Sapa birding, part one

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I'm a few weeks behind on the travelling updates, mainly because for the last two weeks of Vietnam I was just sitting in Sapa doing nothing much at all through a combination of fog, rain, public holiday weekends, getting sick twice, and getting a slight head injury.

As of the last blog post I was at Ba Be National Park. From there I caught the red mini-bus back to the town of Thai Nguyen - this turns out to be the direct bus, contrary to what is said on the internet. It goes a different route to the beige mini-bus, with most of the way from Cho Don to Thai Nguyen being along a winding one-bus-wide road through the rural villages. It only costs 100,000 as well, so is slightly cheaper than the two-bus method I used coming the other way. It leaves Ba Be between 5.30 and 6am, and I got to the Thai Nguyen bus station at 10.40am.

I was intending to go to Sapa in the far north of West Tonkin because this is renowned for excellent montane birding, but it is quite a long way to get up there. I knew there was an "express" bus from Hanoi to Sapa at 7am, and also an "express" train for several times the price. I figured I'd get to Thai Nguyen and see if there was a Sapa bus there, otherwise I'd return to Hanoi for the night.

The bus people are excellent up here. If they know where you want to go (say, Sapa), when you arrive at the bus station they will drop you at exactly the right bus rather than leave you to wander round getting lost and confused.

So there was a bus leaving at 12.10 for Lao Cai which is the main town nearest Sapa. It was one of the sleeper buses which I dislike - they aren't great for Westerners over a certain height. In 2015 when I was going from Saigon to Mang Den I caught my first Vietnamese sleeper bus. That was an overnight one, and I ended up in a bed directly under one of the air-con vents. The next day my face was rashed up like I'd been attacked by millions of blackflies. That happened again on this bus. It's not pleasant.

It cost 200,000 from Thai Nguyen to Lao Cai (cheaper than the Hanoi express bus), and on arrival at 5.20pm there was a local bus waiting to take people to Sapa. This cost 30,000 and took an hour and a half, arriving at 6.50pm. The first third of the route is through the city which seems like a nice sort of place, and then the rest is up a winding road into the mountains.

I went to a couple of guesthouses where the bus stopped, which were a bit too expensive, and then a lady on a motorbike said she had a room for 160,000 so I went with her to the Honeymoon Hotel. It was a Wednesday night when I arrived. She said I could stay there for three nights but the weekend was booked.

I knew Sapa is a popular weekend destination for Vietnamese, but I didn't realise how much the weekend prices differ from the weekday prices. My room was 160,000 - but on the weekend it would be one million Dong! Also it turned out that the coming weekend was a public holiday, so pretty much the entire town was booked up until Monday, and anywhere that wasn't booked yet was ridiculously expensive.

The next morning I slept a bit later than normal because I was tired after several days of little sleep (getting up so early to look for night herons). My plans for Sapa were to visit the Ham Rong Gardens in town which are a particularly good bird spot; to visit the Tram Ton Pass area for more birds; and to go to the summit of Mt. Fansipan for even more birds. These are all basic sites to get to - walk to the first one, motorbike to the second one, and cable-car to the third one - but Sapa has some unreasonable weather patterns.

After breakfast I went outside to go to the Ham Rong Gardens and found myself walled in by pea-soup fog. Actually, "pea-soup" makes it sound clearer than it was. Think of something less clear than pea-soup and that was how thick the fog was. Wet concrete maybe. It was so foggy that from across the street I could no longer see the hotel. I walked to the gardens anyway, just to see where they were and in case the fog was clearer there. It wasn't and I didn't want to pay the entry fee when I wouldn't be able to see anything, so I returned to the hotel. I checked all the other hotels along the way for weekend rooms, to no avail.

On Friday morning the fog wasn't as bad. It was more drizzle than fog really, so I went to the Ham Rong Gardens. From my hotel I just walked the wrong way up the one-way street outside and after about five minutes or so I arrived at a church and turned left. The entrance to the gardens are just up there. They cost 70,000 Dong for entry. While there I discovered a homestay, actually inside the gardens, which has (very basic) rooms for 100,000 Dong. I guess nobody knows it's there because they were empty. So that was me sorted for the weekend. I had been going to catch the bus back to Lao Cai and find somewhere there until Monday, but this was much more convenient.

Not so convenient was the fog which re-appeared soon after I arrived. I could hear birds but almost all of those I could see were little more than shadowy outlines. The first birds I could identify were right after I entered, a small flock of puff-throated bulbuls which are common all over Vietnam. The next identifiable ones weren't for about two hours more, and they were hair-crested drongos which are also very common. It's very frustrating being able to see that there are birds in trees no more than ten metres away, and not be able to tell at all what they are! I did see a few others over the day which were close enough to be seen, although the warblers had to remain as unknowns because I just don't do warblers. Otherwise there were some black-headed greenfinches calling from the tops of pine trees, a white-tailed robin, and best of all a noisy little flock of vinous-throated parrotbills. I've seen these before, in China, but all the parrotbills are great and these one appeared right when there was a break in the fog so I even got to see them properly.

There was also a mole cricket crossing the path which was exciting. I think that's the first one I've ever seen. I wasn't so excited about the leeches though. I haven't encountered many leeches in Vietnam and I hadn't expected any here, so I got leeched of blood a little.

The gardens are quite large and being on a hill there are lots of steps. It's more of a wild garden than an ornamental garden, although there are cartoonish statues scattered around, some ornamental flower beds, and such like. However most of the area is just forest and scrub. Most visitors are there just to visit the pagoda and to go up to the look-out on the summit. I went up to the pagoda but couldn't see it in the fog. There's no point continuing on past there because all the forest has been cleared and turned into bare crop-fields, although that is where I saw the white-tailed robin. The route to the look-out is really interesting, winding through huge limestone outcrops covered in moss and ferns. Actual rock gardens.

On Saturday morning I left the Honeymoon Hotel and moved to the homestay at the Ham Rong Gardens. I left most of my stuff at the hotel because I didn't want to carry it all round there and then back again a couple of days later. The streets were packed with people and buses and cars and policemen. Sapa really is a weekend town. The lady I had talked to at Ham Rong the previous day wasn't there, so I went from person to person asking which room to take, but getting only a shake of the head in reply because none of them spoke English. After a few tries I found a lady who expressly said "no, no homestay!" - while we were literally standing under the big sign saying "Homestay". I assumed she meant they were full, and protested that I had booked the room yesterday. She kept saying there was no homestay, but luckily the original woman turned up just then, and there was what sounded like an argument. I thought I might be going to Lao Cai for the weekend after all! But it got sorted and I was allowed to stay. I'm not sure what the problem was. They certainly weren't full. Almost every other room was empty. It was like they just didn't want anybody staying there.

The homestay isn't really a homestay at all, just a building with about twenty rooms, each bare except for a mattress. There's nothing else provided, not food, not even a towel. I had forgotten to bring a towel round, because everywhere in Vietnam provides towels. I asked the man who was showing me to the room if he had one, which I thought was a reasonable enough request. He sort of laughed and said "no, it's not a hotel". If you were wanting to be in the gardens for a couple of days (and the only reason you'd want to be doing that is if you were a birder) then this is a good enough place to stay, but otherwise it isn't very convenient and you can't go out of the gardens to do anything else without paying the entry fee every time to come back in again.

The corridor leading out to the toilets was lower than necessary. The ceiling beams were just around my head height. I was following the man along here, walking fast with my head bowed to avoid them, and hence didn't notice the last beam across the corridor was much lower, right on my face-height. Seriously, who puts a ceiling beam down at face-height?! I hit it so hard I just about knocked myself out. I'm not exaggerating either; I ended up on the floor wondering what the heck just happened. I think I got a concussion.

The morning was foggy as with the previous days, but at 11am the fog just vanished, like a snap of the fingers and it was suddenly gone. I had a splitting headache, not surprisingly, and my vison had started to blur which wasn't good. This is apparently also the part of the trip where I get sick. I've had a sore throat for a few days and the achy joints have just appeared, so that combined with the head-banging meant I wasn't in the best of shape. I didn't want to waste the first clear day here, but at 2pm I had to give up and go lie down for the rest of the day. I didn't see much before that. Japanese white-eyes, black-throated tits and a hill prinia were new for the trip, but most birds were the same as I'd seen yesterday. I did find these very cool little centipedes congregating on some of the rock-faces, brightly-coloured in purple and blue, and with long pairs of spines on each body segment.

On Sunday I only made it to 9.30am before having to go back to my room and lie down in the dark for the rest of the day. Brown-breasted bulbul was new for the trip, although I've seen them previously in China.

Monday morning was again clear. I think the Sapa tourism department has made a deal with the weather, because all three days of the long weekend were clear and sunny. I actually felt much better, having sweated all the bad sickness out during the night. I decided to see what walking felt like. There were lots of brown-breasted bulbuls about, and some hill prinias and drongos. Nothing I hadn't already seen. I quickly realised that although I felt fine otherwise, I still had a bad headache. So I decided to be sensible and stop for the day before it got worse. Sapa hadn't been going great so far, with the fog to start with, then the unexpected holiday weekend, and then the sickness. Grand total for three days at the gardens was just fifteen species of birds!

The Honeymoon Hotel had a room for me again on Monday, so I went back round there. It's a simple walk, all downhill too, but it left me with a swimming head. Another rest day really seemed like the best choice, although the feeling of just wasting time was gnawing away at me. Hopefully the good weather would hold until I could actually get out and do something!

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