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Published: December 3rd 2007
Banana Pancakes! You're kidding!
What a way to start a rainy day up in the mountainsI woke up at some unearthly hour in the morning with an unwaitable urge in my bladder parts! As much as I wanted to, I just could not ignore it and go back to sleep, so I tried to sneak out as inconspicuously as possible. I really thought I’d done it and then I stood on Heinz. He was really sweet about it and even leant over to get me his torch! I squeaked down the stairs, about as quietly as a hippo, promptly waking up all our hosts in the down stairs area too! To top off my embarrassment, and actually get the old lady out of bed, I was tugging on a very locked door! Finally, I was lead through a side door in the kitchen to the outside bathroom 😊
The mist was really heavy, I could only just see the outhouse. The toilet consisted of 2 planks of wood, about hip width apart, over a flowing river! The idea is to try and squat over the hole then let flow before your hips go into spasm! (There was a bucket for the paper) It was without a doubt the best squatty potty I have ever used
Pest-control
Watching our hosts chase the waterbufallo out of the garden, and enjoying a cup of sweet Vietnamese coffee. 😊
The trip back into bed was much better, if I hadn’t woken everyone up on my way out, I don’t think anyone would have noticed. The next time I woke up was to the rooster crowing and the smell of the smoke from the wood stove… and… pancakes! That’s right! Pancakes! With bananas, honey and limes!! Breakfast of champions and a certain highlight for Darrell (even thinking back on it he gets all whimpery! ...I mean manly nostalgia) 😊
The mist had barely lifted by the time we had to say good buy. Some of the kids and women were waiting to sell us things as we walked out the house! While we were busy trying to convince them that we had not made any kinds of promises to them, someone noticed a huge buffalo in the flower bed eating the old ladies’ flowers! As all of the tourists reached for their cameras, the old lady was out like a shot, waving her hands and yelling at the beast to go away, and encouraging us to do the same! … and to think, we complain about snails!
We said good bye, again, to Heinz and
The 'buysomethingfromme'ers
In case you weren't sure of where the money should go [:)] Martina and headed off into the drizzle for our 2nd day of hiking in the rice terraces. Due to the mist we didn’t see as much of the view as we had yesterday, which wasn’t all together a bad thing, we
HAD to concentrate on our
VERY slippery path! Almost every step was a challenge not to land on our bum! And, as with yesterday, our guide in her well smoothed tennis shoes was showing us up in a big way!
In some ways the mist actually made the mountains seem more impressive. All we thought we could see was the base before they disappeared into the cloud. Until we carried on looking up, WAY up and saw some more of the mountain showing through some of the moving clouds, and still no peak!
We walked through some beautiful bamboo forests, across a few more rivers, and up and down some of the craziest and slipperiest paths I’ve ever followed. Not a fantastic combination if you ask me!
We stopped at our first village after surviving a slope of almost certain death, and were again mobbed by the “buyfromme”-ers and “butIfollowyou” -ers. Heinz and Martina joined up
Misty valley
Rice terraces dotted with bufallo wallowing-holes with us again about 15min later. Heinz had not been so lucky on the way down! He slipped down the ‘slope of almost certain death’ and had broken his fall by steering his forehead into a bamboo walking stick, leaving him with a pretty serious cut across his eyebrow! 😞
This was also a wake up to me, not only the danger of the slippery paths when it rains, but seeing 3 generations in one small wooded hut. The old bent over, weather beaten grandmother and the small, dirty faced, wide eyed toddler looking at you through the same door as you walk by. It’s another life. Perhaps not as romantic as we try to make it out to be.
With all the rain, we decided to give a skip on the next village and head straight to the lunch stop instead. We joined up with Heinz and Martina and headed out of the rice terraces and back onto the main road for our last leg of the trip.
On the way we saw a long network of interlinked bamboo pipes cut in half and suspended in the air by bamboo supports. There was a steady stream
of water running through the bamboo down into the village. Our guide told us that it was their drinking water. They’d tried drinking the rain water but it had made them sick, now they only drank water from the mountain.
We also saw a man washing his motor bike… using the water from one of the deeper puddles!
We arrive at our lunch stop and were served a delicious egg and noodle soup with a pear for pudding. As we’d opted not to go to the last village, the last part, and possibly the most exciting for me, our lift back to the hotel on the back of a motor bike!
It was my first time on a motorbike! It was the perfect end to our trip! We weren’t given any helmets or anything, and I think the only reason the locals were wearing them was to keep the rain out of their eyes! The driver weaved around all the puddles and would hoot before turning any of the corners to make sure there was no oncoming traffic. The scariest parts were when we had to drive about 10cm from the edge of the road (the edge
Another conoured hill
It looks like these hills were made my piling up layers of earth being the last piece of horizontal land for about 50m!) 😱 in order to cross a river in the road! Apparently this was necessary as that was the shallowest water! Baaa!
We got back to the hotel completely drenched and absolutely freezing from half an hour of being on the back of a motorbike in the rain!
Heinz and Martina, being as fantastical as they are, hired a room for all of us to take a shower and warm up in. Super grateful we insisted that they shower first while we headed back into the market for one last look
I ended up getting a few cushion covers (bargained down from D75000 to D25000! Wohoo! )
All warmed up, we said fond farewells and headed off on our respective busses back to the train station for our way back to Hanoi.
It was such a peaceful trip back to the train station (albeit frustrating in the beginning, stopping passed just about every hotel to pick up passengers!). We spent most of the ride in silence just reflecting on our experiences with the village folk. I can’t believe we almost cut this part of trip
Skidding and sliding
Down into the green valley out!
Everyone! Visit SaPa! 😊
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