Summer in Vietnam

ONCE I saw a late model 300 (2000 on up year)

that is in 14 summers in Vietnam the only Mopar

Ho Chi Minh City had a Maserati dealership with 2 cars in it

no parts or service dept. just 2 cars

price tag on it was in the billions in the local currency

it was nearly 400,000.00 dollars

good luck finding a place to get it going fast unless it was at the airport runway

Japanese, Korean and Chinese rule here........
 
That was a lot of fun! Thanks for posting all the pics.
The butterfly was pretty.
Quite the river crossing.
I see some hemp growing. I am curious. They use the hemp for clothing obviously but does anyone grow the other form? I assume they are the same as they both have the same fibers.
What was the purpose of the sacrifice? Health? Other reasons?
Ban is a beautiful young lady.
All the jewelry is very interesting. I see your family has a specific type of tribal necklace ware that no one else uses.
The silver tool is really cool. Are they smelting raw ore's to get the silver or purchasing raw silver and making their jewelry?
The one lady at the end, wearing the LV shirt has lapis lazuli stones on here necklace. I did not see many ladies with stones. Is this a local stone to yal?
Really, that was a fun walk through a different type of living.

To me as an American, the dirt floors are the oddest thing I see. And no restrooms. But we all lived like that 100 plus years ago, so not that foreign.
 
Hemp is for clothing. If you try and grow dope here it gets pollen from the hemp and is worthless.
PLUS it is not worth going to jail here. Some Westerners here have grown it in enclosures and have
seen a big ball of hash that came over the border from China (an hour from here). That was years ago.
If you smoke the buds of hemp all you get is a sore throat. There is zero drug value to it.

Necklaces, bracelets are silver. This summer we brought $763.00 worth of it for her brothers to make us
jewelry. If it was the shaman thing then yes the animals are killed, cooked and eaten as part of it.

The Hmong do not use stones for anything.

Hemp drying in the 1st picture and the last pics a woman pedaling a contraption to wind the hemp thread

7-14-2010 Sin Chai, Vietnam: Hemp & Indigo
Batik on hemp fiber using a charcoal fire to melt the wax
Batik 9-2015, Vendors Sapa, Vietnam
 
Very interesting how the patterns are created.
I assume they would then dye the product the main color and melt the bees was out of the fabric to then dye the bright colors for the patterns.
Quite the intricate way of doing it.
Are they pressing the hemp stalks first, then stripping little bits off of the stalk length wise and stringing those strips onto the machine with the bicycle wheel?
 
NOTE: woman with hands dyed with indigo, stalks of dried hemp in 2 bundles, herbal medicine,
Sapa Saturday night, woman with long strings of beans that we bought and cooked from her
garden, May and two of her sisters, owner of the hotel and May in the kitchen and dinner of
beans, rice, tofu, some greens, a chili dish from one of the Dzao woman at the market, squash,
and cucumber.

Google Photos
 
marty mopar said:
Well I think my wife's family size wise might be the winner:

when her mother died at the age of 93 she had 54 grandchildren

her mother had 13 kids

My wife had no kids and one of her sisters had zero and 3 died before the age of 8

one of my wife's sisters had 13 kids

So the rest were cranking out babies until menopause hit. Some had a baby every year.

Diapers nope ...kids running around on the dirt floor crapping everywhere.

I have a picture of my wife's mother and one of her sisters...the 2 of them had 25 kids

When I tell them I had a vasectomy years ago they think they cut the whole thing off....
Click to expand...
Well that is the adult kids of just one brother. Being Philipino you know there are more lurking in the background. Oh God are they. Only a few days ago another phone call for a money handout from one of her cousins where cousins are a dime a dozen. Of course, my wife turned her down like she turns them all down other that something for her mother and favorite niece in the above picture.

I. myself would love to see Vietnam, as I date a few women in the '80s who had escaped the country at the end of the war as kids. Yet, if we are to fly towards Asia that means stopping in the Philippines for my wife to see those family members. No way she would go past them to another country only. I could do without meeting ALL of them since there are always reasons and I get bored out in the province.
 

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Fansipan: the mountain is 3,147.3 metres (10,326 ft). It is the highest mountain in the Indochinese Peninsula (comprising Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), This is the mountain pictured from the hotel.....the peak is in the last few pictures. Most of the time it is covered in clouds.

Lots of stuff is dried on the sidewalks when the sun is out. Medicinal stuff especially. Woman with motorbike loaded with cardboard to recycle. Flimsy construction on a building either for support or for scaffolding. Mr. Clutter has a repair shop half on the sidewalk. Our lunch at the market we brought from the hotel.

The Dzao women I have never seen before, and I have spent thousands of hours over the 13 years I have been here. The other Dzao in the pictures near the end with the red scarfs on their heads are the locals. They say it is rare to see them here. The have black teeth like the Lu people. They were shopping not selling anything. There were 8 of them. I was so happy to see another minority here.

Fansipan, Drying Food on the Sidewalk, Recycling, Scaffolding, New Dzao People 6-12-2023
 
There is the best noodle place we have ever eaten at just down the street from the hotel.
The place is usually mobbed with a load of motorbikes parked outside, dishes washed on the sidewalk,
handwritten menu on the wall, some pork on the BBQ, 2 gigantic vats of noodles cooking, loads of
greens on the table to add into it, huge bowls of noodles for 30,000 VND a bowl = 1.27 dollars.

3 year old Dzao girl at the market learning to embroider, baby on the back of a Hmong mother, motorbikes
parked at the supermarket outnumber the cars, May and Ly in the hotel kitchen, food.. fog, insane 3rd world
wiring and 2 Dzao sisters that are the neighbors in the market.

https://photos.google.com/u/1/share/AF1QipOOpD6Atoif7POREqX0K96clI1gmB-olhUh1O3cVITXteNgpVs0_x0IOlBnHRSEUQ?key=QmtsVVFMOUhidUJ6WmdGYjhuN3pfazhrTllpb3N3&hl=en
 
Hotpot: The owners of the hotel made us a hotpot dinner after I asked them if they could do it. Friday night they were ready.
A gas cylinder stove was placed on the table and Ly had all the ingredients set out. They were put in one at a time and then dished out into a small bowl. There were maybe 8 different things that went into the dinner. We were bloated by the time we were done.
Only thing that was annoying was the meat that was all on the bone in 2 inch pieces that she chopped up. Impossible to eat with
chopsticks and lots of fat...other than that it was great. Lots of dry spices and fresh green ones too. Ly refused to take any money from us for it.



Hot Pot Dinner at Hotel Sapa, Vietnam June 16, 2023

Vendors and hemp: Weekends at the market lots of hemp for sale. The last 4 pictures show the frenzy when skirt and fabric sellers show up with huge bags of stuff from villages hours away from here.

The Saturday Sapa, Vietnam Market: Vendors, Hemp 6-17-2023



Crammed to the ceiling store: across from the market May went shopping for a thermos and a tea kettle. The pictures do not do justice for the way things are jammed into and onto shelves. When you do not have lots of space you dogpile everything.

Super Crammed & Cluttered Store Sapa, Vietnam June 2023
 
Last edited:
I agree! Thanks for the pictures and exposure.
Seems like an interesting place to go.

I don't see many pictures of men. Are they all out in the rice fields? Seriously, where are they?
 
Well the women are the ones making and selling textiles...the men are at home working on the homes, fields, taking care of the kids
and taking money from foreigners at gunpoint...OK the last one is bogus.
 
May and I spent 2 days at her brother's house in Lao Chai. This is an hour or more walking from Sapa down the valley. We took a taxi as it was pouring rain. Then walked half an hour to the house as no car could get into that area. The shaman was there (a woman...usually a male..2nd time for me to see a woman doing it). She had an altar on the wall of the main room. A small table
had incense, etc. on it.

She spent a few hours banging a gong and tossing buffalo horns on the floor. Chanting the whole time..and really loud. A pig was selected from the pen and a rooster. Throats slit and blood collected for a dish to eat later. Both were dropped into boiling water and the feathers and the hair were removed from both. Then they were cut open and the guts were cleaned. Both chopped up and boiled. I did not eat any of it as the meat was boiled and full of fat. I passed on the guts too. I've seen all of this many times in the past so none of it was new to me.

There are 2 homes: the finished one is her brother's house and the one above it is his son's house. Recently a flood came through due to a new road the Vietnamese put in above the houses. It took out a fridge, washing machine and some other stuff plus ****** up the homes. They called the authorities who visited and said they might get some money from it. If that happens I will cut off my nuts and post pictures. I have given them 2,000 dollars and they have bought a ton of bricks (bags and loose bricks in the center of the unfinished house). While I was there 2 more brick walls went up. The bags of bricks have to be carried in by a motorbike for a good distance away as the road for a truck does not come near the house.

They tell me they are going to build another house between the two. Why? Because every 3 minutes there is another baby as the son's are banging out new ones daily. I walked around to see what the **** is happening with the flood situation. Didn't see much. So I decided to go back to Sapa a different way to see what was above the homes where the river had come in.

I started out going up the valley above the house. BINGO! As far as I could see was a vast area of rock, mud and some bulldozed roads that were eaten away by rainfall. No trees, no plants just a giant wasteland. It took me half an hour of wandering into dead ends and huge gulleys to get to the main highway to head back to town. As I got closer to the culprits there were huge bulldozers and other machinery parked. Nobdy around...and all I could think of is monkeyrwrenching all of it. I kept going eventually nearing the highway to town. A few workers about and they ignored me with my backpack on. Then more workers and finally the unfinished blue mess along the highway with "Delta Group" on it...I assume it will be a hotel. I googled Delta Group and they are a monster company.

The problem is the next big storm that comes through will result in the same mess or worse no matter how many sandbags they put up.

Area above unfinished house (The Cluster ****: Courtesy of the Delta Group Construction Company) Lao Chai, Vietnam June 2023

in the 1st picture is the white house on the right (unfinished), in the center is brother's house and to the left the large house is a guesthouse that is not the property of the family. 2nd picture I have hiked up higher and as you can see is more wasteland. 3rd pic is the blue unfinished hotel on the main highway and the last is the entry gate to the construction from the main highway.

Shaman:

Shaman at May's Brother's House, Lao Chai Village, Vietnam 6-19-2023

lots of paper is cut and put on the pig and chicken and elsewhere....it is all burned.

Unfinished house:

Unfinished House (The money pit) next to Brother Yee's Home Lao Chai, Vietnam June 2023

Brother Yee's house (note the 4 water buffalo in the pen):

Brother Yee's House: The Shaman Lao Chai, Vietnam 6-19-2023



Shaman: Killing the Chicken & the Pig, Lao Chai Village Vietnam 6-19-2023

Shaman: Killing the Chicken & the Pig, Lao Chai Village Vietnam 6-19-2023

Indigo: Brother Yee's House. Lao Chai, Vietnam 6-19-2023 Indigo is a plant and when added to ash produces a potent dye used on hemp which is grown here also.

Indigo: Brother Yee's House. Lao Chai, Vietnam 6-19-2023
 
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