This is a piece I had in my end of semester creative writing folio which went surprisingly well. It remains a mystery to me why. However as you know, I am not above double usage so here you go. It is clearly non fiction although certainly not entirely the truth (a piece of truthiness, you might say). It had a ridiculously wanky title which I can't bring myself to reproduce here.

My father had come to visit me; he’d decided at the last possible moment that he would. Over the weekend, when I didn’t have to teach, we took the train up to the mountains, so different to the flat brown noise of Hanoi. Here there are picture postcard mountains reaching towards the sky, topped with thick, creamy clouds. Even here there are rice paddies though, the Hmong (and other hill tribes) carve steps into the sides of the mountain and dig channels to keep the seedlings irrigated. The rice paddies chime bright green against the deeper green of the steeper, unusable mountain tops.

The town of Sapa is losing its rustic charm. There are some pretty almost Swiss style guest houses and there’s the market, filled with vegetables and strange looking powdered substances. However, the thing most visitors to Sapa remember isn’t any of this; it’s the hordes of hill tribe girls who patrol the streets. They are dressed in their traditional clothes, heavily embroidered velvet tunics with lashings of silver jewelry. As we leave our guest house they pounce.

“Hello, what’s your name? Where are you from?” they trill, some venturing to grab an arm. They have learnt that unlike the Vietnamese who happily barter over everything and push past vendors a hundred times a day we westerners are hostages to our inbuilt politeness.
“Hello.” I offer, putting on my best ‘I am not a fool, and also I have places to be’ face. My father, enamored by the authenticity of it all, picks up where I left off.

“We’re from Australia.” he says.

“Oh Australia, the crocodile hunter, g’day mate!” says one of the older looking girls. Her English is unaccented, here learning English is the way to earn money and this is more incentive than my students back in Hanoi have. My father laughs mildly back at her and I push him up the road as the inevitable happens.

“You should buy some jewelry for your daughter.” the girl continues, shoving a collection of bangles, necklaces and earrings into our faces. My father looks imploringly at me.

“I already have enough, thank you.” I say, politely but firmly and I grab my father’s hand and pull him up the road. The girls spot another group of westerners and give up on us.

We wander up the slight incline of the main road, keeping our eyes averted from anyone wielding jewelry. Choosing a café, we are ushered to a table.

“You have to ignore them.” I say.

“It’s worse than in Hanoi, or Halong Bay.” My father replies with a shake of his head. He’s smiling though; in my family we celebrate this kind of thing. My parents met while traveling, they adore culture and they had quietly lobbied for me to take a ‘gap year’ while my friends’ parents pushed their children headlong into further study or work.
***
The next day we have booked to go on a two day walk in the mountains. Our guide shows up wearing the uniform of young men in this part of the world: well pressed, slightly flared dark slacks with a t-shirt and dress shoes. He collects us from the front desk of our guest house and like school children and we obediently follow him out. His name is Tam he tells us as we make our way down a steep and muddy track. We pass people working in the rice paddies, pulling out seemingly random chunks of the vegetation. They are mostly wearing their traditional dress and I wonder cynically if the owners of the guest houses in Sapa rush down early in the morning to make sure no one’s wearing any Nike t-shirts.

The set of huts we come to is obviously a well worn part of the tourist trail. There is a water powered mill, slowly grounding an improbably small amount of rice. There is a small child selling small embroidered bags. The hill tribes look so different to the ethnic Vietnamese. Their skin is darker, their hair more brown less back. This little girl has slightly curling hair and a large smudge of dirt on her cheek. My father buys a bag, the walking tour was very cheap and it’s probably financed from kickbacks. If we were to make a brave stand against the cute little girl holding bags and friendship bracelets it would be unlikely to make any difference. The sternly worded passage in the Lonely Plant guide which urges travelers to only buy from the shops in Sapa has yielded little response.

By the time we reach the homestay where we’ll be staying the night there are flecks of mud up the back of my legs and I have fallen down twice. For dinner we sit at a low table outside with the family who live in the house and Tam. The middle of the table is filled with plates piled with food there are spring rolls, vegetables cut into shapes and a variety of meat dishes with lots of garlic and onion, and of course the ever present potato chips. Halfway through the meal someone produces a drinking bottle filled with rice wine. I am caught between wanting to impress my father with my already well honed ability to handle rice wine and an equally childish desire to remain innocent in his eyes.
***
On the train ride back to Hanoi the carriage jolts along the track and I entertain thoughts of my immediate demise.

“I had a really good time,” my father says. “I was impressed that you kept up, with the hiking.” I realize he’s probably referencing the photo albums full of me at different ages looking morose and unimpressed by various holiday locals, sitting on park benches refusing to go any further.

“Good and yeah, I’m a grown up now.” I say, laughing at him. Of course, the ridiculous happiness I felt at the end of the well planed and executed trip said otherwise.