Sa Pa trek day 2 - parts 1 & 2/3

This day the goal was to make our wake from Su Pan (village we stayed in overnight) in Lao chai area to Ta Vanh (ending point of tye trek). The distance was a bit shorter that day and it was a 4 hours trek, still pretty steep at some point.

We woke up around 8am to a great breakfast prepared by Mama Mao. Sai arrived at the house and we had some nice food and said goodbye to our hosts.

After 1 hour of trek, I could feel how tired I was from the week we had and fighting the colder weather we had in Sa Pa. I was worried I would get a cold which would be very annoying as the following week was pretty busy and I had a full work week ahead of me too. Therefore, after 1 hour of walk, I asked to go straight to our Homestay in Ta Van by motorbike.

Niki finished the trek om his own with Sai and walked to a Water Fall and a Bambus Forrest

Here are a few observations he made:
- passing by a house where a woman is making clothes by a weaving them through an old process while watching TV on a flat screen. That was quite a contrast!
- Every family owns their own rice field, of which the biggest part will be given to the oldest son, as only men can work in a rice field. The other sons only get a small field. If the oldest does not take care of the parents, the fields will be taken away from him. And if the son does not have enough sons himself and is therefore unable to maintain the rice field, it will be taken away from him, too, and given to the his brother. If he does not have a brother, the rice field will be taken away from the whole family and give to the neighbor. Even if a family then starves.
-If a wife does not give sons to her husband, it can happen that the husband gets a new wife and leaves the mother with her daughters behind. It’s surprisingly common that this leads to suicide by the mother or group suicide by all family members left behind through a poison leave. As Sai said: “A handful of those leaves and 20 minutes later you fall asleep forever”.Read more