so where've you been? 11 Sa Pa, northern Vietnamese / China border

just checking in to say I'm alive here.

I'm in sa pa, 2km from the border with China. It's cold and misty and mountainous - really stunningly beautiful. The hilltribe people here are so alien looking to western eyes - they dye their teeth black to look more beautiful, the women shave some of the hair from their heads, then add hemp coils dyed with indigo and a little tin on top then add a scarf in a bright tartan pattern, and the colour of the scarf denotes what tribe they're in. I'm sat under a blanket I bought off a tribeswoman now - I have no use for a blanket, specially not as colourful and strange smelling as this one, but these old ladies are killer saleswomen, and I rarely get through a day without buying something. Yesterday I was off the beaten track visiting tribespeople's houses - they were in such beautiful valleys, surrounded by rice paddies and water buffalo, and red dirt - and they had next to nothing - dirt floors, walls supported by green glass bottles, and newspapers, dirt floors, big campfires and a dish for cooking rice wine. I helped grind some rice to make rice cakes - it was harder than it looked, I definitely wasn't as good as the old lady who usually does it. The one thing every house had was a tv and dvd player, though, so I'm not sure how long the idyll will last.