The North Face or The North Fake?

I didn't know that The North Face brand was manufactured in Vietnam until I began this month-long Asian adventure.  I also didn't know until I met up with friends in Bangkok that had just been in Vietnam that North Face gear can be purchased very cheaply in Vietnam.  So while in Sapa, I bought both a backpack and a Gore-Tex rain coat complete with a zip-in fleece for next to nothing.  However, I heard conflicting reports on the gear from various sources throughout the trip.  These are the three things that I was told:

1.  North Face gear sold in Vietnam is the real deal - it's just cheap because it's manufactured in-country.
2.  North Face gear sold in Vietnam is the real deal - but what you can find is only sold in Vietnam because it has a defect or few.
3.  It's all counterfeit crap from China.

Hmmm.   Did I buy something real (albeit possibly imperfect) or did I just pad some Chinese pockets and end up with something that will fall apart and/or leave me soaking wet in my moment of need?  I gave the once-over to the backpack first.  All the zippers worked, the straps worked, and the stitching, fabric, and straps seemed sturdy enough.  The only flaw I found was with the rain cover, which didn't seem to fit over the backpack very well.  Well, shoot, if that's the only defect I can find, then I can live with that.  I paid $9 for that pack.

I picked over the jacket next.  Zippers work ok?  Yep.  Snaps actually close?  Sure do.  Seams strong enough?  They survived a frantic flailing-fest around the room, which seemed like a legitimate test to me.   But was it waterproof?  I didn't have it with me during any of the monsoon rains we got caught in throughout the trip, and there is no such thing as monsoon season in the US (I'm not going to wait for a chance hurricane to come through for me to not only test the jacket, but test my ability to not get blown down the street).  So I came up with an alternative - the shower.

Yes, I donned the jacket and jumped in the shower.  What, do you have a better idea?

Well, throw me down and call me Sally.  It's waterproof!  Maybe it really is made of Gore-Tex, after all. So after my Super Much Thorough and Scientifically Proven test, I have concluded that the truth is....  #2.  Real but defective.  I can easily live with that.  Now - who wants to go camping?

Update:  check out what happened to my North Face backpack here.

Sapa Part 1: Oh my Buddha!

Dan and I had a hilarious guide named Kong (well, really it's Cuong, but I like using "Kong") for our weekend trip hiking through the mountains of northern Vietnam outside of Sapa.  Instead of exclaiming "Oh my God!", Kong would yell instead, "Oh my Buddha!" which I promptly stole started using myself.  Kong was from one of the hill tribes in northern Thailand, and he spoke an amazing array of languages - Tay, Black Hmong, Vietnamese, Spanish, English, and likely others, too.  Kong was a riot, but I'll have to tell more about him later.  In fact, so much happened during our epic weekend in Sapa - there was moonshine, chicken attacks, amazing food, and late-night singing, and more - that I'm going to have to break this up into numerous posts.  But before I get to the wacky stuff, first a little introduction to this place:

There are about 54 ethnic minority hill tribe groups in the mountains of northern Vietnam.  The area they live in is beautiful but makes for a very harsh life.  The mountains here are glorious - sweeping mountain peaks, entire mountainsides terraced out for rice paddies, small villiages, waterfalls freakin' everywhere, corn fields, and grazing buffalo.  If you come to Sapa and say, "Meh", then you are not human.  Turn in your Homo Sapien card and go back to Mars.

The hill tribe women do all the work around here.  They work in the fields, harvest corn and rice, make clothing from hemp and dye and embroider it, make (and embroider) handicrafts for sale, have lots and LOTS of babies, and they have to walk up and down steep mountain trails day in and day out to make all this work.  I don't know what the men do because we hardly saw any.  But according to our guide, the men are lazy bums that sit around and get drunk off the rice wine that their wives have made for them.  Maybe they help plant rice or something, too...

Black H'mong women and their baskets 'o stuff

The two tribes that we encountered the most were Black H'mong and Red Dzao.  Each tribe has it's own traditional clothing, and it was beautifully refreshing to realize that the hill tribes do indeed wear their traditional clothing on a daily basis and not just for tourists (lederhosen, anyone?).  Most of the clothes sport very detailed and colorful embroidery work that the women do by hand.  The Black H'mong also wear clothing made from hemp and dyed with indigo.  And then there are their shoes.  All the women that we saw were wearing sandals.  I'm not talking about Keens or Chacos or anything tough and rugged.  I'm talking cheap, plastic slip-on shower shoes that you can probably get for $10 at Wal-Mart.  These women walk every day up and down the mountains on narrow, technical, rocky, muddy trails in dadgum shower shoes.  Did I mention that most of them haul large baskets of hand-crafted goods or food on their backs?  Or have babies strapped to their backsides?  Yeah.  Showoffs.



One of the Black H'mong women that joined us for a nice 6-hour trek

Dan and I were both pretty humbled by these women trotting up and down steep mountains in plastic flip-flops with babies and corn and such on their backs.  Next up:  stories from the trail and our homestay with one of the hill tribe families!