Poor old duck

Wednesday 4 December

Today was the day for the guided tour of a series of villages along the valley starting with Lai Chai. We met the guide in the hotel and the others on the tour who were an Australian and his Japanese girlfriend, both very pleasant. We went out into the main street which was thick with little tour parties. Sapa reminds me very much of a ski town in its ambience. This was just like the ski school parties and in the evening the air smells of wood fires and the bars offer mulled wine and one is surrounded by mountains. 
 

We set off down the road, and then into the ethnic territory. The guide took us on a route through the villages that one would not, of course, have know or done alone. On the other hand, her commentary along the way was pretty limited, partly because her English was pretty poor. She was a young mother of a 2-month old and we stopped for lunch pretty early, I think mainly so she could feed the baby; towards the end of the afternoon the walk ended at a cracking pace, again I thought so she could get back to the baby. 

All along the walk, our group was joined by other ladies so that there were always more guides than tourists. At suitable junctures the ladies offered us their wares. This was a bit more tricky because by now they had befriended us and even been quite helpful offering extra explanations and so on. So ‘no’ seemed a bit harsh. We had a morning shift and afternoon shift of these extra guides. Having been hard hearted in the morning, I caved in for the afternoon group and bought some postcards. Rather than giving a bit of relief, this rather stoked up the selling effort which could have served as a rather curmudgeonly lesson for the future.

Along the way, we had come across a family of ducks walking along the road an old one and some quite grown up youngsters. A car came along and hardly slowed down. We turned round to see one of the young ducks with blood pumping out of it. The ephemeral nature of life and the selfishness of the selfish.