hmong girls rock my world

tim and i got to sapa via the hard sleeper train--6 people in a tiny cabin, each with a comfortable 1-inch mattress! we were in a cabin with an israeli, two swedes and an englishman named dan. dan HATES vietnam and had a lot to say on the subject. he thinks the vietnamese are all nasty thieves and are trying to screw the tourists every way but sideways. he hates the cyclo drivers and the motorbike drivers and he is sick of everyone harrassing him all the time. so of course, i started getting worried that i too would start to hate vietnam after a while (dan allowed that hanoi was the best place he'd seen yet in vietnam) and stayed up all night worrying about that and the fact that someone would break in and steal our bags from the tiny cabin, even though a nice train employee told us to tie them to the beds so that wouldn't happen (dan said the nice train man almost restored his faith in vietnamese).

we got to sapa and walked up the 173 stairs to our room, about 6 stories up on a hillside, checked out the view and then passed out. sweet sleeping action! then, of course, the first thing that happened was exactly what dan was talking about. THE HARD SELL. the place is full of roving bands of hmong and dao women, and it's a little intimidating at first. after recovering from our 574893578239 stairs and 2 minutes of sleep, we were wandering around town and a hmong woman came up to us with her baby strapped to her back. 'you buy from me?' we told her no and she kept following us--ALL OVER TOWN. at one point, her friend started to follow us as well and we were trying to outrun them and we couldn't stop laughing. the first woman caught up to us when we were cracking up and told us, laughing, 'you buy from me, no one will follow you!' finally, we cracked under the pressure and bought a bracelet from her, at which point her friend suddenly appeared and said to me, ' YOU BUY FROM HER, YOU BUY FROM ME!' it's like some kind of hmong mafia.

we spent the first day trying to avoid looking them in the eye, and then we sat at a bar on the main street with this awesome aussie, adrian, who knew them all. he had met a bunch of the young girls playing pool (!) in the bar downstairs the night before, and he met a bunch of the rest of them when they were hawking stuff. he was hilarious, telling them he had no money b/c he's already bought everything, and they kept teasing him and coming up to BITE him and everything. that was also when we learned their routine:
-'you buy bracelets from me!'
-'no, i have 2 bracelets already!'
-'you have 2, you need 4!'
that was when we decided to make friends with the hmong girls.

i made it my mission while i was there, and i am proud to say i achieved it. to be honest, it isn't too hard. buy something from them, or tease them about how you can't buy something from them, and they're yours forever. tim and i managed to befriend about 10-12 of the girls, who are the funniest, sassiest, smartest girls i've ever met (they're right up there w/aussie women in my estimation). they dress in the traditional black hmong clothes, but they speak perfect english and are surprisingly western. THEY EVEN RIDE MOTORBIKES! let me tell you, seeing hmong girls on motorbikes is a weird moment...they are all dressed up in their traditional clothes, whizzing past you. seeing the men is almost weirder, because the men wear their collars up (a la crusty), and for some reason, they look like something out of a weird sci-fi movie, like mad max. they're coming to take over the world, with collars up!

the first night, we went to the aforementioned pool bar and watched two girls (mimi and vu) play pool (they're all pool sharks) against this drunk aussie. it was hilarious. at one point, one of them looked at him and said, 'whatever.' and the other one later made a loser sign at him. we befriended 5 of them the first night, 4 more the second, and 2 the third. i bought something from about all of them (except for one, i think, loulou), but the stuff they sell is only about $1 so it's not that expensive. they are the sweetest little things, all huggy and kissy and wanting to hold hands and telling me that i'm beautiful and tim is a bad husband and looks older than me (though the second night in the bar, mimi was cracking up at the pictures i took of tim and telling him he looks 12 and then showing the camera to these israeli guys and telling them tim was my 12-year-old boyfriend). her friend lili caught on and kept running up to tim yelling 'YOU ARE ONLY 12 YEARS OLD!' and then falling all over him laughing. she would then bite him and run away. tim, of course, befriended the two real pool sharks, lili and vu, who quite literally looks like she could be a gang leader. they were so funny, but at first, they looked really tough and scary. once they started biting tim, though, it was all over. he is in love.

the third day we spent literally 4 hours in an internet cafe helping them email. they can all speak english, but only a few can write it and none can read it (tim says some actually can, but they are too lazy to do it). it was fun, but exhausting. two of the girls i helped had babies. ku, the younger one, has a baby named ga and another daughter, and i figure ku herself must be about 20 MAX. so, the other one, is 25 and has FOUR KIDS. she cracked me up when she looked at me and said, 'NO MORE!'

we've met some other cool people (3 aussies, 2 of whom i brokered a bracelet deal for with the girls and who coined the 12 year old expression) and the israeli guys, and one wretched nasty b@stard from spain who told mimi to f*ck off. let me tell you, i laid the smack down and tim even joined in!

we're pretty exhausted now, because in addition to kicking it with the hmong girls, we have been hiking/climbing stairs all over this frigger because sapa is a hill town and there are stairs EVERYWHERE. we hiked down and back to the nearest hmong village the first day and climbed the big hill in town the second. on our last day, we went on an unbelievably easy (yet stunning) hike to 2 more villages and then got a jeep ride back (praise jesus). our guide was another hmong girl named za, who was 17. she wore her hmong clothes, with sneakers, which is not an unusual sight because so many of these girls are also guides when they're not selling.

in her village, we ran into 4 little girls (8, 10 and 11) who we'd met our first day. they followed us from their village to the next one (an hour walk) and made me a crown of ferns and picked me flowers. one of them, la, also told me the following. 'i remember your husband, but not you. many people in my village are fat like you, but your husband, he not so fat.' man, she's lucky she is only 8 or i might have thrown her into the river! since she was the one giving me flowers, i let her live. at lunch in lao chai (the hmong village), there were some local boys who climbed up the wall of our deck-thing to watch us eat. we gave one of them an egg and another one some cheese, and we started a riot. two more boys came. we gave them two bananas and another egg. then the first ones came back and we gave them an orange. in the interim, they went over to the german tourists next to us and the lady tried to give one of them some cheese and she was almost crushed. they were pretty damn cute, though. according to the girls, little boys in the village do nothing but play and sometimes watch buffalo, but the girls start selling when they are only about 6 or 7 (and from what i've seen, sometimes younger than that). TYPICAL LAZY MALES!

yesterday, when we left, we went into town to say goodbye to them all and we had some major melodrama. we were surrounded by about 10 girls and we told them we had to get the bus, but as we were leaving, one of them started to cry. she wouldn't look at us or tell us why she was crying. it was either because she was mad at tim because he couldn't open her email the day before, or she thought we ignored her that morning (which we hadn't, we had said hello and gotten no response) or because we never bought anything from loulou (loulou's translation, mind you). she walked with us almost back to the hotel, and then we said goodbye. i still have no idea why she was crying. BUT, when we got back to the hotel, all those other girls had come to say goodbye! HOORAY! and when i asked them about zeng, they told me she cries all the time, so that made me feel a little better. we took some pictures, exchanged the few remaining email addresses and went on our way. man, am i going to miss hmong girls. for four days, i got to be a hmong goddess, and now i'm back to being just a fat tourist!

sapa itself was amazing. the views are glorious, as my mom would say, and it's kind of like being in the alps. but not (because you're in vietnam, duh). our hotel room had the most stunning view, and it's a cute little town. but, they are building EVERYWHERE and soon it will be completely overcome with tourists. tim is worried about what will happen to the girls, and it will be interesting to see. when we met the aussies in borneo, they had been to sapa about 5-10 years ago and i think even since then it's changed completely. when they were there, they hmong girls only knew how to say 'bonbon' when they asked for candy, and now, check them out!

we're staying in hanoi tonight...we got the soft sleeper back last night (only 4 bunks and a 3-inch mattress--yay!) and roomed with an irishman who lives in hanoi and teaches english, and two tiny vietnamese girls who both slept in one tiny bunk. tomorrow we head out to halong bay for some kayaking action, so we won't be back online until the 22nd. stay tuned and try not to miss us too much!