Back in Sapa that night we had our biggest group yet for dinner – Ya, back from trekking, joined me, Vi, My and Chu.  As we ate, Vi, in her subtle, low-key way, guided the group towards what seemed like the perfect plan for the next day.  Of the six girls, only My had been to a nearby city called Lai Chau, about 150km away from Sapa, over the highest mountain pass in Vietnam.  The girls had always wanted to go to the market there, and they thought it would be a good way for me to see more of the surrounding area.  For just $25 I could hire a driver to take all of us there in a minivan, leaving in the morning and returning in the afternoon.  Done and done!

Little did I know I just lit the fuse on a powder keg of teenage girl drama…

The morning started out innocently enough.  Vi had arranged the minivan and it showed up around 7:15am.  Ge’s husband didn’t think it was a good idea for her to join us because their baby was still so young, but she decided to join us anyway, along with her baby and her younger sister Chu (who I’ll call Little Chu to avoid confusion with the original Chu).  So we had nine people in our group:  the driver, me, Vi, Ge, Ge’s baby, My, Little Chu, Ya, and Chu.  (Chang was still leading a trek and couldn’t join us.)  The girls talked about how excited they were to see Lai Chau for the first time, and off we went.

“I never meet her,” Ge said.

“Wait, you’ve never met your half-sister?”

“No, never meet. This first time,” Ge confirmed.

Wow! Apparently they’d never been very far along this particular road before. Ge spoke to her half-sister on the phone sometimes, but that was it. So we stopped next to a row of houses and Ge, My, and Little Chu saw their half-sister for the first time. They didn’t hug, and My and Little Chu hardly made eye contact. Ge’s half-sister spent about a minute making goo-goo noises at Ge’s baby, and then Ge said they were ready to go.

“That’s it!?” I asked. “Don’t you want more time?” Nope, they were ready to move on. I insisted on a quick photo and then we hit the road again.

Chang and I planned to meet when she got back from trekking, which was supposed to be around 4pm that afternoon.  But when we returned from Lai Chau around 3pm, Ya – Chang’s best friend and roommate – told me that Chang was still trekking and wouldn’t be back in Sapa at all that day.  So I thought our plans were off, but either Ya was wrong or I misunderstood.

By this time most of the others had joined us, too – Vi, Ge, My and Little Chu, in addition to Chu.  Ya still felt sick from the car ride and decided not to have dinner.  Chu started repeating, “I hungry!” and demanded to leave for dinner right away.  She said she wanted to go to a restaurant she knew that served pancakes, and the rest of the girls advised me to do whatever Chu wanted because she’s the pickiest.

I told Chu I wanted to call Chang first, which inadvertently dug me in deeper.  Chu started to pout – why did I care more about Chang when Chu had been hanging out with me for four straight days and Chang had hardly even seen me?  I told Chu I felt bad about the misunderstanding with Chang and just wanted to try to talk her into joining us for dinner.

Vi called Chang on her cell phone and handed it to me.  I explained my mistake to Chang and she said no problem, but she was tired and didn’t want to meet us for dinner.  Vi, knowing that Chang’s feelings were still hurt, took the phone from me and somehow talked Chang into joining us, but it took a while and Chu’s pout intensified every minute.

As we waited for Chang we made plans to hike up a nearby mountain the next day.  Ge said her husband could join us if we waited until 2:30pm to leave, which sounded good to me.  Eventually Chang walked up and we were finally ready for dinner.  By this time Chu was genuinely upset and refused to pick a restaurant.  So Ge made a quick call on her cell phone and found someone who knew of a restaurant nearby that served pancakes.  I thought I was in the home stretch…

On the way to the restaurant I tried to give Chang the same $5 I’d given everyone else earlier, but Chang refused, saying she shouldn’t get it because she didn’t go to Lai Chau.  I said it was important to me for everyone to have the same thing, regardless of who went to Lai Chau, and that it would make me happy if she’d take it.  Still no luck, but once again Vi stepped in and seemed to smooth things over.  But suddenly, right after most of the girls had walked in the restaurant, Vi looked upset and told me, “I go now.”

“What?” I said, confused.  “But Vi, we’re just about to have dinner.  You don’t want to have dinner with us?”  Vi had always been the solid, no-drama rock of the group, and now she looked like she was about to cry.

“I not feel good,” she said.  I told her I was sorry and asked what time she wanted to meet tomorrow, my last day in Sapa.  “I not meet you tomorrow,” she said.

Whoa!  What happened?  I would feel terrible if I’d done something to upset Vi.  So there we were, standing in the doorway of the restaurant while Chu yelled, “I hungry!” from inside and two waiters watched us with strange looks on their faces – amusement mixed with concern that the whole thing might blow up and cost them six customers.

At that point a 30-something tourist who looked American or European walked up to me and asked, “How’s the food here?”  Without making eye contact I told him I hadn’t eaten yet and then went back to trying to convince Vi to stay for dinner (or at least figure out what was going on).  Vi was almost crying and talking so fast I couldn’t understand a word.

From the corner of my eye I noticed that the tourist was still standing there and it finally dawned on me that he must have thought this whole scene looked sketchy.  “What’s going on here?” he asked.  Yep, he was in Good Samaritan mode.

I had to laugh.  “It’s a long story,” was the best answer I could give him.  I respected the fact that this guy was looking out for what he thought was a Hmong girl in distress (despite the fact that the Hmong men, who frequently walk around with machetes and crossbows, seem more than capable of taking care of their own), but I was irritated by his intrusion and briefly considered saying, “I’m the point man for an international sex slavery syndicate and this ungrateful little troublemaker is acting up.”  That probably would have been more believable to him than, “These girls are like my nieces.”

Eventually Vi’s bunched-up half-sentences confused the Good Samaritan as much as they confused me and he wandered away.  But I couldn’t turn things around with Vi.  She said again that she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to meet me tomorrow, and then she ran off.  Back in the restaurant the other girls seemed entertained by the scene with Vi, except for Chu who whimpered, “I so hungry I die.”

“You don’t have to wait any longer,” I told Chu.  “Pancakes for everyone.”  We started eating and Chu’s cell phone rang.  She handed it to me and said, “Talk to Vi.”

“Vi, are you OK?” I asked.  Vi spoke for several minutes straight but I only caught short phrases like “I sorry” and “I sad.”  She sounded really upset but when she hung up I was no closer to understanding what had happened.  Five minutes later Chu got a text message on her phone and showed it to me:  “Ror I sorry!”

At the end of dinner Chu’s phone rang one more time.  She answered it, talked in Hmong for about a minute, and then said, “Vi meet you tomorrow morning 8:00.”

Ge laughed and said Vi would be back to normal tomorrow.  And sure enough, she was.

During my first visit, Ge was the one who frequently had her feelings hurt and responded with some pretty impressive pouts.  I don’t know what changed – maybe getting married, maybe being a mom, maybe getting older – but this time Ge was happy and good-natured the entire time.  Ge explained that Vi’s stomach was genuinely bothering her and then on top of that she’d butted heads with Chang over the way Chang handled dinner and the gift tonight.  Then she clashed with Ge because she thought Ge shouldn’t have invited her husband to hike to the mountain with us (I had to buy a ticket for everyone who goes on the hike; the tickets are only about $1/each but Vi thought it wasn’t right for me to pay for so many).  So Ge’s theory was that 1) Vi’s stomach really did hurt, 2) Vi thought the other girls were mad at her, and therefore, 3) Vi thought it would be best to remove herself from the whole situation so that everyone else could enjoy themselves.

Talk about being out of my depth.  One female alone is a total mystery to me.  The dynamics of a group of six girls, further complicated by differences in language, culture, and age, are so far beyond my limited comprehension that I might as well have been a cow trying to figure out why a particle accelerator has stopped working.  I’m exhausted again just writing about it.