Advertisement
Published: December 5th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Beginning of our hill tribe stroll
Trek lost something in translation we think... After spending a fews days in Hanoi we had already seen the sites and walked many km's in busy streets with pretty bad pollution so we were looking forward to leaving the capital and travelling to the mountains, Ali in particular was going to have a nervous breakdown if another motorbike nearly ran over her foot.
When we first arrived in Hanoi we had booked a hard sleeper on the night train directly at the train station for 250,000 Dong ($25 AUS) each. The train left at 9:55pm so we got to the station early and waited. Thankfully the train left on time and we were on our way. The hard sleeper was not too bad. The cushioning was thin but length was good and we had some friendly locals (we think they were friendly anyway, as they did not speak much english) who we shared our room (of 6) with. Before we knew it we were awoken by the train staff knocking on the doors saying we had arrived at Lao Cai which is literally a stones throw away from China, which is over the river.
Upon stepping off the train we quickly put on our jumpers and
booked a mini bus to take us to Sapa for 30,000 dong each ($3 AUS). The trip took us about a hour and took us high up into the mountains with some really nice views of the valley.
We arrived in Sapa and found accomodation with a really nice view over Fan Si Pan which is the highest mountain in Vietnam, at something like 3100m. Then we went for a walk after we had interpreted the "Rough Guides" extremely simplified map, i.e. an extremely winding road is represented as a dead straight line and a big concrete arena is said to be the football field. Roaming the streets are stacks of hill tribes people who come up from the valley's to sell their mostly handmade products. Most of their items are nice and would be good to have a look at, but in many cases we have seen foreigners show the slightest bit of interest then the next second they have 10 people surrounding them saying "Buy from me!" so it's a lot easier just to keep on walking. It was high on our priorities to find an ATM so after 40min walking around we had found the only
3 ATM's in town. The problem was that 2 were only for VISA cards (we had Mastercard) and the only one which might accept our card said it could not give out money at this time. Also as we were going to go a fairly untravelled route into Laos after Sapa, we knew that it could be possible there would be no more ATM's until we got quite into Laos so we had to get money here. Luckily we tried the ATM's later at night time and it had been stocked back up so we made ourselves multimillionaires and continued on to book an overnight "trek" to the hill tribes for only $20 US each .
After leaving for our trek at a nice 9:30am we met with our Hmong guide named Cha who was 20years old, married and had a 2 year old daughter. Upon picking up 4 others tourists in Sapa we soon picked up another 5 or 6 tribes people who walked with us as we started our "trek" into the valley down the road. At our first stop we tried some suger cane and then left the sealed road for a dirt road which we
walked along for a couple more km's. We should mention that the guides we had were really nice and even though they lived in the villages they had surprisingly good english, so communicating with them was no trouble at all. A couple of hours after leaving Sapa we had reached the valley floor a few hundred metres beneath and stopped for lunch near a river. The food wasn't great (egg, tomato, cheese and cucumber sandwhiches) but the view was nice. For the next couple of hours we wandered through villages and went into local houses, schools and learnt how the way of life happens for the tribes people. I don't know if all the guides were the same, but Cha was really nice, friendly and knowledgable so for us she definately made the trip a great experience for us.
We got to our homestay mid afternoon and meet another 3 Australians who had come down with 2 different guides. The homestay was mostly western looking from the outside but had a normal Hmong kitchen with mattresses on the floor for us. We then took a walk around the village and down to the water then got into cooking dinner
with the locals. Throughout the night we also enjoyed beer and their own rice wine which proved to be a big winner at only 60c per 600ml with the strength and smell of metho. For dinner we had spring rolls, a chicken dish, a beef dish, a tofu dish, many different types of vegetables and even some chips with a garlic sauce. For one of our first times in Vietnam we finally got plenty of food with the excess going to the pet pigs out the back.
In the morning we had banana fritters and pancakes with honey, chocolate and banana and got on the move. On that day we actually left the road size paths which we had had so far and experienced some tracks with real mud in places. It wasn't tough but there were some uphill slopes.
It's probably best looking at the photos rather than us talking about the scenery but it was some of the best days we have had so far in Vietnam. After lunch we walked up to the road and got a bus back up to Sapa.
We found more accomodation and we are presently killing a day before
the bus takes us to Dien Bien Phu tomorrow morning which is 35km from the Laos border. We will then travel into Laos the next day asnd onto Luang Prabang via Muang Khua. Like we said earlier this is from what we have heard an unpopular route so will be interesting how many troubles we have on the way.
For our respective mums, we aren't going to be in such touristy areas so we may not have any access to the internet for the next 4 or 5 days. Therefore, there is no need to contact the embassy for at least a week if you don't hear from us.
Mic and Ali
Advertisement
Tot: 0.06s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0379s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb