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Flashback: Sapa – Rice Wine & Green Peaches

June 8th, 2009

Plums, Peaches

Plums and Peaches in Sapa Market

Sapa, Vietnam – Sapa is a funny little place. A town of tourists with hill tribe people mixing in selling their wares, and yet you can find bright spots of the town’s uniqueness. The market is like many you’ll see through Southeast Asia selling mangosteens and lychees, rambutan, ginger, garlic, galangal. The greens are more local and the bottles of orange alcohol holding upright serpents aren’t ubiquitious in Thailand as they are here.

One of the unfamiliar familiars for me in Lao Cai were the green peaches. Sold out of large flat baskets on the street, fuzzy and firm. I rinsed and rubbed off the peach fuzz as I used to do with the peaches from my parents’ yard. Some Vietnamese just peel off the skin. I can’t say I’ve ever had a green peach in the US, but the ones I had here were crisp and sweet.

Another familiar unfamiliar was the Hmong Sisters Bar, a normal bar with a pool table, expats, locals and a few tourists thrown in the mix, run by the husky-voiced Hung. Then there is the surprising sight of a few young Hmong women in full traditional dress working the pool table, chatting on cell phones and elbowing other regulars. I suppose I expected the hill tribe people to be frozen in time, but there they were every night, dressed from the past, engaging in the present. What else would they do?

Sometimes it was barbecue after the bar. Late at night, barbecue vendors set up shop on the steep slope on the south side of the town square. There you can choose from an array of grilled meats and even continue drinking with some homemade rice wine served out of plastic water bottles (which never turns out to be a good idea the next day). By this point in the night, you’ve seen the other side of Sapa.
Sapa Market
Tue Tinh & Cau May

Hmong Sisters Bar
Muong Hoa

Late Night Barbecue
Southside of Town Square

Sapa market