Felicity's mega adventure! : day 2 in sapa

Dinner at the homestay

I finally have some time to write something a little more detailed about sapa, its people and the group I am trekking with.
The village called sapa is in the north of vietnam and boasts beautiful scenery and tribal villages dotted around the rice paddies. We learnt from our guide Mang, who is 20, already married and has a year old daughter, that each village has a different tradiational dress and language however they all speak vietnamese to be able to communicate with each other. The rice paddies and allotments provide enough food only for the families and the men have to work in sapa, often as builders to earn money for the family. Mang, however, is the only member of her family who has a job and supports them with what she earns. She takes tour guests on two tours a week which means walking 15-20km a day, up and down steep and muddy tracks. Today she even brought her baby with her and trekked with the baby on her back. She also explained to us that it is quite normal for people to get married young and have children, they even swap children in sapa. If a mother has had three boys for example it is quite normal for a family with three girls to trade a boy for a girl. The families land is only split between the sons so you don't want too many sons if the dad does not have a lot of land. The people here live in very basic buildings but all have a tv and wifi.
The trek today led us to a waterfall in a different village and it was typical for the women in this village to where a red headdress.
The group I was trekking with were very entertaining and we all got on very well. We spent the evening yesterday playing cards and laughing a lot. We ended up playing 'bullshit' which was a brilliant game to get to know everybody. We even watched a bit of Vietnam's got talent with the family we were staying with and it was just as bad as it is in England. We had curfew at 10:30pm last night and had to go to bed.
This morning we woke up to the smell of pancakes and had a good breakfast before setting off again. We had the best off the weather in the morning and as we got back to the hotel in sapa it started to drizzle.
I explored the village before it got too dark and discovered a great massage salon where I got a head, shoulder and neck massage for 2 euros. Not bad!!