31st
Sa Pa: A-Hmong the clouds
Ok ok - so we’ve decided that a pun is now needed in every blog entry, please forgive us.
Before I get into out journey into the northern Vietnamese mountains, Greg thought I should share in our little “missing ATM card” adventure right before we left Halong City. As you may observe, not all ATM’s give you your card back in the same order. When traveling (as anyone will tell you), you let your guard down for a second, money = gone. Tired? Hungry? Unshowered? You must persevere! Either that or you accidentally have your ATM card eaten but not notice until that evening right before you go to bed. I made Greg walk with me like 10 miles to get back to the machine where he then had to scale an electric fence to find out the name of the bank of the ATM (ironically called “Dong Ha” as in “Ha ha your card is missing). The next morning we taxi to 3 different towns looking for this bank until we finally find it. The ornately dressed bank service women (dressed in Miss Saigon outfits perfectly tailored - I can’t imagine their dry cleaning bill) told us to find “Mr. Dinh” who had our card at the ATM we hiked to last night. Thank my VERY lucky stars, I got the card back, literally minutes before we were due to leave on the last bus out of town. WHEW!
So back to our Sa Pa adventure. For those who don’t know - not all of SE Asia is beaches and banana pancakes. There are several ethnic minority tribes that live in the northern mountain regions of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. We go back to Hanoi to meet our friends Joe and Max (the British couple we met in Laos - who are awesome and will come to visit us in SF so you all can meet them!). We luckily get a 4 bed cabin on the overnight train to a town called Lao Cai in which we need to bus to the mountain town of Sa Pa. The nice ladies at Kangaroo helped us out and gave us a good deal on our travel arrangements and were even nice enough to tell us how much we should really be paying for certain things (very helpful in the land of constant negotiations). We get a taxi to the train station and she carefully warns us that we should pay no more than 10,000 Dong each (40k for the 4 of us which is a little less than $3).
On a side note: Greg and I just finished reading the book “The Beach” from which the movie was based (which we haven’t seen) - very excellent book, highly rec’d even if you didn’t like the movie. He says 2 very salient points: the first being that the more you travel the more you realize that there are very little differences between “tourists” and “travellers” - despite what those “holier than thou” traveller types tell you. The second is that he hates dealing with money in poorer countries because he is constantly torn between the hatred of haggling with poverty and the hatred of feeling ripped off. No one wants to be a sucker, but arguing with someone - who makes less than I can pull out of a single ATM trip in a year - over less than a dollar, tears at your heart strings a bit. But I digress….
So as soon as we hop into the taxi, we get a bad feeling because suddenly he’s changed the price on us mid-ride to 50,000 Dong. We insist on the originally agreed price (as is the fair and legitimate order of verbal agreements here) but he continues to be a complete jerk. We arrive at the train station and have the feeling he’ll try to rip us off and steal our packs so Greg and I get out of the car while Joe and Max remain while we unload baggage. Sure enough, as soon as we step out of the car and ask him to open the trunk - he takes off! Max is screaming “help” out the window to an audience of unsympathetic Vietnamese while Joe proceeds to choke hold the driver by the neck from behind while showing him his pocket knife. While this is happening, Greg and I are setting off to run after the car holding our friends and packs hostage to see the car suddenly stop. After much yelling we get him to open his trunk and Max throws 20,000D his way. The ironic thing is - if he made half of what he could have - we would have gladly paid him the full fair if he hadn’t acted the way he did. A little jostled, we make our way to the train. All night long - the 4 of us drink away our worries and are in the bar/karaoke singing car with a bunch of drunken Vietnamese businessmen singing songs we don’t know the meaning of. I have a completely non-sensical conversation with a drunk businessman who has no idea what I’m saying, yet the conversation goes on for about an hour with neither side having any idea of the words being exchanged. We pass out only to be rudely awoken at 5am, 10 minutes before we arrive (the Egyptian trains were much better in my mind - at least they fed you!). Max needs to use the toilet, only to be shoved out of the train by a very rude guard. It’s pouring harder than you can imagine and none of us have (a) showered (b) brushed teeth (c) used the toilet or (d) had breakfast with a chance fully awake. We shuffle buses a couple times until finally we arrive in the foggy town of Sa Pa completely exhausted.
I should also note - this whole time I have become the designated “hotel wrangler” seeing as I’ve become better at haggling since in Asia and I have the best eye for accommodations. We unload from the bus to be physically mauled by hotel touts - and by some unknown power that I didn’t know I possessed, I took control of the situation “Everybody QUIET! - ONE AT A TIME - our party will go to the best bidder and if anyone screams in my face, NO BUSINESS FOR YOU” I find us 2 great rooms for about $10 night with a balcony overlooking what should have been a fantastic view but instead was nothing more than a sheet of white fog. We spend the next 3 days in SaPa waiting for the fog and rain to lift so we can trek into the mountains - to no avail. We end up hanging out in this eerily foggy and strangely Austrian/Peruvian/San Francisco in July-like town where we witnessed 3 motorbike accidents, saw dead baby chickens on a BBQ stick, and bought varies Chinese produced “Hill Tribe” crafts from a couple of slick sales girls barely the age of 15. The children and old folks pull at your heartstrings selling everything they can shove in your face - a constant presence of Hmong hocking goods throughout our time here. They don’t speak Vietnamese - but they learn English surprisingly well (little Ha-ha - I’m talking about you! Go to school please!). Max and I discover a cute sleeping orphan sleeping in the cold we streets and slip him 10,000D under his tiny little hand in hopes that he won’t go the way of the “little Match Girl”.
FINALLY - we got trekking. It’s drizzling, and foggy, and muddier than hell. We rent golashes that barely hold together while we slip and slide down a mountain ridgeline. I discover my inner-mountain-goat and am able to nimbly stay on my feet while our guide slips at least 3 or 4 times while talking to one of his girlfriends on his cell phone. Greg eats it a few times (bad for the knee) and everyone gets a bit muddy - all the while our own private company of Hmong women buzz around our heads like flies asking for money or “selling” their help down the trail. Greg and I joke that their persistence reminds my of zombies in horror movies and we attempt to elude them like one would a flesh-eating walking dead. I tell them to stop bothering us - only to find out that I have a reputation among the Hmong (haha) in town as being the “Ice Queen”. After the 3 billionith “will you buy from me?” and tell them to leave us alone in the meanest voice I can muster - the woman tells me “you have black heart”…. Black Heart! I give money to orphans you toothless tribal hag! Try selling me something useful on a trek instead of home decorating items from China on a 18km hike!
We reach our homestay and meet our host family for the night. We shack up with another 2 couples and spend the night drinking the homebrew rice whiskey and eating their deliciously home cooked meal (with the exception of the water buffalo dish which tasted similar to the way the water buffalo ass would smell). We set off the next day through beautiful bamboo forrests, terraced rice paddies, and breathtaking views. Breaks in the clouds hinted at the beauty that lay beyond - all in all it was stunningly beautiful countryside. My mood lightened - I was even nice the tribes people soon enough (after attempting to beat them off with a stick after lunch). We shower off the caked mud and buffalo poop (literally all over the trail the size of a 3-year-old toddler) in the cool mountain waterfall. We contemplate inner peace over a bowl of instant noodles and bugs. Life is great - I wonder is Greg would be up for a few more miles - but then it suddenly comes to an end and we are whisked away back to our hotel and back to the trainstation to Hanoi. We part ways with our friends Joe and Max. We head straight to Hanoi where we decide to fly to Hoi An (flights are pretty cheap). Then we begin our next chapter which I will only refer to as “my clothing obession days”.
