21st March - packing up - Sapa - buffalo

Thursday 21^st March

Today I am going to pack up my office; there are quite a few personal things I need to remove.  A funny, random collection of items…

·         Four small stones which I collected from the wild wild beach at Strahan when we were there for a hearing years ago

·         A packet (unopened) of strong painkillers – just in case

·         A pretty teacup, from Pete’s mother’s house, given to me when she moved to her nursing home

·         A pile of books which I had lent Tim – he now has a Kindle Fire ...

·         Two toothbrushes (my dentist gives me one every time I go and I faithfully put them in my drawer at work – I prefer whizzy whirry battery operated ones

·         Two pairs of shoes I have never worn…oh dear, don’t ask…also – just there, out of the blue, I had been wondering where they were – my good winter boots

·         A particular ghastly grey hooded polar fleece jacket, with tatty black fur trim, which I think can go in the bin although this is a very unkind way to repay it for keeping me warm at my desk on chilly office days

·         A golden good-luck kitty from Hong Kong which Pauline brought back a decade or so ago

·         A bag of cards for any occasion, so handy

·         My winter mittens – hmmm not so sure I will need these on 2XS but they will be v welcome when I return for random visits

·         Emergency nail polish

·         A packet of brown rice, ready to microwave (doesn’t appeal right this minute…)

·         A jar of whole-egg mayonnaise – well when DOESN’T a jar of this particular mayonnaise beckon to me??

·         Three large maps, which have followed me each time we have re-located – one of the world in its entirety, one of Australia, one of Tasmania…They are much too big to go on the boat; I will be very sad to be parted from them.  I think they will have to go into storage under my little house, along with all of the other items which have ended up there – flotsam and jetsam of my life…

Sapa continued (2008)

The next day was sunny and beautiful, with clear blue sky, no rain.  We had planned to meet Ker and Yang, our Hmong guides, and to go for a long walk with them down the valley to Lao Chai village (about 15 kilometres.)  As we were walking down the road to get to the track, we could see a jeep at the bottom of the ravine off the side of the road.  I asked what had happened, and found out that the accident had only happened a day or two earlier.  One was dead, two in intensive care… I asked one of the other guides about it, and she said, laconically, “I drive the bus but I no die.”  (This was, in fact, her idea of a hearty jest.)  In the terraces and paddocks down the valley we could see big bushes covered with mysterious growths - what on earth??  Ker told us that they were rose bushes and that each rose was individually wrapped in white paper to protect it.  Flowers are a big industry in Vietnam; labour is cheap…

Buffaloes are beautiful in Vietnam, big and fat and placid.  We wondered how come they don’t eat the rice in the paddies, it looks so delicious and green and lush.  No fences; how do they stop these huge ruminants from crushing and eating everything?  Mystery solved…each buffalo comes with an attendant little boy, who spends his entire day wandering around with his individual buffalo.  Ker told us they start doing this from the age of three… Imagine little Leo, out all day with nothing but a buffalo for company, armed with a rope and a piece of bamboo to stop his big friend from going into the rice paddies!  The boys seemed quite content with their lives.  Sometimes we would see a boy blissfully asleep lying along his buffalo friend’s back, just mooching along the roadside.  At other times there would be a little gang, three or four boys, three or four buffalo, just hanging out together.

Kerry and Rina elected to continue down the road, with Yang as their guide, but Pete and I went down the mountain track.   This was very challenging - steep and rocky and narrow.  Ker’s mother, also called Yang, came with us.  She walked mainly with me while Ker, all 4’8” of her, strode ahead with Pete.  Yang was even smaller; I felt like a giant.  She was wearing the most horrid little plastic sandals, like the little girls at the waterwheel, but she didn’t slip or slide on the rocks at all.  Neither, I must say, did I.  I bought, from an enterprising Hmong woman along the road, a bamboo pole with a sharp end, and this was invaluable for keeping my balance.  All was tickety boo until we were walking past a little mud house.  The ground there was completely flat and level, and my attention was drawn to some children, and some pigs, watching us from the narrow doorway.  Ooops, straight over into the mud, flat on my face… The others couldn’t believe that I had managed to come a cropper on the only level part of the track.  I looked a sight; mud and pigswill from head to toe.  There was a convenient babbling brook nearby so I took off my t-shirt to rinse off the worst of the dirt.  Didn’t really need to do a wring and FLICK action, it dried very quickly, we were SO hot!