Coming into the Home Stretch

This morning we find ourselves in Hanoi, spending the early hours awaiting our ride to Halong Bay for our overnight cruise aboard the Jewel of the Bay junk. After a surprisingly restful night train from Lao Cai, near Sapa, we're in the lobby of the Zephyr Hotel, where we will spend the last two nights of our trip before flying home Saturday.

Sapa--like pretty much everywhere we've been--proved to be a mystical experience. We trekked from Sapa to nearby Hmong villages, led by our guide, Maos, a 25-year-old Hmong woman who was a fascinating window into the daily lives of these tribal mountain people. (Alas, she said the scenario we experienced with the old woman at the lake was a common one in Sapa--poverty breeds desperation.) Not only did she describe much of what we saw, filling in details we'd never have known ourselves, she also answered all of our many questions about her own life. She was born atop a mountain that her mother scaled in order to give birth in a sacred place, and when she popped out, the infant Maos immediately gashed her skull open on a rock, and she still has a doozy of a scar on her scalp to prove it. By the age of 9, she was spending mornings hacking her way through thick bamboo forests, covered in jungle spiders, to collect firewood with her mother. Afternoons were spent in the fields, helping to tend the rice harvest, and at the end of the day, she helped her mother prepare dinner. She still squeezes in much of this hard labor around her guide duties--which she fulfills only because she was able to pick up sufficient English by talking to tourists. Schools arrived in her village too late for her, but Maos is looking forward to sending her two children, ages 2 and 4, to school in the coming years. It may mean a better living for the family.

She and Sarah became quite tight during our two days together, even walking hand-in-hand at times. I know we will always look back on her with fondness, wondering what has become of her life, and that of her children. (Her husband is the equivalent of a truant officer in their village--which, incidentally, has no electricity or running water.) We'll also think of others that we met--especially 12-year-old Ca, a beautiful young woman who, because she's the youngest of her family, is duty-bound to remain home caring for her parents and grandparents while her older siblings attend school in Sapa and Hanoi.

Sarah is now waiting in the hotel cafe for me to join her for breakfast before our ride to Halong Bay arrives...I'll try to fill in further details when we return to Hanoi tomorrow evening.