimsiest body parts (yes, i have a tail). ultimately the pig seemed pleased with her outcome.

day 2 was perhaps the most dangerous, on account of all the prior rain. it was downhillfor half the day. couldn't have done it without the help of the ethnic people. how very strange to be hiking through bamboo forests with tribal women flanking you, holding your hands as you descend a cliff face. eventually we parted ways, but i felt that the least i could do was buy some of these women's handicrafts. the next part of the of the way was uphill, but i much preferred that to going downhill.

after a ramen lunch, linda headed back to sapa, and my guide and i began the trek down to banho (where this summary started). immediately after arriving at the stilt house in the village, the guide and i went to some hot springs near the village, no other people in sight. headed back to the house in time for dinner.i guess that's pretty much it. hiked back up the mountain, went back into town and back to the hotel. headed to the train station the next evening. my guide met me there and got me good and drunk with the locals before i settled in for the 10 hour journey back to hanoi. i splurged on a $25/night hotel and slept all day. back to china the next day.

and here i am. and despite how hectic this first month has been, i'm still in a good mood. that warrants a "holy shit!."