Women in Sapa carry a lot at once, she explains: being a good wife, helping support the family's income, and holding on to the traditions, values, and family life that keep the community together. In her eyes, that makes women and men equal, even if the work looks different.
The everyday split is clear enough — women handle the housework, the cooking, raising the children, and usually a side income too, sewing or making handicrafts and souvenirs to sell. Men take on the harder physical labour, working the rice fields. But the equality only runs one direction, she notes: a woman can step into a man's work if she has to, covering everything if he falls sick. A man, on the other hand, generally wouldn't know where to begin with hers.
Tourism has nudged some things forward. There are more cultural performances now — traditional music and dance shows that didn't used to happen. Religion hasn't shifted; not many people here are religious to begin with, and those who are tend to be Catholic or Buddhist. Social relations between people have stayed largely the same, just a little more open than before.
“If a man gets sick, his wife can replace him at everything. A man would not know where to start on hers.”
Food has changed too, partly because tourists want dishes different from what the community normally eats, and partly because there are simply more people who need feeding. Clothing has kept its traditional style but grown more colourful, with more detail in the fabric than before.
She believes tourism can be a genuinely good thing for Sapa, but only if it's steered rather than left alone. Right now, she says, there's almost no control — people build what they want, wherever they want — and it's reshaped the town in ways that aren't all for the better. What she hopes to see next isn't less tourism, but a fairer share of what it brings: more of the benefit reaching the women and the minority communities who are doing much of the work behind it.