It took me three days to speak to any of the tribal women in Sapa town, let alone arrange a homestay with one of the local Hmong women. Their way of welcoming you to Sapa is down right scary. It’s the first time I’ve arrived in a tourist bus feeling as if the people outside were the ones looking in at the animals.

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Pic: Local Hmong women in tribal gear waiting outside a hotel in Sapa

THIS IS A WELCOME?

It’s actually quite a funny morning ritual to watch, from behind the safety glass of your coffee shop window the next day. You get to see the mini bus pull up to yet another hotel. The women are waiting, en masse, looking small and harmless in their beautiful traditional outfits. How sweet, you think they’ve come out to meet and greet you. But this is the thinking of a weary traveller. The bus and train trips are long and arrive in the early hours. You are not thinking or seeing straight through your puffy eyes. If you were you would see it for the strategic attack that it is. And you soon do. The first hotel stop injects an adrenalin shot that wakes you up to your pending reality. This is not the happy farm you were promised. This is the abattoir and you are up next. Only an act of God (a sudden and hard downpour) can save you now.

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Pic: A Hmong woman tries to sell me trinkets in Sapa

It’s actually quite a funny morning ritual to watch, from behind the safety glass of your coffee shop window the next day. You get to see the mini bus pull up to yet another hotel. The women are waiting, en masse, looking small and harmless in their beautiful traditional outfits. How sweet, you think they’ve come out to meet and greet you. But this is the thinking of a weary traveller. The bus and train trips are long and arrive in the early hours. You are not thinking or seeing straight through your puffy eyes. If you were you would see it for the strategic attack that it is. And you soon do. The first hotel stop injects an adrenalin shot that wakes you up to your pending reality. This is not the happy farm you were promised. This is the abattoir and you are up next. Only an act of God (a sudden and hard downpour) can save you now.

 FRESH MEAT

We’re not talking about a handful of quiet tribal women. If you alight at a popular hotel, you will probably wade through women 20 deep just to get your bag. In another context you might feel like a rockstar being welcomed to a village where you are headlining, but not here. Not like this.

They sing a very different tune:  “hello where you from? what your name? you come to my village? “shopping?” “you buy from me? maybe later?” It’s the chorus line from hell’s opus. and it’s on a monotonous repeat. But whatever you do, don’t say the word “later”… they will hold you to it like a blood covenant. You think I’m kidding? The women go so far as to make tourists “pinky swear”. Truth.

It’s the fresh meat syndrome. They know you are probably here just a few days and that they have a small limited window period to book you, so they try establish some tenuous form of relationship with you, starting with getting your name and country of origin. They will then use this information the next day to guilt you into buying something from them, either a souvenir or homestay. It’s the worst kind of sales technique I have ever witnessed. Why would anyone buy anything from someone who constantly harasses them I kept asking myself? And yet we do. For many reasons, but usually out of guilt or sheer weariness. Few can outplay or outlast them. There is only so long you can tune out the “where you from you buy something from me maybe later” soliloquy that rushes at you every time you exit your hotel and follows your shrugging shoulder mumble down the street. It’s reason enough to head for the hills.

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Pic: The “sales pitch and walk”.

But don’t try to outrun them. Would you take on a Kenyan on their home turf? I didn’t think so. These are tough mountain women. They don’t tire of walking and waiting. They can’t afford to. Their villages are at least 15kms away and they come to town every day outside of harvest season and winter. Granted, most get lifts on motorbikes, but a good many walk, both ways. Money is scarce in these parts. They aren’t harassing you for the pure sadistic pleasure of it. (Although it must be kinda fun seeing these big tough tourists run scared). They need the money. Their rice is mostly subsistence. Most have 5 plus children to care for, in sickness and in health.

TRYING TO FIND A BALANCE

So there is this daily struggle that goes on. And most of it happens internally. It’s that uncomfortable feeling you have to confront, but try to delay by having another cup of coffee. In your head you know they need money. You want to support them but you also don’t want to be bullied into buying more things, especially stuff you don’t need. And it doesn’t sit well buying from someone who has followed you around every day since your arrival. None of this makes for a fair exchange and it certainly doesn’t help the tourist/local relationship. The only way to find some sort of understanding and maybe even peace/calm, is to change the game. In town, the power is skewed in your favour. With dollars in your pocket, they are at your mercy, even if it feels the other way around. They are preying (and probably praying) on you for their survival and you are resisting in defence of yours. It’s a zero sum game where everyone ends up losing some respect and money. As for me, I flat out ignored all of the women for three days. I didn’t answer their questions or even greet them. I would go so far as to say I looked past, or even through them, sometimes. And it made me feel sad and angry at the same time. I am not cold and I like to engage with people in small and spontaneous ways. But I could see very early on that I wouldn’t be able to engage them on that level. So I shut myself off to them and probably came across as a sour puss; the unfriendly, cold, traveller who only spends money on food and drink. I must have reinforced many a traveller stereotype in those two days.

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Pic: Local Hmong women in Sapa town

CHANGE THE GAME

My suggestion is to find a woman that you like. Maybe she has kind eyes or always stands on the sidelines, watching the scenes play out. Whatever it is that makes you choose one over the next, that’s what you need to do. And then walk with her to her village. Change the context. Go see her in her natural roles, watch her be a mother, wife, and respected member of her community. See her play with her children, laugh with her husband, choose pumpkins from her garden and cook them for her guest. That;’s you. Suddenly you are her guest, not her patron or prey, something you won’t ever get to witness in Sapa town. And it’s so rewarding to see these women for the farmers, mothers, wives and women that they really are.  In town, the commercial ink of desperation and necessity stains their hands like the indigo plants they use to dye their hemp garments. But it’s superficial and it washes away with a bit of time and effort.

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Pic: Ma, my lovely kind homestay host and mother of Pichu (on her back but not in view) 
And you know what the most interesting thing is, is that they actually need this experience of you as much as you do of them. I still remember Ma, my gentle host with a child on her back and a smile in her eyes, saying to me at her house “when I first see you I think you angry, but you come here and I see you are a nice happy person.” Touché sweet loving ma. Touché.

 

More musings on my actual homestay visit soon…

cat baby

Yes, that’s me above, offering to take Pichu (Ma’s child) for a while. Needless to say he screamed himself off me straight after this picture was taken, where he is momentarily distracted by the straps and unaware of his fate.  

Categories: TravelVietnam

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