vietnam, part mot
We are now drawing near to the two-week mark in Vietnam, and all I can say is this: it's not enough.
After the obligatory three days in Hanoi we headed up into the mountains of the northwest, accompanied with the warning (from our travel agent) that it was a Vietnamese five-day holiday weekend & would be difficult to book return tickets.
We left on a Wednesday night overnight hard sleeper, boarding the train in a sudden deluge that soaked all of us to the bone. I was on the top bunk in a three-bunk berth- ordinarily a novelty I would enjoy; in this case, it just meant that I repeatedly slammed my head on the ceiling of the car as I attempted to strip my chilled body of several layers of dripping clothing while simultaneously trying to avoid having my toes eaten by an erratic, unshielded fan. Not my best night's sleep.
At seven in the morning we reached Lao Cai, gateway city to the mountain towns, among them our destination of Sapa. A tout boarded our car before I had a chance even to put on my shoes, offering us a ride in a minibus for the bargain price of 50,000 dong each, only five times the going rate (according to our guidebook). Thanks, but no thanks.
After arriving in Sapa & fielding still more touts, we finally settled into our guesthouse. The prominent feature of our room- and what bumped the price up a few dollars- was the private balcony off the bedroom. Sapa is famous both for being one of the consistently coldest spots in Vietnam, and also for commanding the most spectacular views. As this big holiday was coming up (during which almost all Vietnamese travel, and Sapa is a prime destination) I was pretty pleased with myself that we had secured such an amazing room, and at such a good price (ten USD a night). So you can imagine the feeling when I dumped my backpack on the floor, tossed my coat towards the coat rack, and threw open the balcony doors to see: nothing.
Sapa, as it so often is, was entirely encased in a fog bank that rendered everything for miles completely invisible. Apparently this is the case most days. Following this discovery, I poked around a bit to find that the television was broken, there was no hot water and the water pressure in the shower was nonexistent. I was a little discouraged, to say the least, but my persistence eventually paid off. Not only was the shower (mostly) fixed, but we were rewarded the next day with one of the clear days that makes Sapa the famous tourist destination that it is. Looking out over the balcony from our bed, we could see miles and miles of mountains, tapering off into clear blue and scattered with villages and farmland at their bases. We took advantage of the day & hiked down into Cat Cat, a Black Thai village 2k from Sapa center. Having fielded countless representatives of the hill tribes over the past twenty-four hours trying to sell us everything from blankets to earrings, it was interesting to see how they live. We caught a motorbike ride back up to the top of the hill & began trying to figure out our way out of the town.
I should preface this part of the story by saying that the guy who worked the front desk at our hotel had clearly been trying to figure out how to screw us out of our money ever since we got there. The reason that we were leaving town the next morning (Saturday) instead of staying through the weekend as planned was that he had told us that our room rate would double come Saturday night, and that this would be the case at all hotels in town (not true). At the time, we were inclined to believe him, as we could see ourselves that the town was growing steadily more overcrowded with tourist (both foreign and domestic) by the second. So we made the mistake of asking this guy to look into a bus towards Lai Chau, a town an hour or two to the west & reportedly much quieter.
The reason that we were asking for help from this guy that we were already slightly mistrustful of is that the buses out of Sapa do not run the way the buses in the rest of the country, much less the civilized world, are expected to do. We had asked around at several tourist offices & travel agents & had gleaned the following valuable pieces of information about our desired bus:
So, deciding to so a little investigation of our own, we headed in the direction the Sapa Tourism Center employee had indicated as that of the petrol station. We promptly got lost in the fog.
We were rescued by the Vietnamese Tony Soprano, who had been chilling out in his little "place of business" on the side of the road but was only too eager to swagger over to two damsels so obviously in distress. Between us we had about two words each of Vietnamese, French, and English, but he managed to get the message across: we were only a hundred meters or so from the spot where the bus picked up every morning. A trip to Lai Chau should cost around 40,000d. We were welcome for a drink anytime, and so on. We had been talking about which hotel I was staying at (why, I can't remember) and I walked away without my room key (which I had taken out after failing to recall said hotel's name). I was that flustered by Tony (not his name), although I couldn't tell you why. Anyway, he was exceedingly nice and helpful & almost made up for the fact that when we finally got back to our guesthouse, that jerk of a front desk guy said that he would sell us tickets to Lai Chau for 135,000 each. Plus 10,000 for his commission, of course.
We were resolved: we awoke early & marched our tired bodies up to the "bus stop," figuring that we would catch whatever came our way. The day started out well enough as we were charged only $8USD per night at checkout instead of the expected ten, perhaps to compensate for the lacking amenities, perhaps because the girl checking us out hadn't been informed of her coworker's campaign to liberate us from our dollars. The bus to Dien Bien Phu was so crowded that it was not physically possible for us to board, but the next, a bus headed for Son La (the halfway point between Dien Bien Phu & Hanoi) was headed out half empty, and the driver was happy to take us aboard at a reduced price.
Whatever Lonely Planet writer said that buses in northwest Vietnam are not worth considering is a complete fool. This was hands-down the best bus ride of my LIFE.
We were given the highly coveted back row all to ourselves, save for a few bags of what appeared to be chicken feed. This afforded us a great view as well as a superior level of comfort, which was much appreciated as the bus slowly began to fill. I'm getting ahead of myself though, because not an hour after we left town, the bus stopped abruptly; peering ahead I could see a long, long line of other buses, cars, and riderless motorbikes. Was this a traffic jam? A pileup? Nope. It was my very first landslide! And this is where the real fun began.
I stepped off the bus to witness an impromptu party springing up all around me. There were vendors setting up tents roadside & everyone was spilling from the stopped cars & buses to sit down for tea, a roasted sweet potato, or both. And everywhere- EVERYWHERE- were middle-aged Vietnamese men, on holiday for the weekend and desperate to have their picture taken with me. They also wanted me to smoke their cigarettes, God only knows why. Natalie went off in search of a photo opportunity at the landslide itself, and I was immediately swamped; after twenty cigarettes, ten times as many pictures, and several cups of tea, we finally resumed the ride. One of the guys gave me this really cute little handmade purse as a gift because he thought I was pretty. Awwwwww.
Approximately seven hours later, we arrived in Son La, a brief overnight stop for us on the way to our (now) intended destination of Ninh Binh. For once, we were glad to see the touts that boarded the bus, as this was an area where no one spoke any English whatsoever and the bus station in Son La is literally six kilometers from the town center. Our trusty Lonely Planet listed several guesthouses that did not double as brothels (apparently in Son La, this is a distinction that needs to be made); these listings, however, were also all 6K away. So we decided to try our luck with the nice old lady who boarded the bus, pointed to us, and made a little sleeping motion with her folded hands.
The brothel she brought us to was right across the street from the bus station and, it must be said, very quiet for a Saturday night. We were clearly given the choice room as it boasted a HOT Spice Girls night table. A prostitute kindly came in & woke us up in time for our 5:30 am bus & we were then escorted across the darkened street by a man whom I can only assume was her pimp. All really nice people, though, and I think a bit glad to have some legitimately registered guests for the books.
Another longish bus ride, this one a bit less fun, brought us to Ninh Binh in the north-central area of Vietnam, one of the poorest and least-visited areas of the country. We are leaving tonight & have seen very few westerners the entire time we've been here- most of them, in fact, at the hostel we're staying at. There's not much to this town on its own but there is tons to see in the surrounding area, which was our plan. Unfortunately, almost as soon as we checked into our room, the skies opened and it started to pour. We immediately jumped online to check the weather & found that rain was predicted for the next week.
Well, that has taught me a thing or two about trusting weather.com, because the next day was magnificent. We wanted to visit Cuc Phuong National Park; it's 50k away, and there being no public transportation to the park itself we decided to splurge on hiring motorbikes & drivers for the day. The front desk guy at our hotel hooked us up right away with some friends of his, so at 8:30 this morning ($24 USD lighter) we headed out for the day.
I am really getting to love seeing the world from the back of a motorbike. On this particular occasion we were even given helmets (a southeast Asia rarity) and my driver even spoke a little English, so that he would try to describe the things of interest that we were passing. Taking the "scenic route" added quite a bit of time to the trip, but despite my sore backside I truly enjoyed the ride & felt perfectly safe on those treacherous roads (except the point when my driver pulled out his phone at 80k/hr & started making a call).
Cuc Phuong consists of a primate rescue center, our first stop, and several billion square kilometers of barely traversed jungle. Okay, maybe not billions. We laughed breezily when informed that the 3K hike up to "Ancient Tree" was going to take us two and a half hours; silly moto driver, I thought. Turns out the seven clicks are ALL uphill. I don't know how some of the local women were doing it in high heels. It was nice to be close to nature, even the part where we walked into a pitch-black cave that was basically a sprained ankle waiting to happen. It's a bit disconcerting, being from the States where we are all so conscientiously protected from things that might hurt us by guardrails, non-skid steps and well-illuminated spaces. There's none of that here, and if you slip on that muddy step and go plunging to your death, no one's even going to be looking for you. At the end of one of the paths we saw a sign warning us that the King Cobra was extremely deadly & to be found in almost all areas of the park- this after we had been walking around there for hours. It was an interesting experience as we were surrounded by domestic tourists, it being a Vietnamese holiday, who all seemed greatly amused by our presence. One little boy even shouted "tay oi!" (Westerner) at Natalie.
On another note- Vietnam is the place where I have finally found my balance with beer. In Russia I often found myself in trouble with the local brew Baltika; it comes in nine different strengths, zero being non-alcoholic, 9 being akin to drinking pure gasoline. Of course we all drank the nine (they were all the same price!!). In China the beer was so weak & we spent so much time out with others that I would drink five bottles before I even realized what had happened. Here in Vietnam, however, I have discovered the everlasting joys of One Beer With Dinner. It's a beautiful thing, my friends.
part hai- coming soon.
After the obligatory three days in Hanoi we headed up into the mountains of the northwest, accompanied with the warning (from our travel agent) that it was a Vietnamese five-day holiday weekend & would be difficult to book return tickets.
We left on a Wednesday night overnight hard sleeper, boarding the train in a sudden deluge that soaked all of us to the bone. I was on the top bunk in a three-bunk berth- ordinarily a novelty I would enjoy; in this case, it just meant that I repeatedly slammed my head on the ceiling of the car as I attempted to strip my chilled body of several layers of dripping clothing while simultaneously trying to avoid having my toes eaten by an erratic, unshielded fan. Not my best night's sleep.
At seven in the morning we reached Lao Cai, gateway city to the mountain towns, among them our destination of Sapa. A tout boarded our car before I had a chance even to put on my shoes, offering us a ride in a minibus for the bargain price of 50,000 dong each, only five times the going rate (according to our guidebook). Thanks, but no thanks.
After arriving in Sapa & fielding still more touts, we finally settled into our guesthouse. The prominent feature of our room- and what bumped the price up a few dollars- was the private balcony off the bedroom. Sapa is famous both for being one of the consistently coldest spots in Vietnam, and also for commanding the most spectacular views. As this big holiday was coming up (during which almost all Vietnamese travel, and Sapa is a prime destination) I was pretty pleased with myself that we had secured such an amazing room, and at such a good price (ten USD a night). So you can imagine the feeling when I dumped my backpack on the floor, tossed my coat towards the coat rack, and threw open the balcony doors to see: nothing.
Sapa, as it so often is, was entirely encased in a fog bank that rendered everything for miles completely invisible. Apparently this is the case most days. Following this discovery, I poked around a bit to find that the television was broken, there was no hot water and the water pressure in the shower was nonexistent. I was a little discouraged, to say the least, but my persistence eventually paid off. Not only was the shower (mostly) fixed, but we were rewarded the next day with one of the clear days that makes Sapa the famous tourist destination that it is. Looking out over the balcony from our bed, we could see miles and miles of mountains, tapering off into clear blue and scattered with villages and farmland at their bases. We took advantage of the day & hiked down into Cat Cat, a Black Thai village 2k from Sapa center. Having fielded countless representatives of the hill tribes over the past twenty-four hours trying to sell us everything from blankets to earrings, it was interesting to see how they live. We caught a motorbike ride back up to the top of the hill & began trying to figure out our way out of the town.
I should preface this part of the story by saying that the guy who worked the front desk at our hotel had clearly been trying to figure out how to screw us out of our money ever since we got there. The reason that we were leaving town the next morning (Saturday) instead of staying through the weekend as planned was that he had told us that our room rate would double come Saturday night, and that this would be the case at all hotels in town (not true). At the time, we were inclined to believe him, as we could see ourselves that the town was growing steadily more overcrowded with tourist (both foreign and domestic) by the second. So we made the mistake of asking this guy to look into a bus towards Lai Chau, a town an hour or two to the west & reportedly much quieter.
The reason that we were asking for help from this guy that we were already slightly mistrustful of is that the buses out of Sapa do not run the way the buses in the rest of the country, much less the civilized world, are expected to do. We had asked around at several tourist offices & travel agents & had gleaned the following valuable pieces of information about our desired bus:
- it leaves from near the petrol station up there.
- there are four buses a day.
- the bus leaves between seven-thirty and four-thirty.
- tickets are obtained from the driver and can cost any amount he pleases.
So, deciding to so a little investigation of our own, we headed in the direction the Sapa Tourism Center employee had indicated as that of the petrol station. We promptly got lost in the fog.
We were rescued by the Vietnamese Tony Soprano, who had been chilling out in his little "place of business" on the side of the road but was only too eager to swagger over to two damsels so obviously in distress. Between us we had about two words each of Vietnamese, French, and English, but he managed to get the message across: we were only a hundred meters or so from the spot where the bus picked up every morning. A trip to Lai Chau should cost around 40,000d. We were welcome for a drink anytime, and so on. We had been talking about which hotel I was staying at (why, I can't remember) and I walked away without my room key (which I had taken out after failing to recall said hotel's name). I was that flustered by Tony (not his name), although I couldn't tell you why. Anyway, he was exceedingly nice and helpful & almost made up for the fact that when we finally got back to our guesthouse, that jerk of a front desk guy said that he would sell us tickets to Lai Chau for 135,000 each. Plus 10,000 for his commission, of course.
We were resolved: we awoke early & marched our tired bodies up to the "bus stop," figuring that we would catch whatever came our way. The day started out well enough as we were charged only $8USD per night at checkout instead of the expected ten, perhaps to compensate for the lacking amenities, perhaps because the girl checking us out hadn't been informed of her coworker's campaign to liberate us from our dollars. The bus to Dien Bien Phu was so crowded that it was not physically possible for us to board, but the next, a bus headed for Son La (the halfway point between Dien Bien Phu & Hanoi) was headed out half empty, and the driver was happy to take us aboard at a reduced price.
Whatever Lonely Planet writer said that buses in northwest Vietnam are not worth considering is a complete fool. This was hands-down the best bus ride of my LIFE.
We were given the highly coveted back row all to ourselves, save for a few bags of what appeared to be chicken feed. This afforded us a great view as well as a superior level of comfort, which was much appreciated as the bus slowly began to fill. I'm getting ahead of myself though, because not an hour after we left town, the bus stopped abruptly; peering ahead I could see a long, long line of other buses, cars, and riderless motorbikes. Was this a traffic jam? A pileup? Nope. It was my very first landslide! And this is where the real fun began.
I stepped off the bus to witness an impromptu party springing up all around me. There were vendors setting up tents roadside & everyone was spilling from the stopped cars & buses to sit down for tea, a roasted sweet potato, or both. And everywhere- EVERYWHERE- were middle-aged Vietnamese men, on holiday for the weekend and desperate to have their picture taken with me. They also wanted me to smoke their cigarettes, God only knows why. Natalie went off in search of a photo opportunity at the landslide itself, and I was immediately swamped; after twenty cigarettes, ten times as many pictures, and several cups of tea, we finally resumed the ride. One of the guys gave me this really cute little handmade purse as a gift because he thought I was pretty. Awwwwww.
Approximately seven hours later, we arrived in Son La, a brief overnight stop for us on the way to our (now) intended destination of Ninh Binh. For once, we were glad to see the touts that boarded the bus, as this was an area where no one spoke any English whatsoever and the bus station in Son La is literally six kilometers from the town center. Our trusty Lonely Planet listed several guesthouses that did not double as brothels (apparently in Son La, this is a distinction that needs to be made); these listings, however, were also all 6K away. So we decided to try our luck with the nice old lady who boarded the bus, pointed to us, and made a little sleeping motion with her folded hands.
The brothel she brought us to was right across the street from the bus station and, it must be said, very quiet for a Saturday night. We were clearly given the choice room as it boasted a HOT Spice Girls night table. A prostitute kindly came in & woke us up in time for our 5:30 am bus & we were then escorted across the darkened street by a man whom I can only assume was her pimp. All really nice people, though, and I think a bit glad to have some legitimately registered guests for the books.
Another longish bus ride, this one a bit less fun, brought us to Ninh Binh in the north-central area of Vietnam, one of the poorest and least-visited areas of the country. We are leaving tonight & have seen very few westerners the entire time we've been here- most of them, in fact, at the hostel we're staying at. There's not much to this town on its own but there is tons to see in the surrounding area, which was our plan. Unfortunately, almost as soon as we checked into our room, the skies opened and it started to pour. We immediately jumped online to check the weather & found that rain was predicted for the next week.
Well, that has taught me a thing or two about trusting weather.com, because the next day was magnificent. We wanted to visit Cuc Phuong National Park; it's 50k away, and there being no public transportation to the park itself we decided to splurge on hiring motorbikes & drivers for the day. The front desk guy at our hotel hooked us up right away with some friends of his, so at 8:30 this morning ($24 USD lighter) we headed out for the day.
I am really getting to love seeing the world from the back of a motorbike. On this particular occasion we were even given helmets (a southeast Asia rarity) and my driver even spoke a little English, so that he would try to describe the things of interest that we were passing. Taking the "scenic route" added quite a bit of time to the trip, but despite my sore backside I truly enjoyed the ride & felt perfectly safe on those treacherous roads (except the point when my driver pulled out his phone at 80k/hr & started making a call).
Cuc Phuong consists of a primate rescue center, our first stop, and several billion square kilometers of barely traversed jungle. Okay, maybe not billions. We laughed breezily when informed that the 3K hike up to "Ancient Tree" was going to take us two and a half hours; silly moto driver, I thought. Turns out the seven clicks are ALL uphill. I don't know how some of the local women were doing it in high heels. It was nice to be close to nature, even the part where we walked into a pitch-black cave that was basically a sprained ankle waiting to happen. It's a bit disconcerting, being from the States where we are all so conscientiously protected from things that might hurt us by guardrails, non-skid steps and well-illuminated spaces. There's none of that here, and if you slip on that muddy step and go plunging to your death, no one's even going to be looking for you. At the end of one of the paths we saw a sign warning us that the King Cobra was extremely deadly & to be found in almost all areas of the park- this after we had been walking around there for hours. It was an interesting experience as we were surrounded by domestic tourists, it being a Vietnamese holiday, who all seemed greatly amused by our presence. One little boy even shouted "tay oi!" (Westerner) at Natalie.
On another note- Vietnam is the place where I have finally found my balance with beer. In Russia I often found myself in trouble with the local brew Baltika; it comes in nine different strengths, zero being non-alcoholic, 9 being akin to drinking pure gasoline. Of course we all drank the nine (they were all the same price!!). In China the beer was so weak & we spent so much time out with others that I would drink five bottles before I even realized what had happened. Here in Vietnam, however, I have discovered the everlasting joys of One Beer With Dinner. It's a beautiful thing, my friends.
part hai- coming soon.