Lost for words in Sapa, Vietnam

by Danielle Willatt (Mexico)

Making a local connection Vietnam

He shouts over his shoulder above the bike’s roar. “I said, life can be divided into two halves. Before and after Vietnam.” If so, the second half of my life began with blisters. On arrival in Hanoi, I walk the streets like a possessed woman. I dodge motorbikes and step over dog-bowls filled with rice. It’s a museum exhibit that makes me stop. It’s about the hill tribes up near the Vietnam-China border and the colourful descriptions suck me in. When it spits me out, I’m on a bus going north. Finally, the driver yells ‘Sapa!’ Sapa; a small town five hours from Hanoi, known for its rice terraces and various resident hill tribe communities. ** A tiny girl bursts into the bus office. She’s dressed in the traditional indigo hemp cloth and bright patterns of the Black H’mong. She’s beautiful. Shiny almond eyes, freckles, and a thick black ponytail. She stares at me in dismay as they confirm I’m the only person booked into tonight’s village homestay. Her name is Ha and she’s my guide A truck drops us at the trek’s starting point. We’re surrounded by lush mountains but I feel awful for this poor girl stuck doing a private tour for the next 24 hours. We sit on the grass and regard each other curiously. I’m just a few years older. I wonder how different our lives have been up until this mutual afternoon. I’m cautious, too. I’ve never done a homestay before. Part of me fears intruding or saying the wrong thing. We swap questions. She asks about my family and I say they’re from different countries. “Ahhh, so you must be accident-baby!” she exclaims with a clap. It’s such a curveball, I burst out laughing. Any awkwardness fizzles up in the sun. I have too many questions, and so does she. We begin to walk and talk - really talk. Childhoods. Hopes and dreams. Heartbreak, ‘true love’ - she likes this last one a lot. I ask about the Black Hmong 'courtship rituals' I'd read in the museum. She nods and laughs, saying how annoying the village boys could be when they hung outside the girl's house with musical instruments. She points out native plants and gets me to crush one in my hand (it’s stained black for three days). We discover a mutual love for singing and the bamboo forest soon fills with our terrible ballads. This encounter was beyond anything a museum could prepare me for. What else but travel could have brought this person into my life? She’s kind, witty and hilarious, with a flair for yelling 'DING!' for emphasis. I’d met someone entirely unique and we were both belly-laughing. She picks up a bulky laptop from her village. She’s into a boy overseas and the ‘homestay’ I’m staying in tonight has the only Wifi for miles around. Our trek now feels like a mission: deliver the world’s heaviest laptop over wetlands in time for a Skype call. And we make it. The next day, I move into Sapa town. We meet everyday. It’s a strange friendship, undulating between common ground and a mutual fascination. Like most Black H’mong women, she wears her traditional dress wherever she goes. Mid-joke, she’d pick up a machete and skin a sugarcane stick taller than either of us. We’d then resume the conversation, chewing and spitting out hard fibers. Before I leave, she mentions freelancing. I suggest making business cards and her eyes gleam On a grubby street, she rolls up some metal shutters and a dark cybercafe appears with local kids hunched over screens. We squeeze in and I make some cards on Ms Paint. She nods approval. ** From Hanoi, I call to thank her again. When we hang up, I rub at the black ink fading on my palm. In the museum, I learned of a Vietnamese poet. He wrote war proclamations so persuasive that the forts that received them would surrender without fighting. They called him a master of words - the right words. Perhaps there’s power in the wrong words too. In being clumsy but earnest. In bad lyrics and awkward questions. I’ve always loved words and museums, but don’t the best connections always happen off-page?