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Published: June 15th 2010
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With the people I met at Cat Ba Island - a Canadian couple and a polish guy who works for the EU in Haiti, we took an overnight train to Sapa. Sapa is located high up in the mountains, so the weather up here is much cooler and not humid. It was a pleasant change as we are getting sick of the heat and the humidity. Sapa is surrounded by minority villages, whose people wear colorful outfits and speak amazing English. They come to town and sell their handicrafts to tourist.
After arriving, we found a hotel room for $8 a night at the Pinocchio. The rooms are basic, but they are on the 7th floor, so the view is fantastic. The hike to the room is a workout, but I need the exercise as I am getting lazy 😊
Later in the day, we decided to hike down to Cat Cat village, which is located right below the town. It was nice. We saw rice being planted and talked to some kids who were trying to sell us stuff. Their math skills are incredible, considering they were only 7 and 8 years old. The end of the trek is at
a waterfall. We saw a white water buffalo getting back from the river. It was something. On the way back, there are motorbikes waiting for you. We started negotiating with them. But in the end, Lukas, the Polish guy and I decided to walk up. The Canadian couple paid $1 each for a 2 minute ride up, which Lukas and I thought was outrageous. The motor bike guys at first wanted $5 from each, but we decided not to pay anything more than $0.50. Half way up, one of the moto bike people offered to give us the ride up for free, but we were enjoying the hike. The hike up was a bit challenging, but the scenery was fantastic and the sun was setting, so it was worth it.
We had lunch in one of the local places with the suckling pig bbq in the front. We got the grilled pig and it was quite good. For dinner, we had pork bbq at another place. The pork is quite big up here and it's delicious.
The next day we decided to rent motor bikes and ride to the next town, which was about 60 km of mountainous roads. The
ride was truly amazing. The bikes were semi automatic, which took me a bit to figure out, but I managed. The road was quite bad at places, since it rained for 10 days before we got there. We saw a couple of mud slides and there is a lot of mud on some section. Most of the road was quite nice. We did manage to get a screw in the tire of the bike the Canadians were riding, but we got lucky it was right next to a village, so we had lunch while bike was being fixed.
The next day we woke up to the rain, which ruled out the possibility of any hike. We took it easy and just set the whole day on the terrace and enjoyed the views. We were catching the train back to Hanoi in the evening, so we decided to have a nice dinner at our favorite bbq place. Since our train was at 8:15 pm, we decided to get the mini bus at 6:30 pm as the ride from Sapa to Lao Cai train station is only about 45 minutes. To our surprise, when we picked up our begs at the hotel,
they told us that the last mini bus leaves at 6! Holy crap. We ran to where the buses are leaving town and didn't see any. We were talking to the taxi guy and were getting quite nervous, when a mini bus came 😊 We were told it's the last one and the price is 50000 dong instead of the 30000 we paid ton get there. We offered 40000 each but the guys held firm. We were the only Westerners, so we didn't have a strong position, but we refused to pay the asking price. After a bit of negotiating, we didn't make any progress and the guy started driving away. We called his bluff and he drove for 2 meters before stopping and agreeing to our offer of 40000. I guess he figured that 80000 dong is better than nothing. 40000 dong is $2, so the whole discussion was about $0.50. LOL. But with rampant overcharging on everything, you irrationally start bargaining about smallest amounts, just to feel better about being ripped off.
I really enjoyed Sapa. It's quite nice and mellow. The people are friendlier than the rest of Vietnam and the weather is awesome. The views are
simply breathtaking.
Anyways, we made the train with time to spare. Unfortunately, the train was delayed by switching problems at other station. Delayed by 8 hours! Which caused me to miss my flight to Thailand. We ended up going the airport directly in hopes of catching another flight. To our surprise, the only sales offices we could find in the airport was Jet Star Pacific - a domestic discount airline and Vietnam Airlines, whose only flight to Bangkok already left.
We asked at the information booth, and they said they could sell us tickets for $220 each on Thai Airways. Ouch. We tried calling Thai but their offices were closed because it was Saturday! We ended up calling Thai Air in Thailand, but they couldn't sell us the ticket over the phone! Our only choices then were to spend another night in Hanoi and catch Air Asia flight tomorrow for $120 or pay $220 and fly today. Since we were set on leaving and since I was supposed to meet up with my nephew in Thailand, we decided to give in and pay.
Some parting thoughts about my month spent in Vietnam. Overall I really enjoyed the trip. It's
a beautiful country and is extremely cheap to travel. Beer is less than $1! In all my travels I think Vietnam has the cheapest beer on the planet, with some places having beer at about $20 cents a glass! The diving was great and the cheapest I've ever seen. I have met a great deal of other travelers and enjoyed talking to them and their company on portions of my trip. I mostly hated the food, with the exception of Pho ( rice noodle soup ) and the bbq places in Sapa. Vietnamese food is really bland, and I got used to Thai food having spent a month in Thailand. It is also not as varied as Thai food, and the veggies are better over there as well. I started hating the overcharging, the rip offs and the touts trying to sell you stuff. It might have to do with me spending a month here, as I only started feeling this way by week 3. So if you come to Vietnam for 2 weeks, I think it would be alright. I also didn't really like the locals, with the exceptions being the Hmong people in Sapa. Granted, I only interacted
with people catering to tourists or merchants, and these are usually not an indicative of the general population.
Hygiene habits of the locals are quite scary sometimes. The spitting, coughing and clearing of the sinuses is quite disturbing some times. So is throwing garbage in the street. In smaller towns, like Cat Ba and Sapa, we noticed people throwing stuff on the floor of the restaurants while eating, like napkins, shells from shellfish, and spitting the bones on the floor! I have never seen that in any of my travels and I've been to about 35 countries.
So overall - I am glad I came here. Would I recommend others to come? Yes. Would I come back? Maybe, but not anytime soon.
Next stop - My favorite place - Thailand.
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richie
non-member comment
BEER
Its nice to see that in your synopsis on Nam. You started with the price of beer and how affordable it is. I'm happy to see that you still have your Priorities in order. Some people might have mentioned Possable Health Issues, or Safety, or getting ripped off First,but not you, You started with the real important stuff. BEER. I cant belive you have been in Nam for a month already. Be Safe