Alexander the Wanderer

07/21/2026

“THE HORSES & THE BABIES”
🎠🫏👶👼
There’s no such thing as child exploitation nor animal cruelty in SaPa, or for the rest of the world for that matter. Too young to be Miley-Cyrus-twerking in front of the crowds in SaPa City Center with your mom watching and waiting for people’s tip$$$, no problem! “Show me what you’ve got and I’ll give you a dollar!💵 “… pretty much is the slogan of this very sad, modern-day wide world. Well, on the flip side of the coin, what are you gonna do, right? Someone’s got to put food on the table (for the common man or family of today). It’s a miserable fact of life (or a necessary-evil for some) but you MUST DO what you NEED TO DO in order to survive.

On the lighter note, earlier today I met a very funny and cheerful Hmong woman woman (I call her LEE de Lam(a)). I may be misspelling it but “De Lam” means Love in Vietnamese. She’s selling hers and her mom’s embroidered Vietnamese fabrics in her souvenir shop today in downtown Sapa. She invited me to join her trekking tomorrow (which groups of people pay 5K VND for a 5-hour walking tour/trekking at the fields (rice-terraces) on the mountains of SaPa. I told her that I’m not doing any more tours as I have been on the road touring for quite a while now. And am not buying nor giving money to anybody as I’ve got so much garbage in my luggage (things you impulsively buy that you don’t necessarily need nor will ever use). She just laughed and kept her candid, blithe spirit and she always crack/laugh whenever I say: “IT’S TOO MUCH $H!T.🤣😊 I’ll meet her and 11 other people/group of trekkers tomorrow at around 8:45AM at the SaPa Stone Church. SaPa central has only 1 church so it’ll be easy for me to spot her/them there.

Sapa is in the mountains so it’s not as hot and humid unlike Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh so I recon the trek or hike can be a good exercise and would be nice to meet other travelers. On the other hand, a 5-hr hike seems to be such a long walk and if it’s going to be on a very steep slope climbing, I might bail out on that hiking ordeal at the 11th hour.🤣 Slight exercise is great but I have to watch out and listen to my not-so-23-year-old body for extreme exercise and heart palpitations as I might be under-estimating the mountain tracks or trail. We’ll see!🤞🫰😊
CIAO👋CACAO💩
👣

05/29/2026

Out on a Limb of a Santol Tree

05/23/2026