High up in the mountains of North East Vietnam you will find the people of Sa Pa, a remote cultural village surviving on rice crops and a community producing handmade goods to sell to the thousands of tourists that visit each year.
Walking through the small villages in and around Sa Pa there will always be a procession of ladies and young children following you, urging you to buy their hand-made bracelets, trinkets and bags. With seemingly probing questions from the children such as ‘What your name?’ ‘Where you fram?’ ‘How ole are you?’, at first you may be forgiven to think they have a reasonable understanding of English. However, after giving answers and maybe asking a question yourself, you quickly realise that their questions are just phrases that the children are taught to say to the tourists. Of course the older children and ladies are quite entrepreneurial and realise English is the key to more sales and they seem to manage quite well.
Should you choose to make a purchase from one child, then you will be probed with different questions from the others ‘Why you buy fram her no fram me?’. Really it is quite charming up until the point where you have been walking around for a couple of hours and you are still being followed. Non-the less the people of Sa Pa are friendly and always have a smile making your time enjoyable and relaxing.
