I have watched Sapa become busier every year. There are more hotels, more shops and more visitors walking through town in search of something to see or take home. Tourism has created opportunities, but when I think about its effects, I return to the young girls selling on the streets.
They come from ethnic minority villages in the hills around Sapa. Some are only six years old when they begin selling handicrafts and souvenirs. They spend their days approaching tourists, learning who might buy and how to persuade them. Boys from the same villages usually remain at home, helping their families and working in the fields.
Visitors may see the girls as a colourful and charming part of Sapa. I see children who are separated from their parents for much of the day and surrounded mainly by other girls doing the same work. As selling becomes normal, school becomes less important.
Some girls begin selling at six, but by fifteen they are already considered too old to attract the same attention from tourists.
Age shapes the whole experience. Small children are noticed. Tourists speak with them, photograph them and buy their bracelets or embroidery. As the girls become teenagers, sales become harder. Some return to their families and some marry, but by then they may have missed years of education that were available to them.
This is one of tourism’s contradictions. A visitor buys from a child believing the money will help her family—and it may. Yet that same purchase rewards another day on the street instead of a day in the classroom.
Sapa has also become more commercial. Prices have risen, selling has become more persistent and minority communities have learned business practices that were less common in village life. Their customs have not disappeared, but those customs now compete with a daily economy organised around visitors and cash.
The money from one bracelet is real, but so is the education lost when selling it becomes more attractive than attending school.
I do not blame every tourist. Visitors often do not understand what their choices encourage. They may also enter a religious place in shorts or a vest without intending to offend anyone. The problem is frequently a lack of knowledge rather than deliberate disrespect.
My request is therefore not complicated. Learn something about the community before arriving. Respect the places you enter and recognise that the people selling souvenirs are not part of the scenery.
When a very young girl approaches with handicrafts in her hands, look beyond the sale. Ask yourself what else she might have been doing that day and whether helping her should mean buying from her directly.
Sapa is becoming busier and more prosperous, but for some girls childhood is becoming shorter—and the income they earn today may reduce the choices available to them tomorrow.