Stopping along the road up the mountain we checked out some ethnic minority girls selling lychee.
The hill tribes, or minority people, as our guides call them, still identify with their tribes although the government says they are now free to marry outside their tribe if they want. In fact, at a rest break shortly after the palace the owners were a local (Hmong tribe) man and a Vietnamese woman from Hanoi. They have two children and say they are happy.
The minority people still marry young. The girls at 14 or 15 and the boys at 15 or 16. They tend to be small in stature so sometimes I'll see a young mother with her child and think they are both children.
In addition to the lychee they also had fresh banana flowers.
Leaving that roadside stand we worked our way up the mountains to Sapa.
Sapa is situated at about 1500 meters (4921 feet) so as we got closer to the town the temperature dropped into the mid-seventies and with the cooling breeze it was quite comfortable.
Looking for a place to eat dinner we saw a man roasting a piglet on a spit over a charcoal fire. It was probably just an enticement to enter the restaurant since it wouldn't be done for a couple hours plus there wasn't enough there to feed very many of the large number of tourists in town.
The hill tribes, or minority people, as our guides call them, still identify with their tribes although the government says they are now free to marry outside their tribe if they want. In fact, at a rest break shortly after the palace the owners were a local (Hmong tribe) man and a Vietnamese woman from Hanoi. They have two children and say they are happy.
The minority people still marry young. The girls at 14 or 15 and the boys at 15 or 16. They tend to be small in stature so sometimes I'll see a young mother with her child and think they are both children.
In addition to the lychee they also had fresh banana flowers.
Leaving that roadside stand we worked our way up the mountains to Sapa.
Sapa is situated at about 1500 meters (4921 feet) so as we got closer to the town the temperature dropped into the mid-seventies and with the cooling breeze it was quite comfortable.
Looking for a place to eat dinner we saw a man roasting a piglet on a spit over a charcoal fire. It was probably just an enticement to enter the restaurant since it wouldn't be done for a couple hours plus there wasn't enough there to feed very many of the large number of tourists in town.
posted from Bloggeroid
No comments:
Post a Comment