My Friend Son, Sa Pa, Vietnam December 2008
Dec. 28, 2007 Every once in a while, when you're on the road, you meet someone with whom, despite the vast differences in your backgrounds, cultures, and lives, and the lack of a shared language, you connect on a level that transcends all of these superficialities: heart to heart. So it was with Son, a wiry little Black Hmong woman in Sa Pa, northern Vietnam, who I met in the typical way that most foreigners meet the Hmong – she was one of several Hmong women tagging along after us as we walked through the Sa Pa market, trying to sell us handcrafts. The Hmong are excellent business people who have adapted well to foreign tourism. It was Hmong women who were smuggling the Thai rice and Red Bull drinks on our bus ride from Laos into Vietnam. They are everywhere in Sa Pa, the tourist mecca of northern Vietnam. No tourist there walks alone; they are always accompanied by a gaggle of Hmong women, sometimes literally hanging off their coat tails, pleading: “Buy from me! Buy from me!” We ...