Sapa Trek, Epsidoe II - Return of the Hmong

The next morning they were back! As we lingered over banana & chocolate pancakes (heaven) in our family's courtyard the middle-aged Black Hmong vendor materialised silently behind Sarah and stood there ominously. I saw her out of the corner of my eye and avoided looking directly at her. After a few minutes Sarah decided to turn around to check out the fields behind her and nearly jumped a foot out of her chair at the apparition which had appeared by her shoulder. Then the "Buy from me" started...

Somehow we escaped and hiked all day through stifling heat and humidity. Through a glorious bamboo forest absolutely teeming with huge orange butterflies bigger than my hand. Past waterfalls and streams, over old rickety bridges, past buffalo almost completely submerged in water to stay cool and through fascinating villages of the Red Zao people where the women shave their eyebrows and the front of their heads from the age of thirteen until the end of their life.



Anyway, end of the the day we undertook a long steep descent to Ban Ho village and our digs in a Tay family home.

Now this was the sweetest family ever. After swimming for a couple of hours at an incredibly beautiful secluded waterfall we headed back and I poked my nose into the kitchen to try to help out with the evening meal. The night before our guide had whipped up about 8 dishes filling the whole table and we waited for the whole family to join us, but he told us "No, this is just for you". Amazing. So I was determined to learn his secrets. Around a simple fire on the stone floor of the kitchen I squatted with the guide and the matriarch of the family (who had studied at a French cooking school in Hanoi) and rolled up vietnamese spring rolls while they cooked up tofu with tomatoes, fried spinach, homemade garlic french fries, some type of omlette, a delicous soup and the ubiquitous steamed rice.



Outside on the verandah Sarah read her novel and relaxed while right next to her two of the younger kids jumped into the pond next door with a net and started trying to catch some fish for our dinner.


Dinner was... incredible once again.



We spent the evening sitting around the table with our guide, the mother and her three sons shooting endless glasses of homemade rice-alcohol, with added "herbal medicine" (apparently it was good for our backs), chatting as best we could, gazing at the billions of stars overhead, the fireflies flicking on and off over the fields and the lightening flickering over the hilltops to the east. Ahhh.