Cat Cat Village, Sa Pa | Vietnam

There’s no nice way to say it . . . Cat Cat Village is fake. It’s an entirely modern tourist trap built as a combo souvenir shop/Instagram set. Can you see ethnic minority people there? Sure. Can you buy genuine handicrafts from them? Yes, assuming you know what to look for. 

90% of the place, however, is Vietnamese shopkeepers selling junk souvenirs and costumes to Vietnamese tourists, who spend the day taking photos for social media. The costumes are about as close to what local minority women wear as Disney’s Princess Jasmine outfit is to traditional Kurdish costume.

No one lives in the “H’mong family houses,” they just sell batik outside. To add insult to injury, Vietnamese pop music blasts through loudspeakers, and every couple hours there’s a ridiculous dance show supposedly featuring ethnic minority performers doing traditional dances in traditional costume (nope, definitely not, and barely).

The village is more or less a convenience. If you are:

• too old or infirm to hike to a real village, or

• you want to pick up Western style clothes “inspired by” the craft processes of the region (rather than wear things made by and for H’mong and Dao), or

• you only travel for the ‘gram so you’re trying to get as many picturesque selfies as possible in one day

this is the place for you.

Personally, I only had two hours to spend here, and almost burst into tears when it seemed like the paths of shit shops would never end, and any good landscape shot was occupied by at least 3 couples inanely posing.

My best advice for Cat Cat village is:

#1 It’s better under the influence. The food is better, the trash souvenirs are funnier, the people taking their social media personas way too seriously seem less of a nuisance, and when you inevitably overpay for something, it bothers you less

#2 Do it backwards. The main entrance is right next door to the Sapa Sky hotel. Pay for your ticket, get a map, and then walk down the hill for 20 minutes to the other entrance and go in there. If you want to buy authentic clothes and snacks from local ethnic minority people, they occupy the far less trafficked backend of the park, probably because the rent is cheaper. 

Trekking Sa Pa | Vietnam

The most popular thing to do in Sa Pa is hike around the nearby villages and sleep in hill tribe homestays. It is the best way to get to know the tribes around Sa Pa, and learn a bit about their culture, how they self-identify and how they relate to each other.

It’s also way more challenging than I expected! I was picturing a relaxing nature walk . . . nope. There was some technical hiking involved, and the villages are high up in the mountains. In my group of seven people (all with different fitness and skill levels) everyone ended up winded and sore, and a couple of us fell at least once on the washed out trails.

I went with Lily’s travel agency, and the H’mong guide brought us on the old mountain trails the villagers use to get around, not tourist trails. Very little walking was done on paved roads or even cut steps. The dexterity of the local people (who grew up climbing the mountain trails every day) is amazing. Older people, small children, and people carrying heavy loads in shower shoes were doing better than tourists in their mid-20s with Alpine experience, hiking boots and poles!

The physical challenge required enough of my concentration that it was hard to keep track of where we were going next and what we were supposed to see there. Differences between villages and tribes that are blatant to a local weren’t so clear to my foreign eyes, especially after dehydration, sunburn and knee problems set in . . .

Local women on their way to Sapa would often turn around and follow along, lending a hand as necessary. When we stopped for lunch and dinner, they would try to sell us the handicrafts they kept in their baskets. Some Westerners are very annoyed by this, but I think $10 for 3 hours of sherpa service and a piece of batik is a great deal.

They also made the cutest little motivational gifts from grasses and flowers, while I was resting or taking pictures. It takes about 3/4 of a day to get above the clouds, and I admit I felt a sense of accomplishment!

The first village we visited was a Black Hmong village. The rice had just been harvested, so it was interesting to see what else was growing: cabbages, pumpkins, green beans, water spinach, leeks and many varieties of potatoes. Everyone had a loom to weave hemp and a vat of indigo on the porch (indigo dye smells terrible). Freshly dyed fabric was drying out on a water line or fence outside every house. Everything is blue near the houses; blue stains on the floors, fences, paths, rocks, and all the women have blue stained hands.

There were so many dogs, the kind I am not accustomed to seeing: big mixes, mama dogs, so many puppies. Other domesticated animals included pigs, goats, chickens, ducks and water buffalo. Slaughtering an animal is a big deal here and a lot of tourists don’t realize that the beef or pork served to them is really a luxury for the people who made it. In an effort to avoid tapeworms I won’t eat pork here, and avoid beef as much as possible; the locals are always either terribly insulted or openly gleeful they get to eat my portion, never indifferent.

I was surprised when our Black Hmong guide told us that despite living so close together for hundreds of years, the local tribes have mutually unintelligible languages; a Black Hmong can’t understand a White Hmong, for example. The mountains are so steep that until around 30 years ago, communication with the outside world was very limited and these villages were much more isolated than they seem now. Lingua Franca is Vietnamese; in the past it was French and everyone here calls me ‘Madame.’

I think it’s fair to say the tribespeople are interested in Western commerce, but not Western culture. Everyone has a smartphone, Facebook, Whatsapp, motorbike, and they are all very keen to learn English. However, they prefer their traditional dress, traditional food, traditional lifestyle.

Everyone marries early and has 5 or 6 kids. Women live with their husband’s family and help with farming and cleaning, but meet up with their own mothers and grandmothers to eat lunch, make clothes and craft little things to sell. Ridiculous EDM pumps in some homestays because they think Westerners like it, but a party here is staying up until 10 shooting ‘happy water’ (the rice equivalent of bathtub gin) and listening to guys play traditional flute music. Over the past 10 or so years, members of different tribes are intermarrying more and more.

I was lucky enough to partially witness (from a respectful distance, so I don’t have pictures, sorry) two important ceremonies: the traditional breakfast party given the morning after a wedding, and the 10 year celebration of a death (including animist rituals, chanting, and the sacrifice of a water buffalo). A lot of the hill tribe people are also Catholic, meaning that though they were converted by the French a hundred years ago, and attend the church in Sapa town with some regularity, they run their lives by the lunar calendar, observing a blend of Daoist, Buddhist and Animist traditions.

The lunch spots in the villages undeniably cater to tourists, but locals do also stop by to eat. It’s usually just someone’s house with a poured cement area for diners. They always let other locals sell groceries or knick-knacks in front. We also walked through a bamboo forest, and saw endless large potted plants, many on pedestals. I was very surprised to learn they are exotic orchids being cultivated for export! Further down the mountain, poinsettias for Christmas were also being grown.

I paid $75 for my 3 days of trekking with 2 nights at homestays, transport to and from Hanoi, and meals included. In my opinion it’s an unbeatable value for a must-do experience. HOWEVER, if you are not particularly athletic, don’t feel bad about doing a one day trek and homestay instead of something longer; you won’t miss much. My best advice is to check weather reports and plan your trip for sunny days. When it’s rainy the trails get dangerous, and when it’s cloudy you won’t get the spectacular mountain views people go for.

Sa Pa Town | Vietnam

Sa Pa is a popular tourist destination situated in the Northwestern highlands of Vietnam, in Lao Cai province, near the Chinese border. The main draws are interacting with exuberant and traditionally dressed ethnic minorities, and trekking through 500 year old rice terraces and bamboo forests. 

The more athletic climb Mount Fansipan, the highest mountain in Indochina; the more materialistic hit all the ethnic and faux-ethnic shops and markets. Some come just to escape the heat and pollution of Hanoi, and stay in a luxury hotel for a relatively low price. Others come to rough it with the locals, butchering their own meals and cross-stitiching the day away in a wifi-free world.

Before the 16th century, the area was very sparsely populated, but there is evidence of prehistoric people: a 3 square mile area of 150-200 large stones carved with petroglyphs (called Bãi Đá Cổ, or Ancient Stone Field) spreads over Tả Van, Hầu Thào and Sử Pán communes in the Mường Hoa valley, just below the town. Archaeologists don’t know much about the glyphs (it’s been suggested that they’re pictographic, religious, related to 3 different language groups, made at different times by different groups, etc.) but believe they date to between 600 and 2000 years ago.

By the 16th century, the northern highlands became home to the various ethnic minority tribes that still live in the villages today: Hmong (over 50%), Dao (25%), Tay (around 5%), and Giay (around 2%); plus Muong, Thai, Hoa and Xa Pho (just a few households of each). These groups were pushed into what is now Vietnam from China, during a time when the border was not clearly defined. 

The hill tribe people you meet in Sapa Town will mostly be Black Hmong and Red Dao, because their tribes have the largest populations in the villages closest to town. Somewhat further away (a day’s walk or so) are the White Hmong and Tay villages. To see other tribespeople in any great number requires a 2+ hour drive out of Sapa. 

Having colonized Tonkin in the 1880s, and signed two treaties with China defining its borders (in 1887 and 1895), the French began building up Sapa Town in the 1910s. At first a military hill station, it quickly became a high society resort. Roughly two days away from Hanoi via train and carriage (these days shortened to 8 hours via sleeper bus), Sa Pa is a relatively cool, mosquito free respite in all seasons. 

The French famously lost their war with the Viet Minh in 1952, and bombed Sapa town into oblivion upon retreat. So, no colonial buildings remain. The French influence, however, lingers in two indelible ways: religion and cuisine. Most of the local Hmong, to my surprise, are Catholic, converted by the French a hundred years ago. As far as Western restaurants go, traditional French cuisine dominates, with boeuf bourgignon, blanquette de veau, and croque monsieurs more readily available here than in Hanoi.

Only in the ‘60s did ethnic Kinh people (the very dominant lowland majority, who foreigners identify as ‘Vietnamese’) begin to visit Sa Pa; only in the ‘90s (when Vietnam changed from central planning to a controlled capitalist economic model) did they begin settling in and opening tourist reliant businesses. Nowadays, the ratio of foreign tourists to Vietnamese natives of any ethnicity is 1:1 in the low season and much higher in the summer months. 

Sa Pa is currently building so much and so quickly it has sparked lots of debate about over-tourism. In town, every other building is a hotel/restaurant; all are constructed around a small, partly artificial lake/park, and every 5th lot or so there’s another hotel going up. Construction laws in Vietnam are lax, so construction noise is a nuisance from sunrise to sunset, 7 days a week. Countless tourist buses, vans and cabs clog the small and windy roads badly enough to make it slightly dangerous to walk during the day, and truly inadvisable after dark. 

In the villages, most families have built houses with cement blocks and corrugated metal roofs, abandoning their traditional wooden architecture. Buzzwords like “ethical and sustainable tourism” have become meaningless ploys to overcharge for the same standardized experiences offered by the gazillion tour companies. The supply of handmade souvenirs far exceeds the demand, and the locals are extremely aggressive about selling them, including lying (*everything* is either an “antique“ or “took 2 years to make”) and trailing Westerners for literal hours. 

Apart from the practical, ecological and economic impacts, a cultural debate is also raging: which is worse, the “Kinh-washing” that’s rebuilding Sapa as a giant luxury instagram set for Vietnamese tourists (who naturally support Kinh-owned businesses that lock minority locals out of their own economy), or the “enforced primitivism” Westerners perpetuate (by patronizing the most old-fashioned/impoverished looking people in the name of authenticity).

I’m making it sound terrible. It’s not! I spent 3 weeks in Sapa and its surrounds and really enjoyed it.