"Ant... you have boyfriend?"

Tueday 6th October to Friday 9th October 2009

Because we are apparently masochists and full of destructive self-loathing, me and Coop decided to punish ourselves for our three days of boaty bliss in Halong Bay by setting ourselves to climbing Vietnam's (and, we later discovered, Indochina's) highest mountain, Fansipan. Having arrived back in Hanoi on Tuesday afternoon, me still grey-faced and whimpering with the mother of all hangovers, now exotically spiced with a bubbling cold, we decided to treat ourselves to a massage and some hair of the dog before catching our night train to Lao Cai on the Chinese border. Encouraged by Coop's description of the Thai massage which she had previously indulged in (a description somewhat distubingly filled with orgasmic moans) I went with that one, but found it, as with my previous experience of a pro massage, a little disappointing. Apparently if they don't have me biting a pillow to keep me from screaming with pain like those I am frequently subjected to by my physio, it just doesn't do it for me. Like I said, masochist. Coop got some Japanese one that seems to consist (from what I could see) of attempting to bend her body into shapes only ever found in 'The Kama Sutra for the Double-Jointed', but seemed to enjoy it.

After a supremely panicked sprint for the train (always amusing when one is carrying one's entire wardrobe on one's back, not to mention a library of LPs), we finally made it into our compartment, to a chorus of glares from the Vietnamese people who had arrived at a sensible time for their train and were now mostly asleep. Vietnamese trains are slightly less roomy than Indian ones, but they are equally comfortable, and with the added bonus of not having a shuffling 70 year old croaking "chai....... chai...... chai" in a voice like a bullfrog with throat-ache every five seconds for all eternity, which made Indian trains so special.

Arriving at Lao Cai at 5am, we resisted the urge to tease the Chinese border guards by pretending to make a run over the border (we suspected it might end in tears, or possibly gunshot wounds), and headed on via minibus to Sapa even further up in the mountains. The closest hill station to Hanoi, its a centre for trekking and for minority peoples, who apparently celebrate their diversity by dressing up in their traditional garb and then following you down the street streeching "You buy from me? You buy from me?" Ah, tourism...
We spent the day researching and booking our trek up Fansipan, and walking to a nearby tribal village, which was nice, although slightly sanitised compared to Mai Chau ("This is a waterwheel" "This is a traditional place where they play music") We saw baby animals of all varieties to coo over however. After this nominal attempt at exploring the town, we resigned ourselves to the inevitable and headed for the nearest bakery. In India it had appeared that hill stations always tended to equal cafes and cake, and after 5 weeks in Japan, where the cakiest thing you can get is a stale pastry from a convenience store, and 2 weeks in Vietnam, where there are no sweet things at all, I was very ready for some calorific goodness. And my god, did this place deliver. Without a doubt, the very very best tarte au citron I have ever encountered. Much moaning ensued.

The cake times were not to last however. The next morning we were up bright and early to start our trek, which involved climbing up one mountain that day, camping at it's summit, then doing a push for the summit of Fansipan early the following morning before making the trek back down. For just the two of us we had a guide and two porters carrying all the food and stuff, which brought on some inevitable post-colonial guilt, but we soon decided just to appreciate the fact that we weren't hauling kettles et al up the mountain, and concentrate on getting ourselves up there. In typical style, me and Cooper unintentionally set a cracking pace, which involved us hitting the lunch spot at 10.45, and which I think possibly made the porters curse us continuously under their breath. Despite Coop's increasingly worsening altitude sickness (kudos to her, I know what a bitch that is) we hit the sleep camp at 1.30pm.

Now, we are well used to roughing it, but I cannot with any integrity state that this camp was the sort of thing you envision arriving at after scrambling up a mountain all day (and, for the record, Vietnamese mountains don't do switchbacks. Nor do they even do a path. It's mainly just hauling oneself vertically up a rockslide). The camp consisted of a corregated iron shack in the middle of a swamp atop the mountain. Despite the fact that about 50 people slept in the shack every night, and that Fansipan trekking is a big thing to do in Vietnam, there were no toilets anywhere on site. I refused to venture out into the bushes, but Coop informed me that the... er... 'dietary evidence' of former inhabitants was to be found liberally scattered everywhere. Probably also in the 'drinking water' that consisted of mountain run-off. Then we realised that we did not even have a torch between us, and thus that after about 5pm we would be in pitch darkness in the middle of said faeces-filled swamp. I believe it was at this point that a slight touch of hysteria crept in.

Given that we had walked so fast and that it was only 1.30pm, our guide decided we should go for the summit that evening instead of leaving it for the following day. By that time the ever-present Fansipan mists were reaching their most impenetrable levels, but we went on nonetheless. I'll admit that by the time we actually got up to the top, I was physically restraining Cooper from ripping our guide's head off and drinking his blood (with justification I might add, damn, I wanted to hit that guide...) but we got up there and spent a few minutes appreciating the wall of white that was all that was left of the view before we started stumbling back down. I spent the descent compiling an ultimate wish list, which included, but was not limited to; a southern comfort and lemonade, followed by a hot shower, followed by some fleecy pjs, followed by a bottle of dessert wine, followed by a hot chocolate with baileys, in combination with some ben and jerry's and a Sainsbury's white chocolate and raspberry cookie, whilst in a warm bed with an open fire and a DVD. I just just making the final decision of which DVD it was going to be when we got to base camp about 5pm.

Sadly no southern comfort had been in the porters backpacks, but we thankfully managed to get a hot cup of tea (when Coop had asked about the possibility of such a thing earlier, the guide had laughed in her face) and got to sit around a fire for a bit. The food I will admit was amazing, bless those porters. More people had arrived by this time as well, ready to make the ascent tomorrow morning, so our shack was lovely and cramped with a motley collection of wet and dirty hikers. I got to admit though, the highlight of the entire day for me was the guide turning over in his sleeping bag later that evening and asking with a nervous laugh:

"Ant, have you boyfriend?"

I believe this resulted in a deathly silence on the propositioned Coop's part, whilst I tried to choke my laughter in my sleeping bag. Perhaps he thought those glares of death she had been giving him all day were come-hither looks?

Let us not exaggerate about that night, and simply say I never wish to pass such a 12 hours ever again. Our guide's attempts to 'snuggle' with Ann left me (on the other side of her) literally hanging off the edge of the bed (I say bed, I mean corregated iron platform 2ft off the ground) and over the gap to the mud directly below. Additionally the ridiculous sanitation and and habit the guides and porters had of just chucking uneaten food onto the ground, meant that the place was INFESTED with rats. We could hear them scurrying all night long, including OVER MY PILLOW (I say pillow, I mean rucksack). Coop swears she felt touch her hair, a thought which is still making us shudder two days later. Needless to say neither of us got any sleep.

We could have had it worse though. Quite apart from the fact that I am amazed we haven't caught cholera from that water, we could have been part of the group of one English bloke and three Vietnamese women we had passed at lunchtime that day. Despite starting an hour earlier in the morning than us, they were clearly having trouble by lunchtime. They were all wearing normal trainers and jeans, and the guy told us they'd totally underestimated how hard the trek was going to be, despite the fact that they had been doing several 'prepatory' walks. Stupidly, their guide had tried to get them up to the summit of Fansipan in the same day too, and by the time they got back to the shack it was long after dark. One of the women looked like death. I don't know how long it took them to get back down the next day. Our guide told me the group he had taken up prior to us had not got back to Sapa until 7pm the following day because they were so unfit and knackered.

Thankfully, that did not happen to us. It absolutely TIPPED it down with rain the following morning as the rest of the poor saps in our shack got up at 6 to climb Fansipan, but we got to have a bit of a lie-in before heading down. Surprisingly, considering our night of direness, me and Coop were both ready to put some pace on the next morning (never underestimate the pulling power of a hot shower). I had been a bit worried about my knee going back down those ridiculous gradients, but some pre-emptive ibruprofen did the trick, and Coop's altitude sickness started disappearing as we dropped in height too. In any case, we pretty much bounded down the mountain, arriving 3 hours before our ETA and in good spirits.

We had conquered Fansipan. But more importantly, wine and cake awaited.

Stayed:
Sapa - Cat Cat View Hotel: I think the nicest place I've stayed this trip. Huge rooms with a view, the hotel also has a grest 7th floor restaurant, hot showers and free internet. 15$ a night for our room, but you can get cheaper.

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Part of trip: Japan and Vietnam

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