Red Dao embroidery

While in Vietnam, Andrew and I had a great visit to Sapa, a region in the far northwest of Vietnam near the border with China. The highlight was trekking to local Red Dao (pronounced "zao") and Black Hmong villages. The first day we hiked from our guesthouse to our guide's home in Tauphin. Along the way, we learned about how the Red Zao weave hemp, hand dye hemp and silk using local indigo plants and imported plant dyes, and then embroider their clothing with elaborate patterns. As we all walked, the women with us spun hemp in their hands or embroidered cloth. After lunch, we arrived at Tauphin and were met by our guide's mother, sister, and daughter with a large basket of hand made embroidery in hand. The stuff was beautiful -- much more so than what I had seen in the market in Sapa -- so I proceeded to buy more than a few items. Our guide Sume then took us to her house where her family thought it would be great fun to dress me up like a Red Dao woman. You can see the results above -- in the group shot, Sume is on the left, I am next to Andrew, and Sume's mother is on the right. I didn't shrink on the trip -- I was bending down a little in the picture. The other pics are a close up of my sleeve and Sume's family walking ahead of us.

The following day, we headed off with Sume to a Black Hmong village. Andrew and I were suspicious that something odd was going on when a group of Black Hmong women kept peering at us throught the glass door of our guesthouse as we ate breakfast. Then we noted that the group of Black Hmong womem hiking with us along the way to their village was a lot larger than the group of Red Dao women the day before. The case was solved when after lunch I was descended on by a number of women with their embroidery, one of whom said "Yesterday you bought from Red Dao, today you buy from Black Hmong". Apparently I had developed a reputation as a buyer. They were persistant, but not too upset when I only bought one item -- I really had too much already.

Overall, I was impressed by how much better off these villages were compared to the villages Jeff and I visited in Laos -- nicer houses, handmade beautiful clothes, no malnourished kids. I imagine that tourism has brought in a lot of money for the villages because they are selling directly to tourists. I think the government is also a lot more helpful than in Laos -- we saw many well built schools and even a clinic in the villages we visited, all built by the government per Sume. She also told us that all the kids attend school for free until they are 15 and no one is illiterate -- a marked difference from the places I visited in Laos and Cambodia. Maybe, in the ideal world, the increasing amounts of ecotourism will help a little in Laos in Cambodia, but that certainly won't solve things without functional governments. In the meantime, am certainly glad for NGOs like one I talked about in my Cambodia post.