T&A

We decided to go to the mountain tourist town of Sapa, Vietnam to see rice terraces set amid mountains, and to get there we had to take a sleeper train. The train was actually pretty comfortable since we chose a “soft sleeper.” This cabin had two bunks of two soft mattresses and curtains on the window. Unfortunately, there were no curtains to block light from shining on your face while you sleep. We awoke in the border town of Lao Cai and took a quick minibus to get to Sapa town. Once in Sapa town, we chose one of the touts to show us her hotel, and it turned out to be great with a nice balcony for viewing the mountains. As we were walking towards the hotel, we noticed that some of the local women were dressed traditionally and sold locally made items. The rugs, blankets, and clothing that they sold was interesting because it was dyed naturally. As a result, many of the women’s hands were stained dark blue or green. The rest of the day we spent planning our visit throughout the area. We quickly found a tourist map which highlighted the roads as well as hiking routes, and decided that the following day we would spend visiting two or three of the villages along the main tourist track.

After a quick breakfast the next day, we decided on a whim to rent mountain bikes to see the villages. We thought that if we had bicycles, we could cover more ground, and it would be a bit more fun than using a motorbike. Well… it was very fun, on the way down, but the ride back up was pure hell. We might as well have been training for the tour de france. The ride back was about 12 kilometers, all up, and with 10 degree climbs in several sections. Nevertheless, we had an easy time touring the villages since we could breeze by the locals trying to sell things (if we were tired of the mild harrasment) .

The villages were situated in the valley between two massive mountains. On the way down, the locals would try to sell bracelets, purses, belts, etc… and if we had been walking, they would have followed us for kilometers until we gave in and bought something. We saw it happen to the other tourists trekking through. Adam had a conversation with one of the women who was 19 years old and had a baby which was left at home. Apparently, her husband was back at her home taking care of their child – he doesn’t work. We came to the conclusion that she probably makes more money selling goods to tourists, and must be supporting her family in that mannor. Unfortunately, this mini-economy spoiled the traditional atmosphere since we were always nagged to buy something. It was all a big show, but the scenery was fantastic. After the bike ride, we were too tired to visit any of the other local sites, and so we decided to continue our journey into China.

The following morning, we checked out of our hotel and took a minibus back to Lao Cai. The driver was nice enough to drop us off close enough to walk across the border. After a smooth check-out from Vietnam, we walked across the bridge and into China. The officials there greeted us and were incredibly nice. They helped us fill out the required forms and even usherd us into a separate “speed” line to pass through. At the customs stand, there was a “rating” machine for the officer. If you thought the service was satisfactory, you could push a button with a smilely face. We both pushed the smilely face; however, there was one last check before we walked out of the building. We had to put our bags through an x-ray machine. No problem; we didn’t have anything to hide… except our books! The only thing the last customs official was interested in was flipping through our books. He made us empty our bags (our books were in the bottom) so that he could check for contraband books. All of Adam’s books were deemed acceptable, and then it was Tara’s turn. We had heard from other travellers that China does not appreciate Lonely Planet’s version of the map of China which shows Taiwan as a separate entity. We were told that the officials will either tear out the map, and section on Taiwan, or confiscate the book. Tara took out her books one at a time, but stopped before the Lonely Planet, and said she had no books left. It was a risky move, but the official seemed satisfied, and we made our way into China.

This was the first border crossing where the two countries were completely different. There wasn’t even the slightest influence of the two cultures mingling between the border towns. All of a sudden we couldn’t recognize any of the writing, and not a single person spoke english. The only english we did hear was from the friendly locals shouting “hello” to us as we walked by. This part of our trip was intimidating, but it was really fun to whip out our guide book and patch together words and phrases to make our way around town. Most of the time we had to point to the actual written words on the page to make ourselves understood. Pronouncing mandarin properly is not the easiest thing to do!

The first stop we made was at a bank to take out money and exchange our leftover Vietnamese Dong. We quickly did so, and then made our way to the bus station only to find out that we had missed the last bus by 20 minutes. We were forced to spend the night in the border town of Hekou, and took the first bus the following morning to the YuanYang rice terraces.

The bus ride resembled the roughest ride in Cambodia. The bus had small seats and no space is wasted with a bench in the aisle to cram more passengers inside. The road was paved in some spots, but was mostly dirt and very bumpy. There was a brand new, paved, elevated, super highway which followed us almost the entire journey, but it didn’t seem to be completed yet. We wish it had been. One young person was proudly blaring music from his cell phone at maximum volume. It lasted for almost the entire journey. This also happened frequently in Vietnam. Just imagine three or four people blasting different songs from horrible speakers all at the same time for hours on end… After about four hours, our bus arrived in the little town of Xinjie. As we stumbled into our budget hotel, we were approached by a couple who wanted to share a minibus to view the surrounding area, and of course we agreed.

That evening and the following day, the four of us and a chinese women were wisked through winding roads to view spectacular rice terraces. We went to different locations or lookouts and also caught a sunset and sunrise. Our minivan was hilarious and had racing stickers spackled all over it. The interior was also pimped out with a sound system complete with a display screen in the sunvisor so we could watch a DVD of whatever music he decided to blast. He choice was mostly chinese love songs.

We also had our first real chinese meal during our only night in Xinjie. We joined the other couple we had paired up with for the day, and they took us to a restaurant with a display case. The display case contained simple ingredients such as chicken, pork, asparagus, mushrooms, peppers, etc. We simply pointed to whatever main ingredients we wanted and the chef did the rest. The meal was spectacular, and for five dishes, including three large bottles of beer, the total cost was less than 10 USD. The food in China is absolutely nothing like you would find in North America.

The rice terraces in this region of China were MUCH more spectacular than those of Sapa, Vietnam. Here, most of the tourists were other Chinese, and there were very few locals to pester us while we enjoyed the views. Surprisingly, a large portion of the locals still dressed traditionally, but the total amount of people dressed this way was still less than Sapa. This led us to believe that they were dressing this way to preserve their heritage rather than make a few extra bucks. Throughout the Xinjie village which was literally perched on a mountain top, we watched local people enjoying some sort of chess like game, and smoke on their huge bamboo water pipes.

Almost every man we have encountered in this rural part of China smokes, whether it is through their bamboo pipes or cigarettes. Smoking in public is also allowed, and so we probably had our monthly nicatene intake through second hand smoke on the bus ride to Xinjie. Another nasty habit that the men seem to have is that they spit anywhere. It could be on the street, out the window of the bus, or inside the bus on the floor. When they do this, they also decide that they need to develop the biggest wad possible, and loudly scrape/clear the back of their throats before they let it go. They certainly are not shy about this, and it doesn’t bother anybody else. We were told that China is trying to stop this nasty habit for the olympics among all the other culture “troubles” (another one is that the men pull up their shirts which shows their bellies when it is hot).

Even though the culture gap is tremendous, the people are extremely friendly and shout hello to us all the time. It is much harder to travel here compared to the other countries because of the large language barrier, but this has been the most fun in terms of a cultural experience so far. We are currently in a small town with zero other tourists. We won’t mention the name because this place is not listed in the Lonely Planet and we don’t want to spoil it. We’ll have to write about it in the next update though because this one is getting to be lengthy.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 10:58 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.