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Published: August 13th 2012
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After walking in the rain to the train station we took the overnight sleeper train from Hanoi to Lao Cai. I really can’t understand why they are called sleeper trains because I don’t think I’ve had any kip on any of them yet. If you want to experience what it’s like to travel by sleeper train; whilst closing your eyes, get your wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, neighbour, whoever, to grab you by the shoulders and shake you violently from side to side, then punch you in the arm to reinact you hitting the side of your bunk because the driver has needlessly slammed on the brakes, probably because he has dropped his beer or something! Anyway after nine hours of this torture we arrived in Lao Cai, safe in the knowledge that we wouldn’t have to mess about getting a taxi because the guesthouse we had booked in Sapa was picking us up in a minibus, or so I thought. We walked out of the train station to hundreds of minibus drivers holding up surnames, however after half an hour of checking everyone and most of them driving off with their passengers, we were practically the only ones left on the
platform. It was 5 in the morning, still dark and I hadn’t had any sleep on Vietnams public transport version of Alton Towers the Nemesis – it was safe to say I wasn’t a happy man. Luckily a driver of another minibus said he had room for us and offered to take us for a cheaper price than our forgetful guesthouse was going to charge anyway- happy days again. After a 45 minute drive higher and higher into the mountains and above the cloud level, we arrived in Sapa.
Sapa is a nice little market town built as a hill station by the French in 1922 and its sits overlooking the most spectacular beautiful valley with mountains towering over it on both sides. We were unable to get into our room so we decided to go for a walk into town and find a coffee shop. The morning we arrived the town was shrouded in rain clouds and mist and as soon as you walked anyway you were soaked. As we walked through the town we experienced our first local ethnic minority village people, the Black H'mong. Every day they don their Sunday best traditional clothing and walk up
Small paddy field
Can you spot the pig? to Sapa to try and sell their goods to tourists. It’s only the women because the men are back home working the land/drinking beer/watching family guy on their satellite TV’s! There are many different villages and each has their own style of dress, some with red scarfs, some with blue, some shave just the first half of their heads ecetera and most have blue hands from the dye they use on their clothes. I’d been told not to buy the clothes because as soon as you start to sweat (which is a lot in Vietnam) the dye runs and you end up looking like a Smurf. Some dumbass thinking he was cool had used a scarf as a bandana and his head turned blue for days, muppet. The attention from the locals is quite nice to start with, but they tend to follow you wherever you go and after having zero winks I was not really in the mood for small talk with a scary looking women with blue hands and a half shaven head, sorry luv. After we could finally get in to our room we both crashed out to catch up on some sleep. When we awoke later
that afternoon, the clouds had disappeared and we had the most amazing view of the valley from our balcony. We spent the rest of the day reading and enjoying the view.
The next day we were keen to do some trekking and see some of the local villages. We walked to the nearest village of CatCat which was about three miles away at the bottom of the valley. Like idiots we had assumed that Sapa would be cold like Dalat, so we put on all our hiking gear and warm clothing. However as soon as we dropped down into the valley it was soon 34 degrees again and we looked like proper plonkers. We were a bit disappointed with CatCat as it wasn’t really what we expected, I didn’t even realise we were there until we walked through it. It was just one path going down to the bottom of the valley and all the local houses have just been turned into shops selling their handmade crafts. It was just all a bit too fake and contrived. The walk was lovely and it took us to a lovely river and waterfall. We decided to continue along the river and
stopped and had a picnic, which was nice. We also got surrounded by the most beautiful bufferflies, that sat with us, which felt really strange. The walk back up the mountain was a bit of a struggle in all our winter clothing.
The next day we decided to have a day off from all the walking and hired a motorbike so we could explore the area. The views and scenery were just stunning as we merrily rode past the traditional folk going about the daily business of washing in the steam, harvesting the corn and shepherding their buffalo. We headed down one road which snaked its way along the mountainside towards the river at the bottom of the valley. The road has many streams and waterfalls which cross it and you just have to plough your way through them. One local guy had parked up next to one and was washing his car – well it beats Morrison’s drive through (See video).
On our last day we again headed out to do some more trekking and decided we wanted to head further down the valley to try and find some more villages which are about six miles away.
We decided not to get a guide and just walk ourselves there to save us some cash. Soon enough when we were about half a mile down the road we were again chatting and walking with two local traditional village ladies who said they would walk with us to their village. As it turns out we were quite glad they did as they took us on the most amazing path down the mountainside where no other tourists or tour groups went. It was a lovely walk and as we chatting we found out loads of interesting stuff about their traditions and way of lives. When we got to their village we were again a bit disappointed as it was all a bit too geared up for tourists with load of shops and restaurants. The lovely ladies then invited us into their home and we drank tea and had some lovely fruit that was like some sort of sweet grapes. We did buy some of their traditional goods for a small price but we were more than happy to do so after the amazing walk.
That night we got back on the sleeper train/roller-coaster back to Hanoi. We spent one
more night in Hanoi and as it was our last night in Vietnam and we’d had such a good time, we decided to celebrate and had ten beers for £1.50.
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