Friday night we left for our overnight train ride to Sapa. The train was ‘somethin’ else!’ There was mass chaos when we got there and people screaming Vietnamese to one another with everyone running around the tracks. A man who works there (for tips, not employed) showed us to our cabin. It was a four bunk 7 x 7 room. It was noisy and smelled of smoke. Surprisingly we laughed and talked, settled the baby’s in, then slept 10 hour ride to Sapa.

            We awoke to the most beautiful peaceful town. We stayed in the Chau Long Sapa Hotel which overlooked the town. Sapa is where there is a local market selling food and clothing and seems to be the only non-farm area around. Sapa is home of two main people groups, the Black H’mong and the Red H’mong. There are other small villages scattered out around the main town, we visited 3 total villages.

We visited one village on Saturday, the Cat Cat village. The Cat Cat people are in native dress and are rice farmers. Their children run around with only shirts on until they are potty-trained, so we saw lots of little hiney’s.

The walk/hike through their village was about 2-3 miles. It was all open farm land and open houses. We were invited in by a family and were able to see the inside of their house. They had no beds, a vat of dried rice, some cut out pictures from magazines on the walls and small wooden benches to sit on. They were very friendly and loved our babies.

They had never seen a bottle before and couldn’t figure out why we were not breast feeding. They kept pointing to their breasts and were very confused. We had our tour guide, Son, translate for us what a bottle was and what adoption meant. They understood and just smiled at this new concept.

Our tour guide was quite a hoot. He spoke with an Australian accent because that was the only way he could pronounce English words! He talked and talked and told us many stories and answered all our silly Vietnamese questions. We were discussing the Vietnamese people eating dog and we wanted to know from him what dog tastes like. He said, “well, it tastes like monkey.” Isn’t that the funniest response!

When we returned the 4 miles back to Sapa and we ate a traditional Vietnamese dinner. We then headed out to watch a little of the H’mong’s native dancing in a local meeting room. The dancing was cute but Adam’s dinner caused a big problem in his belly and he actually didn’t get to see the two other villages the next day due to this! : (

Everyone on the trip has had ‘it’ now… so travelers to Vietnam, eat what you want the Vietnamese and Western food is great, enjoy everything about this awesome culture, but don’t be afraid of the v and d. One meal out of about 70 is not bad! (Adam nor I vomited, but we both were praying we would! It just made its way out the only other way possible.)