Sapa Hill Station

A mini bus took us from BaCa to Sapa, one thousand five hundred metres altitude. The sun was setting by the time we reached Sapa and the temperature falling fast. We stayed in a grandiose hotel with Roman columns at the entrance, painted sickly yellows and browns, a huge entrance hall with a plastic flower arrangement in the centre, a wide staircase with piles of dust and cigarette ends in the corners of the stairs. Downstairs was a huge dingy dining room, where they fed up supper at five o'clock.

Then we hit the town, which is full of bars and shops, and rows of stalls selling barbecued meats.

Next day we were taken on a ten kilometre walk downhill, through the rice fields. A group of women from the Black Hmong tribe latched on to us and accompanied us all the way. Each one of them attached herself to one of us, asking us a stock set of questions: "what is your name? how old are you? how many children do you have?" and so on. When we reached a slippery muddy patch, they helped the less able across.

They took us to a place like a concrete bus shelter with three open sides that overlooked the terraced rice fields. Blue plastic chairs and tables were arranged in a row and we were served with bread, omlettes to share, tomatoes, cucumbers and la Vache chi rit to make our sandwiches. As we ate the Black Hmong stood on the path above the restaurant looking down at us, occasionally waving an embroidered blanket, waiting for us to finish. We lingered over our food, reluctant to go out and do business with them. Eventually we had to emerge and were instantly surrounded by them chanting "buy from me, buy from me" like a chorous of blackbirds, as they pressed small objects into our hands, tried to hang bags round our necks and quoted sky-high prices at us, saying "I walked with you all the way". Most of us bought something small for much too much money, then fled.

We were taken to a church, a school and a village. All the houses had asbestos roofs, donated by the government.