All we got for Christmas....

---

.....was shepherds pie!

In addition, with growing horror in the days after returning from Halong Bay, we began to realise that the bed bugs had hitched a ride and that I was still being bitten. This was probably the worst timing possible as we had a very busy few days planned and as we did more research it became apparent that this little problem was not going to be got rid of easily.

Unfortunately we only really came to this conclusion on the day we were about to leave Hanoi again on an overnight train to a town in the mountains in the far north west called Sapa. We had no real option but to go and hope that the cold there would get rid of some of them. We spent the afternoon in Hanoi at the Ethnology Museum - a fascinating place with lots of details about the 54 different ethnic minorities which live in Vietnam, including a garden full of the different styles of houses that they live in.

We'd been told to be back at the hotel at 8pm for a 9.15pm train so were disturbed to find out that the train was actually at 8.40pm when we got back. Even worse, there was no taxi there and they seemed to be having trouble getting one. They kept saying that it was Saturday night and difficult to get one but there always seemed to be hundreds in the street. We were really unhappy as we had booked this 3 weeks before and been asking them for the train tickets for a couple of days but it was clear they had only booked them that day. The tickets they gave us said we should be at the station half an hour before the train left and both had the same bed number on so we were not even sure that there was room for both of us though they insisted that they had booked 2. To cut a long and angry story short, they finally managed to get a taxi at 8.20pm but two staff members came along on a motorbike to get there quicker as it turned out the tickets we had were only vouchers and needed to be exchanged at the station. Once there nobody could tell us where the tickets were and when they did appear we were missing one vital piece to one of the tickets. However, in the end we made it with about a minute to spare and we did get two beds.

We were sharing the carriage with 2 German women who we chatted with for a while before crashing out. Not for long though as, even though the timetable said that the train got in at 5.40am, it was actually around 5am when the train pulled in. The farce continued as we were put in a mini bus to travel the 30km to the town only to end up being forced to sit there waiting an hour for other people arriving on later trains.

The mini bus journey took us through lovely scenery up the mountain surrounded by paddy fields and misty hills. The tour seemed to have been organised by a hotel in Sapa that wasn't the one we were actually staying in. However, for our first night we were going to be trekking to stay in a house in one of the local villages so we just had a shower and meagre breakfast before being met by our guide, Ping. She was from one of the local Hmong villages and dressed in traditional clothing apart from her canvas shoes and backpack. We were also trekking with an older Glaswegian guy called Jim who was teaching in Hanoi for a couple of years.

While I would hardly call it trekking, more of a meader, it was a beautiful walk up and down the hills, through paddy fields, across streams and farm land. We had lunch at one of the villages and later passed through Ping's sister's village where we met her and her 3 children. Traditionally when women marry they move to their in-laws house so Ping's sister had moved away from her village. Ping was 25 and had been married, she had a one-year old girl, but was not married now and was living with her mother and siblings. I did not want to pry further into what had happened and what that meant for her now but I am not sure that this is a common thing amongst the village groups.

Mid-afternoon we arrived at Ta Van village, a Zay village, and we were taken to the house that we were going to spend the night in. After a cup of tea we had a wander around the village which is pretty large at 3,000 people and stretches some distance. In the centre there was a lot of (very muddy) building work going on which looked like a new road next to the school and government building already there.

Back at the house we met the two other people that were staying the night there, Mark and Vicki who now live in Edinburgh. However, Mark is originally from Liverpool and Vicki from about half a mile up the road from us in Leeds - it's a small world! They had only just arrived in Vietnam so we caught up on a bit of news from home then were called into the house to have dinner. Ping, our guide, was going back to her own village, about an hour away, to feed her daughter, but Vicki and Mark's guide, Tan, stayed and helped the lady who owned the house cook a fantastic meal with far too much food.

Following dinner they came out to join us and the Zay lady (unfortunately, I never quite caught her name) produced a small water bottle containing rice wine. This was the forerunner to two further bottles, this time each 2L and, in retrospect, one of the stupidest things I've done in a long time. Maybe I was just hoping to forget about my bites for a while....maybe I'm just easily led! So, we started with one shot each and a discussion about songs in our own countries. We each had to sing (or drink a shot instead) but then drank shots in between any way. The night turned into a bit of a blur but I do remember all the Brits doing the Okey Cokey at one point! I also remember that Tan and Mark both had lovely voices but Vicki rather let the side down by not knowing the words to Ilkley Moor Bar Tat (& not even knowing what the words meant!). However, after that it disappears until I remember sitting on the concrete porch outside with my head in my hands making it very clear that I could not get up the rickety step ladder to where the beds were laid out so Hugh disappeared to pull mattresses downstairs.

The next thing I remember is waking up while it was still dark, feeling rather smothered by heavy blankets but still fully dressed and with a pounding headache. I needed the loo - sadly a trek outside the house and across a couple of wooden planks above a ditch which I somehow managed but by the time I'd staggered back to the house the whole world was spinning. The next 2 hours were spent out there in great pain, watching the mist appear out of the darkness and wondering how on earth I was going to get back to the town that day as I could hardly stand. I was a little better after a couple more hours sleep but struggled to get out of bed when the others were up and breakfast was pretty tough. It was only at that point that I spotted the beer bottles and realised that everybody else had been drinking beer after the rice wine ran out, Hugh included - as a result he wasn't feeling 100% either!

If the weather had been good I might have continued walking but we could see nothing and, also, my bites were really giving me some grief. It seemed I had also picked up a few mossie bites just to add to my discomfort and, when Ping had finished chastising me (she had warned that the rice wine was very strong) she said that she would arrange a car to take us back to the hotel if we wanted. Suddenly this seemed like a very welcome thought and so we collected our things, said our goodbyes and walked down to the bridge across the river to where the jeep could get to. Unfortunately we had to wait for half an hour and it was a horrible drive back in the mist. We then had to collect our things from one hotel to get to the other but eventually we were showering in a lovely, large, warm room and we spent most of the rest of the day there recuperating.

Being Christmas Eve a number of the hotels were having special dinners, including the one that we were to have dinner in as part of the tour but we did not get to have the Christmas buffet unless we paid extra. We had no real appetite, just wanting to be asleep, so had a rather meagre meal although, amusingly given our respective states, we were brought a free glass of wine by the manager! We were joined by Jim who had walked during the day with Ping and had a good day although they could see nothing and had got rather wet so I had no regrets at our decision. We returned to the hotel before 8.30pm and I had an interrupted night's sleep trying to calm my burning bites. Christmas morning was therefore not greeted with much joy, particularly as I seemed to have some more new bites.....the bugs were still with us? I decided that, again, I could not face walking, partly due to bites on my feet that rubbed on my boots and partly due to more lousy weather. We met Ping and explained the situation and apologised and she was fine about it.

So, Christmas was spent like many at home - watching trashy movies! As mentioned above, we popped out for lunch, to, would you believe, an English cafe/pub and had shepherds pie and then returned to the telly and some cakes before having to leave for the minibus to take us the 30km to the train. This journey was interesting (!) as you could still see very little and the road is very windy and rough in parts. The Vietnamese girl travelling in the front seat was sick and Hugh was not feeling well from being at the back of the minibus by the time we got to Lao Cai where the train leaves from. We had a couple of hours before the train so had food and took the opportunity to make calls home to our families celebrating Christmas in various parts of the country.

Back on the train I was feeling pretty uncomfortable as my bites were driving me nuts so after chatting for a couple of hours with Jim and the American woman also in our carriage (who was rather miserable about anything and everything!) we turned in but I tossed and turned for much of it.

We arrived back into Hanoi at around 4.30am and had to choose from 2 exits to leave the station. The hotel had said that they would send a car to pick us up so we trekked to both of them but nobody was there so we sorted a cab back to the hotel. About par for the course, two of the hotel staff turned up about half an hour later on motorbikes saying that they had been waiting for us at the station. They clearly weren't convinced that we had looked for them!

Of course there was no room available that early so we entertained ourselves for a couple of hours in the hotel dining room and had some breakfast before popping out for some early morning sightseeing. We had yet to see Ho Chi Minh in his mausoleum (or Uncle Ho as he's better known) and it was advised to get there early as there were regularly queues. The process was rather convoluted - you leave bags in one place, go through security, leave cameras and phones somewhere else with lengthy accompanied walks in between. It was before 8am but there were already large groups of people, many who appeared to be Vietnamese who clearly were taking the whole thing very seriously. At the mausoleum itself we were surprised to find that Uncle Ho did actually look quite like himself, unlike Chairman Mao who we saw some years ago. The Vietnamese all bowed 3 times to him very reverentially and were clearly quite moved. The high security didn't quite continue as we struggled to find our way back to where we had left our bag and were wandering about the whole area without being stopped!

Back at the hotel we had to break it to the manager that we might be carrying bed bugs - luckily he had organised the boat trip for us so couldn't throw us out! He agreed to get all our clothes washed at a reasonable rate and we started the huge eradication programme on the rest of our gear which involved washing all the packs in very hot water in the bath, washing shoes and all other fabric items where they might hide. This turned out to be a large number of items as there's things like camera cases, first aid kits and money belts, even the inside of glasses cases. The unpacked stuff was also spread out all over the room but with an attempt to keep it all away from the bed.....what a nightmare! While going through this process we were called downstairs by the manager as he had contacted the organiser of the boat trip who had come to apologise. He was clearly very concerned about what we might do and said that he would pay for one night for us in the hotel. More importantly let's hope they steam cleaned the room on the boat!

We had a full set of washed and quarantined clothing that we had prepared in Sapa so we were hopeful that this would resolve matters but unfortunately the weather had got pretty cold and wet in Hanoi while we had been away and the clothes we had were not that warm. Not that we went very far but we did have to go out for dinner. We also had tickets for the water puppet theatre, luckily not too far away. The show is very clever with puppets under and on the surface of a small water stage all controlled from behind curtains at the back - very skilled and highly entertaining.

The following day Hugh had booked a cycling trip which he will write about:

I prepared for my cycling trip with some trepidation - the weather was cold, it had been raining and was currently drizzling. Due to our comprehensive washing programme I had no waterproofs, fleece, or boots; just a polo shirt, thin long sleeved shirt and a pair of sandals. Luckily the hotel came up trumps with a thin plastic rain coat bought from down the street for about 10p!

I had been expecting to be picked up by small motorbike, but due to the weather I was relieved to be picked up by car, and doubly so when it took over an hour to reach the start of the ride.

The actual ride was a lovely leasurely ride through the countryside, particularly in the afternoon as the drizzle had stopped. There were just 3 of us, a french student Debege who had been studying in Singapore, our guide and myself. From our guide Hoi, we learnt about various aspects of village life, e.g. that all villages have a Banyan tree, a river and a temple.

At one point I had to brake sharply to avoid a posionous snake - from the photo I took Hoi said that it was poisonous, so I'm glad the brakes worked.

Back to Sarah:

I had intended a lazy day with hair cut and massage but clearly the bites meant that a massage was not on the cards. I appeared to have a couple more bites despite not having been able to find any bugs so was pretty depressed. The weather was pretty grim and the washing wasn't due back till lunchtime so I spent much of the day in the room trying to help the wet stuff dry. I did brave the cold and traffic to get my hair cut though which was quite sucessful. As an example of the excess of labour in Vietnam, for the first time ever I had two people drying my hair at the same time - what service!

Hugh was back mid-afternoon and we managed to get most things packed up apart from odd damp items before heading out for dinner. We had arranged to meet Diep and Michele again and had an interesting meal of typical Vietnamese food that we had not tried yet, including Lotus Seed Sweet Soup for desert which was.....interesting! We had an early flight the next day so ended the evening early and headed for the hotel for our last night in Vietnam.

As you can see we are now in Laos but I will tell you all about that next time. While the bug story has not ended yet, we hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Hope all of you had a lovely Christmas filled with good cheer and that 2008 is full of good things.

Lots of love

Sarah + Hugh
xxx

---

Comments

[Sarah H.]

I'm so sorry to hear that the bed bugs are still with you. Reading about you first encountering them brought back rueful memories of my first (and only so far) encounter with them in a hotel in Colombia many years ago. I had no problems while I was sleeping in hammocks for 50p a night but towards the end of my stay I treated myself to a more fancy place (about £5 a night, if memory serves) and woke up after a couple of hours, bitten all over. I well remember the horror as it dawned on me what the problem was - I do sympathise, Sarah. I "slept" on chair for the rest of the night but I get the impression you didn't have that choice. I'd forgotten all about the horrendous business of having to wash every damn thing afterwards but your account has brought it all back! Probably the first time I haven't been envying your trip. Anyway, you don't seem to have let it get to you - full marks for positive attitude. Your account of the rice wine evening brought back other, equally rueful, memories from Colombia of "aguardiente" evenings (and mornings after). I did it more than once, but I was a lot younger.......