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Published: December 1st 2007
Saturday 17 November 2007 We lazily spent the day wandering around Ha Noi and preparing for our night departure for a tour of Bac Ha & Sa Pa. Barbara’s lazy packing was cut short when we were notified at around 7:30pm that our train time had changed from 9:15pm to 8:40pm. After a little scurrying around, we braced ourselves for a hectic taxi ride (6 people including the driver) to Ha Noi Railway Station (photo). Glad that an assistant from the hostel was accompanying us, our train was easily located and we settled into our soft sleepers for a not-so-quiet night train ride. The cabins were nothing fancy, but were clean and comfortable. Our cabin originally seated the two of us and a Canadian & an English backpacker who were travelling together. However soon we were joined by two Australians, four Englishmen and the occasional stray passer-by (photo). There was much merriment and many beers. The conductor selling the beers eventually just gave us the ice bucket she was selling the beers from in the hope we would let her sleep! Barbara had here first squat toilet experience - success (despite almost falling in when the train jolted to a
stop)! Around 1:30am we retired for a brief sleep.
Sunday 18 November 2007 We had a sudden awakening at 5am with the conductor banging on the door yelling “Lao Cai! Lao Cai!” Lao Cai is the station at the northern-most end of the Vietnamese train line, the town being a common border-crossing into China, located north-east of Ha Noi. Dazed, we disembarked the train and were met by a crowd of tour operators bearing signs with names on them. We found ours and were escorted across the road to the “Friendly Restaurant” (photo). Much like the beaches on Cat Ba Island, all of the restaurants in Lao Cai are now named “Friendly Restaurant” after one which became popular and famous. After a 3 hour wait, our overcrowded bus turned up. Our 6 person small-group tour had turned into an overcrowded 14 person tour. Although we weren’t half as unimpressed as a French couple who had paid an outrageous amount of money to have a private tour with just them and a tour guide - but ended up in a tour of 12!
During our travels we have discovered many new phrases, the applicable one for this situation being
“things going a little bit Vietnamese!”
A cramped bumpy 3 hour bus ride took us to the town of Bac Ha to the north-west of Lao Cai. During a short unscheduled break in the trip due to road construction we were entertained by local children and buffalo (photo). Once in Bac Ha, we visited the local markets that are run every Sunday by the Flower Hmong villagers. The Hmong people inhabit the northern mountains of Vietnam and this ethnic minority is known as the Flower Hmong due to the bright colours of their clothing (photo). The markets are busy and colourful, stocking everything from pigs and buffalo to local food, handcrafts and Hmong fashion . Barbara invested in some silver Hmong earrings and Michael sampled local delicacies including fried banana fritters (photo).
We were then taken on a walking tour of the local Hmong village including a visit to the house to a local family. The woman of the house was very hospitable as she gave us the tour of her house (photos) and offered tastings of corn-wine from the “cellar” (photo). We were advised
that the wine sampled, although very potent, was only approximately 30% alcohol and that the wine they usually make to sell or for gifts is often around 70% or more - no wonder the locals are always smiling!
Back on the bus, we drove back to Lao Cai where we stopped briefly to view the Vietnamese-Chinese border (photo) and the proceeded to Sa Pa to the south-east of Lao Cai. The drive was only about 1 hour and it was already dark with no views so Michael had a snooze on the bus.
We arrived in Sa Pa and were shown to our hotel. It was very nice and situated on a hill at the top of the town (photo from next morning). Dinner was provided (after some negotiation - guide said not included but our pamphlet said it was!) at a local restaurant named Buffalo Bell. The food was a fusion of French and Vietnamese and was absolutely superb! We started with a cheese soup followed by creamy chicken & cashew stir fry & sizzling beef. We met a few of the local Black Hmong women (local Hmong villagers named Black because of the colour of their
clothing) selling handcrafts and then wandered with our fellow travellers to the Red Dragon Pub for a night cap - Barbara enjoyed a rare treat...Hot Chocolate!
Monday 19 November 2007 We departed Sa Pa early for a bus which dropped us half way to Ban Ho for us to hike the rest of the way. We enjoyed a short hike before lunch which took us up and down a couple of hills, to a local school (photo), across a suspension bridge after letting a buffalo pass (photo) and across a creek crossing (photo). We opted to the adventurous route across the river rather than the “toll-bridge” consisting of a bamboo bridge, an elderly woman and her buffalo. Along the way, we were very impressed to see most of the houses equipped with hydro power (photo). After lunch we had a steep muddy 1.5 hr downhill hike to the village of Ban Ho - Barbara was very proud that she only went heels up in the mud once!
In Ban Ho, we were shown to our home stay which was very clean and comfortable and one of the largest and fanciest houses in the village. After a short
walk around town we enjoyed a home-cooked dinner and some home-brew rice wine (photo). The wine was enjoyed in the traditional manner of a series of shots toasted by the host and reciprocated by the guests. Soon the host was toasted so we were allowed to stop drinking and go to bed. During the drinking session, Barbara slipped out with some other female travellers to watch some local dancing at a nearly house. The last dance of the night was a “bamboo dance” which entailed three pairs of bamboo sticks about 3 metres long and 10cm diameter being banged on the ground in time to music with people dancing between the sticks. The pairs are banged twice apart and the once together and you have to make sure you remove you feet from between a pair of sticks before they close and you lose your feet - sort of like a savage game of ‘elastics’! Barbara had a great time and escaped unscathed but exhausted and ready for sleep.
Tuesday 20 November 2007 After breakfast of pancakes with banana, the morning’s challenge was to climb back up the hill. We decided we would take the road which was
longer but less steep and less muddy so, after Michael had a dip in the hot springs (photo), we departed early for our walk. The road was approximately 5km with a gentle but steady incline. We took some rest stops along the way but managed to reach the top before the road was closed for dynamiting (a dam was being built and every day at noon the road is closed so they can blast holes in the cliff face). Once at the top (photo) we rested and waited for the others to arrive. Unbeknown to us, after we left, the rest of the group (which contained an elderly couple and a woman with asthma) had decided to take the road also and requested this route of the tour guide. Not knowing themselves where the road was, they relied on the guide to take them up the road. Against their wishes, he took them up the hill and after much sweat and tears the group met us at the top. Given that the tour guide had laughed at them and the abandoned them, the only blood shed was the desire of the hikers to shed the blood of the guide.
After a tasty lunch of Pho (noodle soup), we caught the bus back to Sa Pa where we spent the afternoon exploring the town and markets before catching the bus back to Lao Cai.
At Lao Cai, we were left at the “Friendly Restaurant” (which is also the office for the local tour service) to wait for our train back to Ha Noi. At this point, things “went a little Vietnamese”. Curious about the Vietnamese handwritten scrawl on our ‘tickets’, Barbara requested a translation. Denied a translation by 3 tour guides, she headed upstairs to the ticket office where she was advised that these weren’t our tickets, just reservation notes. With our train time drawing nearer and no tickets in hand, we started getting a bit edgy. Finally, after numerous requests and delays our tickets arrived. It turned out that our tickets had actually been double-booked along with about 30 other travellers and we had to wait for them to be re-issued after the train company decided to add an extra carriage to the train. Unfortunately we were put on this ‘extra carriage’ which appeared to have been found buried in an old shed somewhere after years of disuse. It
was old, smelly and in poor condition. The air conditioning was freezing and the beds were hard (so much for the ‘soft sleeper’). Given the discomfort and discontent of everyone in the carriage, it was decided that the only option was to, once again, party ourselves to sleep. Unfortunately, the only way to access beer while the train was in motion was to exit the carriage via the engine room (photo), the kitchen and through to another carriage. The engine room was dirty, noisy and slightly dangerous so the trip was only ventured a couple of times with copious amounts of refreshments carried back each time. We left two sleeping Swiss travellers in our carriage and joined an Australian, 3 Canadians and an Irishman (sounds like a bad joke) in a nearby cabin (photo). After much merriment, we retired to our dodgy cabin a little after midnight.
Wednesday 21 November 2007 This time we were prepared with an alarm clock for a gentle 5am wakeup. We arrived at Ha Noi and walked a group back to the Hostel - avoiding an overpriced misdirected taxi which we were warned against by our hostel. We then enjoyed a hearty breakfast
at the Kangaroo Cafe including a Milo for Barbara - woo hoo - followed by a day of sorting our the next steps in our itinerary. We had originally planned to only spend 1 week in Ha Noi before taking the train south through Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang and to Ho Chi Minh City. However, due to extensive rain and flooding in Hue and Hoi An and storms approaching HCMC, transport in the region was intermittent, towns were inaccessible and diving would be poor. Accordingly, we decided to head over to Cambodia before returning to southern Vietnam (unfortunately skipping the middle). We visited Vietname Airlines’ office only to find that they charge foreigners substantially more to travel than locals (approx 220% more) and opted to take an indirect flight with AirAsia with transit in Bangkok. We made bookings, indulged in some more coconut ice cream (photo) and packed our bags to farewell Ha Noi.
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