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Published: April 6th 2007
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I was on the back of the scooter and saw this hidden away about a 100meters off the road. My guide said that it was built about 100 years ago by the french, at a time when much of Indochina was under french colonial rule, thus the baguettes GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!!!
After a short flight, I arrived in Hanoi and realized I was a definite minority in such a large city. Despite my travels throughout the rest of Southeast Asia, this was the first time I’ve experienced a great language barrier. I filed through customs around 7 pm and my plan was to make my way to train station. After closing on a price with a cab driver in Vietnam Dong, I was off in the nations capital and I found the traffic really overwhelming. Picture if you can a four-lane highway packed with noisy scooters swarming angrily in and out cars, trucks, and Tuk-Tuks. Now add a symphony of grade three instruments or vehicle horns all performing different songs in a small room, and a cloud of un-breathable carbon monoxide, and you’ve just created a race track in which everyone especially the drivers on scooters are very over-anxious to get home.
It was somewhere around 8 pm when I arrived at the train station and I went inside only to find that the signs here were not as bilingual as the rest of my travels had been. I looked around for some help only to
realize that I was the only one in the station who wasn’t Vietnamese. Feeling a little intimidated, and surrounded now by well over 200 people all looking at me like I was way off the beaten tourist track I tried to ask a few people for help. Despite my questions, hand gestures, and map pointing a lot of the older people I asked simply shewed me away. Frustrated I kept on trying, I would point and then they would point, then I would walk and they would laugh until I finally got to counter where I found a lady that was willing to help out a tourist. She gave me map to what was another train station two city blocks away for travelers heading north. I was still not sure exactly where I was trying to get to on the map, so I ended up going outside to get my bearing. As I walked down the street I showed the map to a few younger locals who were somewhere around 25, and from there came to the conclusion that they had learned a little bit of English in school and would be the ones to count on. So they helped
me get to the station. Once at the station I realized while waiting in line that in a country with this many people you either push your way to the front of the line or you sit at the back and watch all the tickets get sold out. So I started creating elbowroom and was only passed by a few older Vietnamese.
I walked down the station walkway, to birth twelve, in search of a number eighteen bed. The trains here in Vietnam usually sleep six or four. The bunk I was in held six passengers, five locals and myself. Before bed we all sat there in this train room and I watched and tried to imagine what they were saying by their body language because their pointing seemed to be directed at me. So I made some small talk with a hello, and received a hello back. I followed up with does this train go to Lao Cai? To which I received no answer. After a short period of silence, two Vietnamese girls around 23 I figure asked me where I was from. So I got out my trusty pocket travel atlas and showed them exactly where in
Canada. Then they showed me in my footprint travel guidebook where they were from in Vietnam. So we conversed, question by question, short answer by short answer, and I had them write me down five helpful Vietnamese phrases. With these new phrases I have been able to ask the older Vietnamese questions because I start out with a friendly Vietnamese xin chao followed up with ban co khoe khong and a half smirked Canadian smile that shows I am at least trying.
Upon arrival in Lao Cai, where the climate was colder due to the higher elevation, I realized that this was the first time I hadn’t been sweating while Asia. I Rushed out of the train, purchased a bus ticket into Sapa and jumped on the tourist bus. We climbed to an altitude of 2000 meters above sea level into the mountains bordering China. Midst the dense fog Sapa suddenly appeared. I immediately booked a jeep and a guide and we cruised up another 3000 meters and went 4x4ing around to heavens gate viewpoint where you can apparently see China on a clear day. There was too much Fog however, so we dropped back down to around 4000
meters above seal level and I hiked a waterfall. After an interesting lunch of sticky rice packed into a bamboo shoot and then cooked over an open flame I departed back to the town. I went for a walk through the market and made my way to a local village about 3 kms away. After exploring it for a bit and people watching a local asked me if I wanted to see another village 15 kms just below the fog. I agreed and road on the back of the scooter eyelashes frozen and all through the cold mountains.
The Vietnamese are very intelligent farmers, they live off the land, which they have plowed and tiered down using water buffalo and plows. Crops are grown here at different elevations according to their required water demand, rice at the bottoms of valleys, potatoes at the top, and medicine/vegetables/etc… somewhere in the middle. Streams, rivers, and waterfalls have been diverted and they supply the main source of water to the fertile red earth.
I spent eight hours in Sapa, and then headed back on the night train for Hanoi.
Corey Rich
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