287. | Sa Pa

Sa Pa. Here I am now inside Vietnam.

Where heaven and Earth date.

Every morning I look out the window and see Heaven so close.

And I haven’t even been outside the city yet!

Here in the mountains

Sometimes I have to allow myself a little geographical perspective in my writings to make it easier to understand where I am.

Sa Pa is a mountainous region in northern Vietnam, close to the Chinese border. The town is located at an altitude of 1500 meters above sea level, so its climate is much cooler than the rest of Vietnam. The area is made special by terraced rice fields, mist-shrouded mountain peaks and Fansipan, the highest mountain in Indochina (3143 meters).

The emphasis for me is on the “mist-shrouded mountain peaks”. The word “amazing” is not enough for me to express what I see here every day. I hope I will be able to show it with good pictures.

Another important thing about this place:

The region has been inhabited for centuries by various mountain peoples, including the Hmong, Dao and Tai communities. They still preserve their own language, customs and traditions, making Sa Pa one of the richest regions in Vietnam, not only from a natural but also from a cultural point of view. Most of the rice terraces are still cultivated by hand, just as they have been for generations.

I have seen this here in the city. I will definitely write about it in a future post.

On the square!

I’ll end my “China” post with the thought that if Ninh Binh is beautiful, then Sa Pa is beautiful on the square.

I arrived here on Tuesday from China. Today is Sunday.

In the past few days, I’ve only been in the city, and within that, only about a two-square-kilometer area.

This week, I focused on my work and my new project. I didn’t want to mess around, in a serious way.

I live in a hostel, in a four-bed room. Out of the 5 nights I’ve spent there, I’ve been completely alone for two nights, and I had a roommate for the other three. So, I can say that I now have a private room for the price of a shared dorm room. LOL.

My room is 500 meters from the main square of the city, 600 meters from Starbucks, where I’ve spent most of my days so far.

I walked around the city a lot. I got to know the surrounding streets, restaurants, the beautiful lake in the middle of the city. After a few days, I was greeted like an acquaintance in many places. So, nothing special.

I’ll show you a few pictures from the past few days.

Then, of course, life rewrote my plans again!

From this post, I managed to write the story this morning to the point that “and I haven’t even been out of town yet!”

Yesterday, as I was sitting here, I saw a Chinese guy several times. When I left here in the evening, he approached me, and we talked for a while.

He was looking for a place to stay, so I took him to the hostel where I live now. He booked a room for himself, and then he came to have dinner with me.

That evening, we agreed to have lunch together around 11 o’clock. I told him that I would be at Starbucks when he came, and we would eat.

Well, I had just written the above sentence when he came, so we went to eat at the KFC-like restaurant inside the mall building. I had already eaten there once this week, the chicken there is really delicious.

He went ahead because I had to pack up my office. By the time I caught up with him, he had already ordered lunch. For me too. Rice with chicken and chicken wings in a bun. He invited me to lunch. I happily accepted.

Then after lunch he asked me if I wanted to go to the first station of the mountain with him.

I told him I wanted to work today, thank you, but no. He didn’t insist, he just said he liked company much better. I thought about it and asked myself: Why not?

So we went to see the mountains.

He bought the tickets for the train, said he was so glad he didn’t have to go alone, that he wanted to host me.

One more thing about the guy is that I’m very grateful to him for diverting me from my original intention. We spent a very nice half day together. Today I got one step closer to Heaven, that’s for sure!

After we got back, he invited me to dinner. For the first time in my life I ate frog. Grilled. Many people told me it tasted like chicken. Now I know from experience that they were right.

After dinner we talked for a while, then he went to Lao Cai, from where I arrived here on Tuesday, and tomorrow he will go home to China.

And I will continue my day where I left off in the morning.

And in the meantime, all that happened was that I became richer with an experience of a lifetime, and now I was happy that someone with a grateful heart gave me half a day.

What did I see in Heaven today?

I met another friend in Laos, we spent a few nights together there. Let’s just say we drank a lot of beer. LOL. He’s coming to Sa Pa tomorrow. This will be the fourth time during my trip that our paths will cross again with somebody.

I learned from him that the train I was on today didn’t exist last year.

I’m lucky that I’m here now. Because the train ride up the mountain is an experience in itself. We rode in a full panoramic car. As it left the plaza building, an incredible view opened up before me.

Huge mountains above deep, incredibly beautiful, green valleys. And the tops of the mountains are shrouded in clouds. If there is such a thing (there is!) that takes your breath away, this is it. The only problem was that I didn’t know where to look. There was something amazing in every direction.

The train ride didn’t take too long. We only went up to the first station. From there, a cable train takes you up to the 3000+ meter altitude mentioned in the introduction. But today it was foggy on the mountain, so we didn’t go up. All due respect to the operators! When we wanted to buy a ticket up, the young girl at the ticket office said that the weather was foggy, the view wasn’t the best. She showed us the picture on her phone, based on which we decided to do it another time.

I will definitely go up to the highest point in Indochina in the next two weeks.

When I got off the train, the moments when the air was short just kept coming one after another. I enjoyed being in this place so much!

Gardens after gardens. Flowers in all kinds of quantities. Statues, flower sculptures. Lookout points everywhere. Selfie points. Walkways to the right and left. A swing here, a bench there. A Zen garden, next to it a pink London-style phone booth.

Everyone finds a spot where they can take their favorite photo. Alone, in company, with family. Everywhere there are happy people who are obviously very happy to be here. Just like me.

My Chinese friend was a good patron of my “Silence in Motion” project, because after a while he found a suitable spot everywhere for me to take a picture in a meditation pose. I let the pleasant flow of today take me, so today I took a lot of pictures in that series. I will soon post them on the page.

There was a temple on this part of the mountain. A majestic sight under the huge clouds.

During the nearly three-hour walk, it became clear how lucky I was. This was not the first time the guy had been here, but he had never seen what I had seen today.

A small village had been established at a certain point in the area. It was not for nothing that I mentioned in my introduction that Sa Pa is one of the richest regions in Vietnam from a cultural point of view.

For me, today was the highlight of the day, a folk dance performance. We arrived at the main square of the tiny village just as the folk performance with dancing, music and singing began.

It was a half-hour show, which I watched while sitting on the edge of the area. Everything happened right there in front of me.

The trio of music, singing and dancing was perfect. The dancers’ clothing seemed authentic. They performed the dances with a smile. Those folk dances that always revolve around the relationship between man and woman.

There was such elegance in this whole performance, it was so light that I felt it was very close to Hungarian folk dance. The play was understandable. There was tension, there was release. It was playful when it was next in line, serious when the situation required it.

They presented many layers of this culture. I saw the instruments they played. I could observe the game that was played in the background, while the main characters were in the foreground. They showed the separation and then the union of the male and female sides. There was a man singing alone, then a female-male duet. There was a pledge handover, parting, and reunion. You could notice the change of clothes during the performance.

And at the very end of the whole thing, they invited the entire audience to a dance game that required a bit of skill. My first thought was that I would go, surely no one would want to go. I was wrong. Many people went and enjoyed the game for a long time. So I watched the whole thing from the shore and I didn’t miss being there at all. It was so good to watch, to feel the game of so many people. That was my reward.

I really loved being a part of this wonderful performance.

If fate wills it, I will see it, here again.

I am very grateful for today!

I love Sa Pa.