Cat Cat,
Sa Pa Vietnam 30 December 2012
travel 2012 travel 2013 neuage.org ALL TRAVEL
Vietnam December Blogs: First blog in Vietnam December 21; Christmas Day Hanoi December 25; Sapa Day 1 December 26; Sapa Trekking 1 December 27; Sapa Trekking 2 December 28; Cat Cat Village, Sapa December 29, 2012; Guangzhou January 02 2013
Slideshow of Hanoi photos. Photo slideshow of Sapa. For slideshow of 'on your bike' biking around Hanoi. Slideshow of Hội An
Videos: Hoian (youtube); Black H'mong tribal village of Sapa, (youtube); Hanoi (youtube); Christmas Eve in Hanoi (youtube); Cat Cat (on youtube); Sapa (youtube)
The first rainy day or actually
all night previous but not to worry the rain did clear on Sunday morning with
just a mist over Sapa and the one place we had not
been to yet was the nearest village to Sapa, Cat Cat. Cat Cat video Yes, that is its name. The H'Mong ethnic group tribal folks fill the area
before, during and after.
Cat Cat is walking distance but the
walk at the moment has a lot left to be a proper walk of any hue. The first
kilometer there basically is no road where there was once a road or where there
will be a road; it is difficult to figure which. There was a lot of mud – and
jumping from stone to stone and wonderment whether we were going to be cactus
before reaching the actual village.
There was a dude that seemed quite anxious with a
megaphone thingy and we just thought he was trying to help us from slipping
into the endless river of mud until he got us past the area and down part of
the hill then there was yelling into his megaphone thingy and an explosion and
a section of the hill moved with rocks and smoke and us sort of out of the way.
Cat Cat is similar to
other villages in that everyone and their child is trying to sell their
trinkets and weavings. All the young women seem to have babies on their back as
we have seen the last few days and I have shown in previous posts. Most of
these folks get married around 15 years of age and have two babies by 18;
except, for Vivian, the guide we had yesterday – see yesterday’s blog, who has
no intention to get married until after doing a university degree… good luck
girl.
What is the most different about Cat Cat is the environment… it is very mountainous whereas the
other villages were hilly but open with all their rice fields. Cat Cat; yes, I enjoy saying that, is like Aspin, Colorado or
any mountain forest place.
The main attraction for us was the waterfall…
It took us an hour to get to it and that was our
day. We had already made arrangements with some hustlers at the top to collect
us at the bottom to save our weary asses from having to climb back to the top.
The owner of our hotel told us not to go to Cat Cat because it was too touristy but we reckon it was
because unlike the other two days when he sold us tours Cat Cat
is too close to Sapa to have a tour to. We did not
see any tourists along the way probably because it had rained all night and no
one was stupid enough to slip around in the mud and go down the dangerous
trails… oh wait! We did. It was a great trip.
To save from writing another blog before getting
back to Campus Village at Dalian American International School in two days I
will jump to now which is New Years Day and we are
back in Hanoi.
The train back was a lot better as the mattress
on the bed was quite comfortable unlike going to Sapa
when it was so thin and hard I had bed sores by morning. I still did not get get any sleep because it was such a loud and jumpy train. We paid for an extra night at our hotel
because we got into Hanoi at five am pretty much the worse for wear. After a
couple of hours of sleep we were out and about. The next day, which is today,
New Year’s Day we went to ho chi minh's mausoleum. It
is pretty ghoulish seeing the dude laying there. I wanted to shake him and say
something witty but there are so many guards and they look quite serious and
push us forward so we can’t linger that I did not have a chance.
contact DALIAN CHINA ~ TOFU ~ PICTURE POEMS ~ Educational blogs updated August 15, 2013 Vietnam trekking.
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Today working on picture poem links starting around "better"). Picture poems are the digital format of work I did as a street artist in New Orleans in the 1970s, as well as New York City, Honolulu, San Francisco and Adelaide South Australia. Follow @neuage.
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