Lunar Festival

     The day after we got back from our hike to the village we went to a big lunar celebration in a village in the opposite direction.  I'm pretty confused about the names of the villages right now--my dad said that the one we spent the night in was Ta Phin but the one where the party was was clearly Ta Phin... too?  Instead of?  Same with Lao Cai.  It was definitely (to the best of my knowledge) the village we walked through after leaving the party but was also definitely the town where our train arrived and our bus left so hopefully, when I can locate a map, I'll be able to explain better.  For the purpose of now, Ta Phin no longer refers to the hike we did with Zaa and Lao Cai refers to the town where our bus left from.

     Along the twisty mountain road from Sa Pa it took us about a half an hour to reach the point a few hundred feet above Ta Phin where we were left.  Two roads seemed to lead to the village, one filled with motorcycles and the other with pedestrians.  There was some wishful thinking that because it was a holiday no one would try to sell us anything but the upside was that the people chatting us up were also showing us where to go.  We lost them when we reached the village and also lost the way to the party.  After walking up and through the village we came to a point where we could see tents and crowds by the river and walked back the way we came.
     There was a small path leading from between some buildings to the tents and we shuffled along with the mass of people drifting in the same direction.  To cross the river going through the rice paddies there was a bamboo bridge that sagged in a way that would have been rather alarming if the river hadn't been a couple feet deep and lazy.  Looking away from the town as we crossed we could see a bamboo pole balanced on one side by the riverbank and tied on the other to an upside-down V on the other that people, mostly kids, tried to walk across.  A picture would help here.
     The party was in an open field with a row of meat-filled food stalls leading to the main attractions.   First we went to see what the large group of people (all Black Hmong but scattered with tourists) were looking at.  A screen had been put up behind an open space and in front of it some unhappy-looking children danced to Western music.  After they exited and nobody else seemed about to perform we wandered off to look at people climbing the greased bamboo pole.  Again, it was mostly kids attempting to climb it but with no success until they started stacking them.
      First the boosted one boy, then another underneath him who stood up with the first on his shoulders.  With the people on the ground supporting them at arm's length and the top boy standing on the second's head (ouch!) he could just reach the bags of candy tied to the bamboo and dropped on down onto the crowd.
     Next to this there was a crowd gathered around a gong tied to a bamboo pole balanced horizontally between two bamboo tripods which blindfolded people tried to hit with a small mallet.  All the games were really fun to watch because of the audience, which cheered, laughed, and applauded with each success and groaned sympathetically each time the blindfolded person wandered off in the wrong direction or someone slithered down the bamboo.  

The gong game

     A 60-foot-tall tapering bamboo shoot with a target tied to the end was lain at an angle to the ground and we were interested in finding out what it was, but after waiting for some time and seeing nothing we walked back to where people were dancing.  We stood through what seemed to be a Hmong dance, part of a Vietnamese dance, and most of a flute solo before joining the gathering people back at the thing with the target.  The weather forecast had called for an 83-degree day but I was scornful because of the miss with the day before and the overcastness of the morning.  By the time we finished watching the dancing I had executed a mental 180  and was very happy that my mom had brought an umbrella.  Also adding to the happy was the fact that other people were using umbrellas for shade too, so I didn't need to repeat to myself that we just seemed like 'those weird tourists'.  
      While they were slowly raising the target to be vertical in a way that I really hope we have a picture of because I can't even try to make it make sense otherwise we stood and (I) peoplewatched a little.  Everyone seemed to be Black Hmong but some girls were dressed up in beautiful colorful dresses.  My dad asked to take the picture of one little girl in particular, who agreed but didn't want to look at the camera.  Her parents beamed at seeing the photo.

It was perfectly safe at the festival.  Groups or pairs of five- and six-year-olds wandered around unattended.  People also were very affectionate towards each-other.  Not only groups or pairs of girls/women but boys and men too held hands, linked arms, leaned on each-other, bumped into each-other.  I kept an eye out for Zaa as she said that she would be there but from the back she could pass for too many people and I couldn't walk up to everyone and peer at their faces to see if them.

     Yes there's a formatting issue here but I don't know how to fix it. 
     I haven't talked about the Hmong clothes that much mostly because I don't know how to describe anything.  I'd like a link to put in but can't find exactly what I want but it's close enough and an interesting website.  What I will describe is the garment that I've seen described as both a waistcoat and an apron.  It looks more like an apron to me.  
     This apron is worn by both men and women all year round, covering their front and back like a smock would do.  Made out of hemp and died with indigo, for holidays they use special aprons that have been treated to become shiny.  To make the hemp this way they spread out the article of clothing on a long board covered in candle wax and 'surf' up and down on top of the clothes on a wooden board, balancing carefully.  After going back and forth a couple of times the hemp becomes smooth and begins to shine.  Hmong start learning to do this when they are very yound as it is apparently impossible to master otherwise. 

    It takes so long to raise the bamboo and target to verticalness that we leave while they are still balancing it upright with stones.  A couple of times in the process it swung menacingly in one direction or another and people laughed and shrieked as the ran to clear an area beneath it but it never fell.  The game, which we did not stay to watch, consists of throwing a cloth ball with a streamer attached to it and hitting the target.  At the height it was, it seemed like an impossible task.

     It was much more crowded leaving than going.  The bamboo bridge had a division down the middle with one side for comers and the other for goers but each side was only wide enough for a single file line and there was a block to get on the bridge.  Small children had a huge advantage in height and while at least a dozen ducked down a little and wormed their way through at knee-height before anyone could make an effective barricade to keep from being cut.
   The path back to the village was likewise packed and, along with other people, we cut through try rice paddies.
     On our way through the village we stopped  to buy these apple-like fruits that Zaa recommended as being tasty.  They did look a lot like green apples (with pits), only just a bit larger than a quarter, had a texture like pears, and tasted a bit like cherries but a lot like nothing in particular.
     Breaking news:  The village we homestayed in was Ta Phin, the village the lunar festival was in was Ta Vanh, the town the train arrived in was Lao Cai, and the town we walked through after leaving the party was Lao Chai.  Ouch.
      By the side of the road before we got out of Ta Vanh we passed a group of women sewing.  Predictably, one walked up to us and fell into step while asking where we were from.  She walked with us to Lao Chai where she gave us directions to Sa Pa and didn't try to sell us anything once (she lived in Lao Chai and, I guess, had been waiting for somebody to walk home with).  
     A couple days before we went to the party my parents went on a walk without me and ended up walking to Lao Chai and kind of remembered the path, but after taking the fork which the groups of tourists weren't walking down and then trying in turn each of the three muddy, narrow, steep paths that it led to it was agreed that, though they had definitely come that way, it was impossible to find it anymore so we walked on the more beaten trail.  Soon it was reinforced why people walked to the village rather than away from it.  Sometimes the incline of a wheelchair ramp, sometimes more along the lines of a flight of stairs with a ramp laid over the stairs and covered with a nice thick layer of squooshy mud the entire way back to Sa Pa is uphill.   
     The bridge we crossed spanned  about 100 meteres of rice paddy valley about 50 meters down.  It had no railing.  Barely a moment after we got to the other side a big truck drove over the bridge and we were so glad to be off it, as people here operate less on the 'I'll back up so you can finish crossing' or even the 'I'll drive slowly so you can run away before I hit you' principle and more along the lines of  'Of course you can walk around me on the 5 inches or so of clearance I have on either side of my wheels'.   I'm not exaggerating about how close the truck was to the edge.  When it turned on to the bridge half of the back left wheel was resting on nothing. 
     After about three hours in the 85-or-so-degrees walking uphill without more than a small bottle of water, no sunscreen, and me in a long-sleeved shirt for sun protection we made it to a store on the main road two kilometers out of Sa Pa.  We bought some sugar cane here.  The man selling it had been doing something with gasoline and had filthy hands so my mom learned how to strip the barklike stuff from the cane with a machete crossed with a cake scraper through trial and error.  Nobody was hurt, the bark was effectively removed, and we were glad to have the cane.
     A van came to pick us up to take us back to Lao Cai and after a brief (but groundless) scare that my dad forgot his glasses we made it out of town.  Even with a few stops to pick up and drop off more people we got to Lao Cai in no more then and hour.  It was arranged tht we would si at and eat at the sister restaurant of our Sa Pa hotel until the bus came and when it did we were glad to have one of the people who worked there walk us over.  Nobody checked for tickets and there were no assigned seats, but we picked three upper bunks and settled in.  It'd be nice to have a picture but the only one I have is blurry and, for better or for worse, I will be on plenty more sleeper buses and will take plenty more pictures of them.
     By eight the next morning we reached Hai Phong and upon seeing it rethought the possibility of spending a night there before moving on.  Instead we took a taxi from the gas station where we were dropped to a place where we could buy ferry tickets.  For an hour and a half we sat in the office until a bus came and took us to the terminal.  They had us put our bags on the outside part of the ferry where the motorcycles were kept and we were very glad that they didn't tip overboard as nothing was holding them in place.
     We reached Catba Island (Ha Long bay) after only twenty minutes on the boat and at that point just floated aong with what people told us to do.  (In Hai Phong the bus was supposed to arrive at this time then that, this side of the street then the other; the ferry was supposed to take an hour and a half, etc.)  There were only two other people on the bus, both wearing face masks.  I don't know if people wear them for germs or for pollution but it's common to see people wearing surgical masks with floral patterns.
     I'm a little behind on posting and probably won't be able to tomorrow, but yesterday we didn't do much after we arrived except to go out to dinner where there was an ant in the salad and bad food, today we walked out to the beaches and the resorts (the two we saw were ugly beach hogs) and ate some really good veggie pho, and tomorrow we'll leave in the morning for a night on a junk.  I have yet to convince my parents that practicing is a bad idea, but am reassured that I'm doing nothing wrong by the skype lesson I had with my teacher  back in San Francisco.

Boats in the bay