Day 5: Sapa Town Tour, Cat Cat Village, Overnight train back to Hanoi

I'd like to start this entry by saying that heated mattress pads are amazing!  They had them in the hotel and you simply turn it on, go brush your teeth, and then slip into the nice warm bed.  It was amazing and I can't believe I'd never thought of having this!

Ok back on topic.  It's Day 5 in Vietnam and our last day in Sapa.  Tou was gone and we got our new tour guide who we met in the lobby after breakfast around 9am.  He seemed like a pretty nice guy and we didn't waste any time with our tour.

We left the hotel and headed up through the Sapa market.  The market was founded by the French about 100 years ago and it was still going strong.  It had 2 floors and we started with the upper floor.  It consisted mostly of textiles and clothing made from scratch by the different tribes in the Sapa area.

The amount of complexity and needle work for some of the pieces of clothing was impressive and to think these were made from scratch at a fraction of the price it would retail for in western culture was astounding.  I ended up buying a handmade gift for Eliza but I won't disclose it here because I want her to see it before she finds out what it is!

Next we headed to the bottom floor which was the farmers market and a food court.  We took a little saunter through what appeared to be the vegetable aisle.  Countless bundles of delicious looking green vegetables.  Many different tropical fruits and herbs and spices I hadn't seen before.

We rounded a corner and then found ourselves in the meat department.  It was a long row of several tables with... well meat sitting on it.  This was one of the most "real" meat markets I had seen apart from the one in Hong Kong (which I blogged about a few months or so ago).  There was a leg of a cow on the table with the hoof still on it, a pig head sitting on a table, and dozens of plucked chickens with their feet sticking up in the air.  A plate of chicken heads finished off the aisle as we walked out onto the street where some men were hacking up some pretty large live fish.

you guessed it. chicken heads

Now that we had made it through the market we made our way down a long road towards Cat Cat village.  The village got its name from the French.  There is a big waterfall there and the french named the village "Cascade Village." Cascade is "waterfall" in french.  However, the Vietnamese had trouble pronouncing that name so when the french left, the name turned into Cat Cat.  The walk was a steady decline down for a good 20minutes or so.  The village was at first covered in mist but as we got closer the mist burned off and we were treated to a beautiful view of the village from above.

Our guide explained some of the customs of the people here and we went into a few small houses and shops to get a flavour of the village.  One of the traditions that I thought was funny was that when a boy and a girl like eachother, it is rude to just go ahead and say "I like you." So what happens instead is the boy plays this fancy looking instrument to "court" the girl.  If the girl likes the guy, she may also play a song back.  The songs have meanings so I think this is how they communicate.  If all goes well from here, the boy will take the girl back to his family's house and then lock her in this separate room that is inside the house.  Over the next few days the girl remains locked in there and the boy brings her things like food and drink and I guess she gets a feel for what it is like in his family because she can still communicate with the mom/dad/family through the walls of the locked room.  Then if THAT goes well, they can be married :)  I don't think this would go over too well in western culture :P What do you think 'liza?

We continued to the bottom of the valley where 3 rivers converge into 1.  There is an old French hydro station there that has been re-purposed into something for the villagers with a little tourist market/area.  The waterfall was a really nice one so we took the opportunity for some photo opps.

We then made our way around the back of the village up towards Sapa town again.  The hike up was tiring but we took several breaks to catch our wind and for pictures.

poor monkey chained to the tree

The tour for Sapa was now over and we had several hours in the afternoon to ourselves until the tour bus picked us up and brought us back to the Lao Cai train station.  We decided to eat at "The Lizard" restaurant in town which had some pretty hilarious engrish on the menu.

Rob can't stop laughing :P

Rob and I then checked out the rest of the market and killed time in the hotel until 5:30pm where our bus picked us up and took us to Lao Cai.

We had a quick $2 meal before the train and then we were off back to Hanoi for a restless overnight sleep on the train!

Lao Cai Train Station