We arrived in Sapa
We arrived in Sapa at about 7:30 in the morning, after the night train and an hour long bus ride. Just the two of us for the first time in a while. We left the British boys in Hanoi and will meet up with them in a couple days in Laos and Maryse was left in Halong Bay to go rock climbing for a week or so before continuing on. I was actually pretty sad to leave her. She’s been traveling with us for a while and she is a pretty cool girl. But it is nice to be just the two of us again for a bit. We can be brutally honest, fart in the room, and all that stuff without company around to criticize.
So anyway, we got to Sapa and checked into the Pinocchio Hotel. Our room was on the fifth floor and had quite the view from the balcony. Huge lush green mountains. Dalat was a nice mountain town, but after seeing this it doesn’t quite compare. This place was equally as beautiful as Halong Bay, but it couldn’t have been more different. Sapa is situated right in the center of many small tribal villages, and is the location of their market, church, and modern needs (hospital, post office, etc.). The views everywhere you look are absolutely magnificent and the scenery and vistas is one of the main attractions for tourists to come here.
The city itself isn’t too much to talk about. The instant you leave your hotel and walk around on the streets you are confronted by a pack of about ten women of the Red Dzao tribe. They surround you and pretend they are just interested in being friendly, they ask your name, how old you are, where you’re from, and so on. After this they follow you around and act as a tour guide for about ten minutes. Then they bring up the fact that they happen to have a backpack full of hand sewn bags, purses, wallets, hats, shirts, and whatever else you could want. After the fifth time this happens you know it is coming and try to persuade them that they are wasting their time from the start, but this is of no use, so wherever you go in Sapa you are followed by a gang of women dressed in traditional village garb with a backpack full of goods to try and sell you.
This annoying fact aside, the town is a nice little mountain town, the market is pretty exciting, and it is overall pretty cheap. Our hotel room was $6 each, complete with all the amenities you could ask for. Meals were all about $1.50. It rained pretty heavily in the morning, so we hung out at the hotel, did some skyping, got some breakfast, and planned out our next few moves on the trip. You’ll find out about those as we go, so no need to divulge all the details now. It stopped raining around 11, and we got a motorbike ($6 for the day and about $5 for gas) to go explore. This was a far cheaper option than the $13 each tours available through most travel companies.
First stop was the silver waterfall. It was only about 20 km away, but it took us quite a while to get there. Between the windy mountain roads and the beautiful views we stopped to take pictures of, we had a nice hour long ride to the waterfall. We were on a curvy one lane road, barely big enough for a car to drive on. Below us was a valley with a gently flowing river, and on either side tiered rice paddies had been dug into the mountain side and were farmed by the local tribes. The mountains themselves would have been plenty beautiful enough, but the farms dug into the side of them added another whole element. Rice only takes about a month to grow, so the different paddies are all in different stages of development. Some are just filled with water, others have little grains of rice poking through, and others are completely bright green, ready to be harvested. The contrast makes for a great view, and of course you have beautiful mountains in the background to go with it.
We drove through this to the waterfall, which we were able to climb up half way. This is by far the biggest waterfall we have seen thus far and it was quite impressive. I won’t say too much and just let you look at the pictures, but it was a nice climb. This is just one of many waterfalls dotting the mountainsides, also the largest.
After the waterfall, we continued our ride to Ta Phin village, populated by the Red Dzao and eH’mong tribes. When we arrived at the village we were accompanied by a few women who walked us around, gave us a tour, and took us to their home for a cup of tea and a visit with their children. All very nice people, a nice bowl of tea, and some cute kids. Then came the “will you buy something from me” part of things. We were expecting it however and this money went to actual tribal people and a good cause. Aly bought a pair of earrings, and I bought a wall hanging thing. I’m not sure I really want it, but it was $5 and hopefully the money is going to a good place. It sure seemed like it was at the time. The village wasn’t much to look at, and didn’t seem too tribal or primitive in anyway.
It just seemed like a poor village, similar to many others we’ve seen so far in this part of the world. We were able to get up close and personal with the land however, walking through rice paddies, seeing how they were constructed, watching the men plow the fields with water buffalo while their child is riding on its back. The terraces are literally hacked out of the hillside, given a small lip on the edge to contain the rainwater, and a small hole is put into the lip of each to allow for a drainage system. Each terrace drains into the next very slowly so that each layer holds enough water for the rice, before it drains into the river at the bottom of the valley. Quite an intelligent system actually, one that has been in place for many, many years.
After this we got back on the bike and headed home. The route home was along a street barely big enough for two motorbikes to pass each other, no cars were coming down this bad boy. It was dirt with a little bit of gravel strewn in here and there. Probably not the best road to be traveling down for someone driving a motorbike for the fourth or fifth time, but we took it very slowly to enjoy the scenery anyway, and we made it A okay. I can’t say enough about how beautiful this place was, so I’ll stop and let the pictures do the talking. Quite the week going from Halong Bay to here. We got back to the hostel and headed for the post office. We sent home some stuff, including my suit and gold sneaks. I sent my stuff by boat, so it’ll be there in 3 months hopefully. We then went and got some dinner, an Italian restaurant. We’d eaten enough pho in the past few days to last us a life time, so we mixed it up a bit and enjoyed some Western food.
After dinner we went and got a massage. It was $6 for a full hour, so its hard to say no to that. After the massage my body didn’t feel too much better however. In fact, I felt like a man mounted me and beat the hell out of me for an hour, without lotion if you must know. It was constant chopping and slapping and pounding and very little rubbing and relaxation. Also, apparently half of my body consists of my beard and moustache, because I’m pretty sure this is where half of the hour was spent. The back is not important in a massage, but the moustache…how important is that. A lesson learned about massage places, but they were very nice, so we told them they did a good job and paid our $6 and headed home for bed…once again we had an early morning ahead of us.
We woke up to catch a 7:30 bus to Dien Bien Phu. By bus I mean van which should hold about 12 people max. It was the public transportation system however, so we crammed in 19 along with all of our luggage and settled in for the 150 mile ride. Not too bad huh, just 150 miles. That should take no more than 3 hours. Actually, we’re in Vietnam, so it took a good 9. I don’t think I have ever been so uncomfortable in my life. Even if there were the correct amount of people on the “bus,” it was not made for Western sized men and would have been uncomfortable. Also, I was once again shoved in next to the girl who had to throw up the entire bus ride. I felt bad for her, but come on, what shitty luck is that. On the bright side of things, the views along the way were amazing. Most of the trip was taken along the highest mountain pass in Vietnam, which separates two different weather zones.
As we descended down, the mountains stayed, but the vegetation slowly changed back to tropical jungle and the crop changed from rice to corn. It was quite strange to see a massive cornfield on the side of a beautiful mountain in Vietnam. So similar to home, but so different. Anyway, the bus ride sucked, but we made it. Dien Bien Phu doesn’t have much to do for a tourist, it is just a stop on our journey to Laos. It is 35 km from the border or so, and we will continue on tomorrow morning at 5:30 AM to Muong Kauou or something like that in Laos. This journey is about 9 hours long as well, and probably on a similar bus as the one today. From there we can catch a bus or boat to where we want to go in Laos, Vang Vien. A good 2 or 3 day journey to travel not very far. That’s just the way things go here. We got some dinner and then played some backgammon where I managed to lose all of the money I had acquired since being in Vietnam and whooping up on Aly and then some. I didn’t win a single game all night. She had a ton of doubles though, I’m pretty sure some cheating was involved. Anyway, got to get to bed for the early day tomorrow and our first taste of Laos
