The dissertation, based on my two-year research and many subsequent visits, examines experiences of a group of Hmong girls who have left their villages to come to Sa Pa town, Lao Cai province, Northwestern Vietnam, to sell handicrafts and to work as tour guides. Many tourists have traveled thousands of kilometers, crossing mountains and oceans, to get to Sa Pa, a far greater physical distance than the six kilometers traveled by the Hmong girls to get to Sa Pa town from their little village of Lao Chai. For the girls, however, these six kilometers represent a much more significant distance, a bridge both short and never-ending between local and global worlds, the worlds of tradition and modernity. The dissertation traces the journey the Hmong girls have made since they first set foot in Sa Pa town for a purpose other than to participate in Sunday markets with their mothers and grandmothers. Whereas Hmong women of previous generations all married before the age of fifteen, had one baby after another, and lived a life of confinement in the village and of hard work tending lowland and upland fields and making hemp and indigo, the girls are enjoying completely different lives.