On the roof of Indochina

---

I was a bit nervous - I had never travelled in the sleeping carriage of the night train before. We had booked a hard sleeper for the way to Sapa and a soft sleeper back. This wasn't to save money but to experience also the more local way to travel. (To get the real real thing I think we should have taken just the seat but this far we weren't ready to experiment.) When we passed the soft sleeper carriages on our way to our hard one and saw the water bottles and fake flowers on their window sill, not to mention the soft lighting and wood paneling (fake again) we were cursing for a split second our adventorous minds. Well, the hard sleeper was fine. There were just two more people in the same space, and not any of those above mentioned 'luxuries'.

We shared the couch with three Vietnamese men - so the experience didn't lack the originality we had been looking for. Unfortunately I didn't have the common language with any of them. Francesca, as a fluent French speaker, could discuss with one of them who was a French teacher. Apparently the man spoke old fashioned and very polite French. When I asked if it was ok for me to read with the torch for some time after the lights had been switched off he said it was fine 'even for 20 minutes'. Generous.

I slept splendidly. For now on I always take the night train if possible - such a comfortable way to travel. I love that rocking feeling, same you have in (sailing) boats. The arrival to Lao Cai, the closest train station to Sapa, wasn't quite as pleasant, however. Nobody told me that you need to have the ticket with you when you exit the train station. Of course I had left mine on the table in the carriage. There was an army of the railway officials checking everybody's tickets by the gates and when I didn't have mine they told I couldn't leave the station. After I had tried nicely and then loudly complained and eventually tried to run through the gates (didn't work, they stopped me) I needed humbly to go back to the train. Not quite as simple. Firstly, all the number tags had been removed so I didn't know which was my carriage. Secondly, all the doors were locked. So me and other unfortunate ticket losers were wandering round the platform trying every door. There were no-one around, except some cheeky young boys trying to sell unused tickets for some ridiculous sums of money. They really don't let any opportunity to make money go by without trying to exploit it. I was getting really frustrated. It was 5.30 in the morning and I didn't feel like playing this stupid game. "That's fine then", I cried loudly, "I can't get my ticket and I can't get out of the station so I just spend the rest of my life sitting at this platform. Is that you want?" That actually helped as the lady who had checked my ticket on the previous night appeared from the train and let me in. I found the right carriage and my ticket from the table and returned to the gate. They hardly looked at the ticket. WHY do they want to irritate people so badly?

We found the bus and started the slow but oh so scenic trip up the mountains to Sapa. I love mountains. I think I will always want to be on the mountains for now on. Once arrived, a huge number of people who wanted us to stay at their hotel attacked us. Francesca stayed behind with the bags and I went through some five hotels. None of them were too good, so I based my decision on the best view and the cheapest price. Sapa is very touristy and competition is harsh; subsequently the prices are really low - we paid $4 for the twin room. After long showers - it was a while from the previous one having spent one night in the boat and one in the train - we were off to explore the town.

Sapa lies in the altitude of 1600 meters, close to the Chinese border. It is incredibly attractive, colourful place. Not only is it surrounded by those wonderful mountains that change their colour with the sun, but because of the hill tribe people who make their way by foot (or sometimes by motorbike...) to Sapa to sell their handcrafts. Two different tribes are presented: Black Hmongs and Red Dzaos. The former ones are more numerous and more eager to make friends with you - and consequently sell their products. Dzaos are a bit shyer. Anyhow, both are equally photogenic and
people like Francesca with their flash cameras go absolutely crazy with the photo opportunities. I'm more like a Red Dzao myself: I don't like asking people if I can take the photo and I don't like snapping sneaky shots when they don't notice. Or more precisely, I can't - they always see my intentions.

It is also incredibly touristy place. I never managed to find out how much of this show is the real life of the tribal people or do they just 'pretend' that they have kept their traditions for the tourism's sake. It would have probably helped if I had visited one of the villages and tried to learn more, but I hate that kind of tours. I feel like an absolute intruder standing in their homes or yards taking photos and then feeling obliged to buy things in return and feeling embarrassed for the other tourists who don't do that. In the meanwhile they are putting up a performance and you left feeling unsure if that's all they really have or are they going to change their tribal clothes into jeans and switch on the tv's once the group has left the village.

Instead, there was something that was attracting me like honey bees. Fansipan, the highest peak in Vietnam and whole of Indochina, can be seen from the village. It is 3143 metres high, higher than any mountain I have ever climbed, and I wanted to conquer it. I left Francesca taking photos and went through every single tour organiser in the town, but it seemed that I was the only person in Sapa who wanted to start the Fansipan trek on the following day. It usually takes three days, but I wanted to do it in two - there was no way that I would camp in those altitudes for two nights. It was chilly to sleep already in Sapa so I could only imagine how cold it would be in a tent in 2700 metres. My hiking gear was also quite minimal - I had hardly any cold weather clothes with me.

I was nearly loosing the hope and thought I needed to go trekking alone with the guide and porter, but in the evening when I returned to the hotel I heard that they had found a companion for me. He was an 18 year old Dutch guy - how awfully old I felt myself.

So in the morning we started. Unfortunately the weather wasn't as good as it had been on our first day in Sapa. Now it was misty with the threat of rain. First there was an half an hour jeep ride to the starting point. Then we walked an hour and a half to the lunch stop. At this point the terrain was still quite easy, going up and down. We eat baguettes with egg and tomato by the 'shop' owned by a Hmong lady. She only had water and soft drinks available. Now I had an opportunity to see how it is to live alone high up in the mountains. Definitely no TV or any kind of entertainment, not to mention more basic stuff such as running water or electricity. She just had a simple hut with a bed, table and some shelves, and was cooking on the open fire in the middle of it.

After lunch we had the more challenging part of the day ahead. Now we were mostly going up, sometimes using ladders or climbing on the stones. The weather was getting mistier and wetter all the time and I started to worry about the night.

The first day was tiring but yet not too hard. When we reached the night camp we felt we could have continued for an hour or two and make the second day a bit easier. But what can you do, you need to stay where there is a place for it. Camping wasn't luckily tents after all, but a big hut with a tin roof and elevated bamboo platforms to sleep on. There was another group staying with us, consisting of a Swiss couple and their non-English speaking guide. There were on the three day trek but had changed their minds and decided to the journey in two as well.

The evening felt very cold, even if I had all my clothes on already before going to bed. We were all sitting by the fire and watching when the guides and porters were preparing the dinner. As the food supplies of the two groups were now put together (and the other group was much better reserved than ours) we got quite a nice multi-course meal. Afterwards our guide tried to entertain us by telling Vietnamese jokes. As there was absolutely nothing else to do, we all went to bed around 8pm. I was terrified about the night, being sure that I couldn't sleep for a moment on the hard bed suffering from the damp coldness. The sleeping bad was provided, but it was similar to kind we use only indoors in Finland.

The Swiss came to my rescue. First the kind girl told that I could sleep next to her to feel warmer and then the guy gave me his aluminium drinking bottle which works like a hot water bottle when filled with hot water. That was blissful thing to have in the sleeping bad! I can't say I slept great but at least I have been sleeping at some point as I remember seeing a dream.

The second day gave me the sweat, pain and blisters I've been looking for for the whole trip. It was two hours up to the summit, then five down. The first two hours were the worst. It had been raining all night and the ground and particularly the stones couldn't have been more slippery. We needed to climb all the time using hands. No ropes were provided.

Yet I enjoyed it very much. It was just the two men that got into my nerves. The young one proved to be fairly unfit, scared of heights and with no trekking experience whatsoever. He was unbelievably slow and whining all the time. The guide was in a hurry to get away from the mountain and most of the time so much ahead of us that we could nor see neither hear him. I didn't know what to do - follow the guide who kept hurrying us or stay behind and make sure the youngster didn't fall or collapse.

In the end I lost it with both of them. First I told the youngster to stop acting like a girl and left him behind. Then I caught the guide and asked if he thought it was good guiding when we couldn't see him most of the time and he kept hurrying us in dangerous places when the Dutchman had obvious problems - perhaps a bit of encouragement would be a better approach. And it wasn't my duty to take care of him. Then I left him too and marched as quickly as I could to the lunch point.

Miraculously it worked! The guide had a word with the youngster and as a result he found a second gear. We nearly run the final leg of the journey, leaving behind even the Swiss who had reached the lunch stop an hour before us.

I have seldom looked forward to a hot shower as much as I did after that trip. Back in Sapa there was an unpleasant surprise waiting though. The hotel hadn't kept the room for us as they promised. I had no idea where Francesca was, so I couldn't check into another hotel in case she had already done it. I was really cold and angry, and used the "I'm going to write to Lonely Planet how reliable you are in this place" card, which worked as always. After a while they ran after me to the street and suddenly had one room available after all. Luckily we didn't need to return to the place, however, as I saw Francesca who had in the meanwhile found a much better place for the same price.

In the evening Francesca took me to the loveliest imaginable cafe she had found earlier. I eat so much! Lasagne, cake, coffee... And the next morning we went back and had more cakes and coffee. So that's then about the calories I used in Fansipan.... Sigh. We would have wanted to go for a tour to one of the markets in the remote villages close to the Chinese border, but unfortunately there were none on Wednesdays. So we stayed in Sapa and relaxed. Francesca did some shopping and I mainly sat at the terrace of the hotel and watched the world go by. It was funny how many familiar people I managed to gather to my table. First I spotted the Dutch couple from the Halong Bay cruise and they joined me for a couple of hours. Then the youngster from Fansipan came to say hello. The Swiss couple sat with us for a while. Finally the Israeli girl from the Halong Bay boat showed up - I didn't even know she was in Sapa.

In the evening we took a train back to Hanoi. This time we shared the soft sleeper with an Italian-Greek couple. I slept uninterruptedly again and this time took very good care of my ticket. (No-one asked for it of course, needing it on arrival must be some sort of Sapa specialty.) We were back in the capital at 5am and I had seven hours of active play time before I needed to leave for the airport. I had planned to visit at least one museum, but somehow I ended up wandering aimlessly around the Old Quarters. I was so tired that all I could do was to have a massage before it was time to book a taxi and say goodbye to Francesca and Vietnam.

---

Photos

A cute little girl
and such a good salesperson - she managed to sell me lots of suveniers

On the top of the world - eh, was it just Indochina
Just a shame we didn't see anything because of the thick mist.

A group of Hmong girls
As every lady in Vietnam, they are trying to avoid tanned skin