T A B L E_T A L K What makes a travel book truly great? Discuss your favorites in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Getting into Chechnya By Thomas Goltz A journalist's heart-stopping adventure slipping by Russian border guards (05/26/98) Letter from Jakarta By Jeff Pulice When all hell breaks loose, what's an expat to do? (05/22/98) Mondo Weirdo Oh, those tropical nights! Readers relate their nocturnal adventures in the wilds of Australia and Indonesia (05/21/98) "A Walk in the Woods" By Bill Bryson An almost-encounter with two big animals in the middle of the night (05/20/98) A talk with Bill Bryson By Don George On writing, hiking and other arduous pleasures (05/20/98) Browse the Wanderlust Passages archives		Hitchhiking Vietnam On a backcountry market day, a solo American woman negotiates a horse rental -- and discovers the changes tourism brings. [ E X C E R P T ] HITCHHIKING VIETNAM BY KARIN MULLER GLOBE PEQUOT PRESS, 1998 NONFICTION, 312 PAGES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY KARIN MULLER | Sapa was awash in concrete construction, mostly catering to the tourist trade. Everyone was getting in on the act: The main street alone sported a Bank Guesthouse, a Fansipan Mountain Hotel, a Waterfall Lodge, and even a Post Office Hotel, where rooms were available but stamps were not. Along with the building boom had come a glut of entrepreneurial, nonethnic Vietnamese who not only looked down on the minorities, but also by now outnumbered them. The town itself had once been a French resort, perched high on a mountainside in the cool and comfortable Tonkinese Alps. An old, browning photo in the neglected museum showed wide streets, well-spaced houses, fancy fifties cars, and a central green for communal sporting activities. Present-day Sapa was somewhat less idyllic. The larger grassy areas had deteriorated into grazing land for skinny packhorses. Cars had been replaced by flocks of motorbikes for hire, the gaps between houses filled in with pigsties and food stalls, and lawless chickens scratched among the streetside trash. A general air of boomtown money and shoddy, hurried workmanship hung over the piles of homemade bricks and construction materials that littered the sidewalks and backyards. Worst of all, every relationship seemed adversarial. The guesthouse owners disliked each other, the Vietnamese disdained the minorities, and everyone was trying to wring the last dollar out of the transient tourists before sending them back to Hanoi. Even the dogs were uniformly mean. But just beyond the edge of town, a mere five minutes' walk from the busy marketplace, a rugged mountain landscape took shape. It was a land of bamboo groves, of gentle breezes and sinuous terraces, their careful geometry cut by tiny streams. As twilight fell I reluctantly retraced my steps to town and intercepted the first likely looking man I found to see if I could hire one of those scrawny horses for a month-long trek into the mountains. His name, he told me, was Cham. He immediately squatted down into a comfortable, long-term bargaining position and arranged his face into an expressionless mask. He motioned for a suitable prop, a cigarette. I didn't have one. The corners of his mouth sank half an inch and he fell into a moody silence. The horses, he said after considerable thought, were far too delicate to carry a big-boned foreigner. I had seen them plodding into town with several hundred pounds of rice lashed to their wooden saddles. I hastened to assure him that I had no intention of riding the wretched beasts. I wanted one to carry my pack, a trivial item to say the least, a veritable feather on the back of these fine steeds. He plucked a piece of grass and chewed it thoughtfully. How were they to know that I wouldn't just steal it and disappear over the nearby border into China? I imagined myself wandering about the Chinese hinterlands with nothing but a bony stallion. No currency, no language skills, no visa. I pointed out that a foreigner with a horse would leave behind a superhighway of gossip and that I couldn't "disappear" if my life depended on it. He thought some more, his eyelids drooping in an effort to focus his concentration. I suspected, uncharitably, that he might be dozing off, if that were physically possible while bent into such a tendon-snapping squat. His eyes popped open with a sudden inspiration. Perhaps, he said, he should accompany me as interpreter and guide, as the Hmong horse owner would almost certainly speak no English and would insist on chaperoning his steed on such a hellish trek. I studied Cham's face. His features were pure lowland Vietnamese, and he wore not a shred of native garb. I was willing to wager he spoke no Hmong, nor any other ethnic dialect. Since we were conducting the conversation in Vietnamese, I knew his English was nothing to boast about. A man wearing such fine clothes, I exclaimed, indicating his wilted T-shirt and tattered shorts, shouldn't stoop to sleeping in mud huts and washing in the river. As much as I aspired to his services as guide and mentor, perhaps he would content himself with a hefty finder's fee and my eternal gratitude. "You know check?" he asked with unexpected abruptness. Check. Traveler's check. Chekhov. Checkers. Checkmate. I had no idea. "Czech language," he said impatiently. "No, I don't," I said, feeling a little ashamed of the fact. He had apparently spent five years in Czechoslovakia, studying construction and women. He had managed to acquire no less than three girlfriends, all tall, plump, and European. They had convinced him that Asians would someday rule the world because, try as he might, he failed to impregnate a single one of them, despite fathering six spanking infants by his Vietnamese wife in as many years. The Western world was dying out, he told me. Their women were barren. In a few generations it would all be over, empty houses and fancy cars with the keys still in the ignition, and the sturdier Asians would simply move in and take up where they left off. He himself had his eye on a fine three-story house in Brno, if all went according to plan, for his grandchildren. He looked at me with pity, and seemed surprised at my lack of concern. "Fine," I said, "but what about the horse?" The next morning was market day. The sudden appearance of hundreds of Hmong and Zao in their Sunday best was enough to temporarily banish all thoughts of mountain hikes and scrawny steeds. The minorities in their turn attracted dozens of itinerant traders, who set up their wares on long mats at the bottom of the market and did their level best to relieve both tourists and tribespeople of cash and kind. The Hmong women all wore indigo-dyed hemp clothes embroidered with inhumanly intricate designs. The Zao held their own with elaborate stitchery and enormous red headcovers, layered and twisted into pillowlike pads that hid their shaven heads. Small knots of teenage girls ventured arm-in-arm among the food stalls, simultaneously attracting attention with their lovely costumes and rebuffing it with waving hands and averted faces. I saw infants less than three weeks old, their mothers having walked as much as fifteen miles to attend the market-day activities. The children slept endlessly, or looked upon the world with wide, attentive eyes. I never saw one cry. Almost everyone was barefoot, their soles as hard as rhino skin. Those who could afford footwear had but one choice -- a cheap Chinese sandal, sold for the forbidding sum of ninety cents. I watched a bent old woman try on one pair of plastic sandals after another, enviously fingering the rigid straps and then shuffling away, unshod. Everyone arrived with their purchasing power in hand -- a couple of carefully padded eggs woven into a tiny reed basket, a string of gnarled mushrooms, or a bulbous sprout of mountain orchid. It was the middle of winter and the life-giving earth was hard as iron. Planting wouldn't begin for several months, and attic stores of unhusked rice were already running low. Many families bolstered their meager resources by foraging in the forests for tubers and roots, bamboo shoots, tender leaves, and edible insects. They sold the excess and used the money to buy salt and medicines, blankets, kerosene, and a few iron cooking pots. If anything was left over, they wandered down to the traders' mats to pore over the latest gadgets and tempting trinkets. Market day was clearly more than just a shopping trip. It was a time where villagers could meet and chat, where romances were kindled and conflicts resolved. It was a day without the usual burden of chores, a time to temper the rigid daily discipline with a few minor luxuries. Stalls advertised peanuts by the tinful, tangerines, balloon-size cabbage heads and tiny, prepared pineapples on a stick. Hot food vendors sold sizzling tofu, rice gruel, deep fried batter, blood soup, and fully developed chicken embryos, cooked shortly before hatching and served with fresh basil and a dash of chili. Market day had functioned this way for centuries, filling the meager needs of its feeder population. New products occasionally appeared and traditional items faded away, but the market itself continued, unchanging. Until now. - - - - - - - - - - - - N E X T+P A G E | Tourism comes to Sapa.