Day 87: November 15, 2014

This morning started with a sesame seed and sugar doughnut, followed by us meeting our tour group at 9:30am. We hopped on a bus and went to a place where it was highly recommended we rent rubber boots, but nobody from Loyola decided to (we would regret this decision later on). We then took off down a road in a bus full of our group, which included 14 people plus our tour guide, and were let off at a place where we then had to walk.

Our tour guide was from the Thai minority here in Vietnam, and it truly is fascinating to look around you and be able to tell that everybody comes from different ethnic groups. We started our descent into the rice terraces of Sapa, for which it is famous, and were followed by members of the Black Hmong tribe. While it was so foggy at the hotel that we could barely see past the front gate, as we continued to climb down the mountain the views became clearer and clearer. We walked through a village of around 2,000 people, took a ton of pictures of the rice terraces, and finally stopped for lunch around noon. We were served ramen noodles with an omelet and stewed tomatoes, all in a broth, with bananas for dessert.

After lunch is when the trekking really began. We actually went in between the rice terraces, which were not only eroded from all of the tourists but also because of the rains yesterday. It was a slippery, muddy mess, and the women from the Hmong group that were following us had to help the stupid Americans who refused to rent boots at the beginning. They held our hands as we walked up and down piles of mud, helped us up as we slipped and fell, and overall laughed with us as we laughed at ourselves. The tour ended with them trying to get us to buy things, which of course I felt was necessary after all of the help they had given us. Was I overcharged? Yes, but they also followed our group all day and kept us from falling off the cliffs.

Having them follow us today was rather interesting. I had gone into this fully expecting a tour of the villages like we had received in Dalat, where we would sit in a local house and talk with them. Instead, we had signed up for a trekking adventure that really didn't consist of interacting with villagers. The women following us were the only chance we had to ask questions, and as we continued to fall in the mud they just kept saying "Too many tourists. Rain yesterday make muddy." Since I am doing my research paper for sociology on the impact of tourism on women's lives, I couldn't help but think how said it is more profitable for these women to follow a group of tourists around for the day and hope at the end of the tour they purchase something then it is for them to follow their traditional lives. Not only that, but the impact of tourism on the land here was highly visible as we slipped around on the mud.

We got back to the hostel around 3:30pm, and we had a few hours to spare before the bus took us back to the train station to get to Hanoi. Hopefully this train ride will go as smoothly as the one to Sapa!