I did it my way

Saturday 7 December

Looking for a final walk, I asked the advice of Messrs Kim and David (the hotel owners) who recommended a walk going right off the 4D soon after the left turn to Ta Phin and then going down to Hau Thau and picking up the road back through Lao Chai. They were all for a guide costing 20 USD or a fully arranged tour (drop off, guide, packed lunch, pick up) for 55 USD. In all they reckoned it would take 7 hours. In the event I did it on my own in a fairly easy five hours. Although it is a bit mean not pumping some money into the economy, I find walking without an unnecessary guide (and they would have been obviously unnecessary) far preferable to having all decisions including when and what to have for lunch taken from me.

It was a splendid walk. I saw only a couple of tourists on the main bit and there were no sellers. The map was basically ok and it coupled with my iphone compass and map meant that the frisson of doubt as to whether I was on the right track never became more than that.

So that’s my last SaPa walk. It has been amazing being out in the mountains and valleys, amongst the various peoples living their lives. It is a risk to be patronizing. These people are living quite simple lives, clearly without wealth but with their basic needs of housing and food catered for. There seems to be a big emphasis on schooling and generally the school is the most impressive building on the village. All the children play around in what we would see as urchin mode but they all look happy and cared for. Clearly we tourists are taking from these people and using their land for our recreation and their lives as a sort of theatre, particularly their provision of the rural idyll with all the pigs, chickens, buffalo, ducks etc running around and not in a factory farm. It is right and proper to pay for that. I think the payment should be through a tourist tax rather through feeling obliged to buy something one doesn’t want from an individual seller.

That evening, my last in Sapa, I decided to eat in the hotel as they were one of the few places with a limited menu and I’d also been impressed with their breakfast. What a good decision. I ordered the chicken hot pot an hour in advance and when I came down this delicious and beautifully presented plate of food greeted me. One of the waitresses helped by putting the foods in the bowl for the appropriate times and I had a massive and delicious meal. The recipe to get is the ‘soup’ in which all the ingredients are boiled.