At around 7.30pm we got on the bus to Sapa from Hanoi. In typical SE Asia style, you book your ticket at your hostel, they call their mate who calls their mate who picks you up in a small minibus along with all the other travellers and drops you off in some main bus station or corner somewhere where the main bus will pick everyone up at some unspecified time. We waited on corner watching the motorbike rally until our night bus came along. I’ve heard from quite a few people that this can be a pretty hairy way to travel across Vietnam, but it’s also the cheapest. But tales of stolen baggage, breakneck speeds and massive uncomfyness still isn’t enough to put me off the price. You can book an open bus ticket which is $55 for about six stops from North to South Vietnam.
The bus from Hanoi to Sapa isn't included in the open bus ticket though, and was booked through the hotel and cost $22, as opposed to $35 on the night train, and is around 10-12 hours long.
The seats on the bus where laid out like bunk beds, three rows of them with a tiny walkway in between. They reclined almost all the way back, but if you wanted to sit up you’d have to half reclined and not upright, the chairs just didn’t do upright. They were really small and thin, with metal arm rests to stop you from rolling over into the next persons chair and also to stop the people in the top ‘bunks’ from falling out when the bus made a hazardess turn, which was often. I chose the seats right at the back on the bottom because I didn’t know any better at the time, they seemed away from everyone and like a snugly corner. Boy did I regret that! I had such panics of claustrophobia whenever I thought about trying to get off that I had to swap seats, they were just so tucked away and in a little cave at the back.
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| Stu on the top bunk in the bus - taken with his camera |
Sapa is in the mountains to the North West of Vietnam, and so the bus had to climb some very twisty, windy roads with sheer steep drops on one side and huge potholes and unfinished roads to rattle over. The back of a bus is always the bumpiest,
remember this friends. It was so bumpy that if I lay my head down it would bounce up and down smacking on the back of the chair or the metal bars or wherever my half asleep neck would dare to creep up to. The driving in Vietnam is in
sane. There are no lanes, I’m not even sure everyone knows to drive on the right hand side. Buses squeal and scream down the roads like a Tasmanian devil with its tail on fire. Drivers overtaking on blind corners whilst talking on the phone and smoking is the least of your worries. The headlamps of huge trucks bare down on you in slow motion until you are saying your final prayers, and at the last possible second the bus driver kindly swerves into the ditches and crashes and bumps over rocks to miss the truck, nonchalantly saving the passengers souls. Add to this the neon lights that come on and off at whim, some TV screens that show crazy loud Asian movies that are over dubbed in three languages and the bus fumes that engulf you at the back, means it’s pretty much the most insanely uncomfortable bus ride I’ve ever had. I realise I haven’t been to Cambodia, Loas or India yet and I’ve heard those buses are pretty bad, so I’ll let you know which is worse when I get to them.
I took a sleeping pill and put my music headphones on loud, and went in and out of the strangest dreams and bruises. The driver then stopped and woke everyone up at about 12.30am just as all of our sleeping pills and chronic anxiety had just settled down, to get food and use the toilet (yep, no toilet on a night bus). It felt like the middle of nowhere and was just a big room filled with plastic chairs and everyone slurping pho soup. I went to the outdoor toilet and the fumes that hit me made me gag. They were holes in the ground with no flush or bucket of water, huge armies of flies and mosquitoes and a shaky, swinging light flickering on and off. Hello rural Vietnam public toilet! Although, they really aren’t all as bad as this one. I bought a pineapple cut up in a bag and some water from a two year old baby being held up by his mother to entice people into her shop and sat bleary eyed at a table watching a group of Vietnamese men drinking red bull, smoking and staring at all the Western girls. Eventually and miraculously we reached Sapa and were shoed off the bus as the sun was coming up at 6am.
Sapa is a very beautiful mountain town in North West Vietnam. To the East is the Chinese border and to the West the Loas border. People go there to hike with the
Hmong people and stay in homestays in their villages, and to motorbike around the beautiful mountain roads. It is so different to Hanoi; a small town, hilly, mountainous with crisp air and bright sunshine without smog. The people in this area are rural farmers, but in recent years tourism has probably become one of the main industries. There are quite a few hotels and guesthouses, restaurants and tourist shops. The women of the Hmong tribes cover the town, wearing traditional dress and latching onto any tourist’s side to try sell them something or to offer walks to their villages. It’s the women who do the tourism work, the men I believe are still farmers or labourers. Although there are still small armies on men on motorbikes offering xe om rides whenever they see you walking. As soon as you’re off the bus you have about five women following you and asking the same questions: What’s your name, where are from, how old you are? Oh! So young! They learn English, French and other languages off the tourists, and even the little kids parrot English in a funny way where you know they don’t understand half what they’re saying, but they’ve learnt the right phonetics.
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| Sapa on the hill |
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| Sapa Town Square |
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| Hmong ladies in Sapa |
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| Downtown Sapa |
We were approached by a woman at the bus stop who had a
hostel for $5 a night, so after a quick Vietnamese coffee to try normalise
after the mental bus ride, we set off down the road to her hostel on the hill.
It’s aptly called ‘Back Packer Guest-House' on Hoang Dieu Street, and it was
nice and clean with big rooms and a nice balcony overlooking the town. It’s a
little away from the main drag which is nice, but prone to electricity
blackouts (as is everywhere) and the family who lives there likes yelling outside
your door while they go about their morning chores at 5.30am.
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| Backpacker guest house |
The day was spent wandering around the town, poking around
the market and trying strange and new things to eat. The Sapa women would not
leave your side, and someone tried to sell you something at every possible turn
which became a little tiring. But it was still a pretty town and nice to be in
the mountains so it was a good day, especially after finding a place that did
fresh Bia Hoi for $1 a jug. A lady had set up some tables, chairs and umbrellas
on a street corner (standard practice on every available space of pavement) and had a delicious barbecue on
the go. Sweet potato (which was actually purple inside and out) corn on the
cob, some yummy greens wrapped in bacon and barbecued on a stick, mushrooms,
bread... all dipped in some salty chilly dip. We ate to our hearts content, and
only ended up paying around $4. There is nothing going on in Sapa at night,
besides some guys trying to entice you into their hotel bars to sing karaoke,
so it’s really all about the food and exploring and setting up tours in town.
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| Hanging with the buffalo in Sapa town |
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| Barbecue yum |
The next day Emily arrived and we started on the two day one
night tour of the Hmong homestays. We booked the tour through
Vietnam Nomad Trails
and it cost $26 each and included a guide, trekking into the mountains and
staying at a homestay with all food included. All the Hmong women have the most
beautiful faces, intelligent and weathered with very kind eyes and beautiful
dark hair and caramel skin with rosy cheeks, and our guide was no different. We
set off at a pace through the town and gathered up about six women who intended
to walk the entire way with us. This is what they do with all walking groups,
walking up to 16km a day with the hope that you’d buy something from them. Its
mad but you can’t stop them, they do this daily and most people end up buying
something small because well, you feel you just have to after they’ve walked all that
way with you.
The walk on the first day is very busy with tourists, guides
and women who walk with you. You set out from Sapa and follow the main road
into the valley and then go on a well worn track to the villages. There were
tiny children playing in the rice paddies, farm animals and farmers dotted all
around. The valleys are beautiful and we were really lucky, this area is
usually swathed with cloud it being so high up, but it was blazing sunshine for
us. It was actually boiling hot, bring a hat for sure. You could look down into
the valleys and rice paddies carved into the side of the ravine, and it was
really very pretty. We stopped to enjoy the view and be sold stuff from the
little girls of the villages every now and again. The kids here are so serious,
especially the girls, they all work at a really young age and while there is a
school in the valley they probably are made to work more than allowed to go to
school. I bought some bracelets and asked them if I could take their picture,
and they barely crack a smile. Sometimes when you take pictures and then show
them, their faces break up into big smiles. We stopped for lunch at what looked
like some stables but turned out to be a bit of a tourist cattle market where
all the walking groups stopped for lunch. It was a little tiring to be
approached by women selling things, every minute you had to say no thanks and
shake your head firmly until eventually they went away and the next group
started. They are such beautiful, sweet women though, with laughing eyes and
funny senses of humour that you really can’t dislike them being around, I
longed to take pictures of them all but felt it was too rude without buying
something.
We passed the most touristy bits of the villages, and then
walked up some windy tracks into some quieter farmland and stopped at our
homestay for the night. A homestay is really just a hostel with beds set out in the open mezzanine floor
upstairs, with the family living downstairs. The guide showed up our beds and
then started playing cards with the women of the house, where we were left to
our own devices. A big rest was needed after around 12km of walking in the
heat, and after we cooled down we went for a walk amongst the farms and rice
paddies up the valley. People were still living a really rural life here, and
it must be strange (but probably less and less so) to see tourists with cameras
wandering around while they worked the land. We made our way to the river in
the valley and found a good swimming spot, although this is downstream from
Sapa, and the guide told us not to swim there, but the water didn’t seem too
dirty and we were so hot. The evening brought on some amazing clouds and
sunset, man I love the skies and clouds in the part of the world! Always
changing, beautiful and layered, capable of immense storms and beautiful light.
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| Cute farm children with Farigo, they only smile if you show them the picture |
When we got back there was a truly amazing meal waiting for
us. All traditional Vietnamese (not traditional Hmong as they mostly eat rice
with no meat) and about six different dishes, all fragrant with beautiful
flavours. The women of the house didn’t interact with us too much, but our
guide gave us some rice wine afterwards and one of the women had
a sweet little boy who she named Nicholas and was teaching to speak English, so
he came and did some cute prancing around for a bit. By 8am dinner was done and
the family left us to our own devices. Bring a book or something to entertain
you in the evenings as there really isn’t anything else to do! I luckily had my
music and the lonely planet, but everyone was pretty much in bed by 8.30pm. It
was a long day of walking so was probably a good thing.
The next day was definitely the highlight, as the number of
tourists and walkers dropped off to only a handful, and we walked to really
remote villages with no road access which were really beautiful. They had tiny
schools for the children too, and here the children weren’t all out selling.
One of the women who was following us had a baby on her back, and when we
stopped at tiny shops where the women were much older and more worn. We all bought
machine made bracelets but a really old, sweet toothless lady sold Stu a
handmade one that she had made herself for the same price which was so pretty.
Our guide didn’t say much, mainly just walked briskly on but if we asked her
any questions she could tell us, and she had a really intelligent, demure
personality which I loved. She warmed up to us towards the end and told us
about her children and their funny antics. We walked up the last hill to the
road where thankfully we were going to be driven back to Sapa, after having
knackered ourselves walking in the heat. But not before the last line of old
ladies came out to try sell us the same stuff we had been turning down the
whole way, shame. The road to Sapa was windy and really high up, and we could
see into the valley we had just walked.
Back in Sapa, we decided to stay one more night and hire
some motorbikes the next day, and maybe even drive to the Chinese border near
Loa Cai, about 40km away. We were straight back at the barbecue for dinner and
bia hoi, and then after went for a walk to see what was happening in Sapa which
wasn’t much, although we found a bakery with chocolate cake which was almost real chocolate but not quite, you can't really get it out here. The next day was quite
rainy but the clouds were broken up by the mountains, and so we hired some
motorbikes for $4 (no ID, questions or licence asked for, really trusting! But
if you get in an accident the authorities will get you for not having a
licence) for the day, rode around trying to find a petrol station and then made
it out the town on the high road to the waterfall that they point all motor
biking tourists too. We eventually found it, but it turned out to not be very spectacular
and so just drove the windy mountain roads soaking up the beautiful scenery and
people.
It was freezing cold up in the mist though and so we came back down to
Sapa for some food from the Sunday market. It’s a great food market tucked in
the roads and avenues of Sapa, selling vegetables, meat, fruit, weird and
wonderful concoctions that you have no idea what it could be, and in the centre
a place to sit down and get served something absolutely Vietnamese. There were
some not very savoury sites including whole boiled black chickens and some un
identifiable animal innards at the tables, but the pho soups were really tasty
and the funny shots of the Vietnamese coffee which has no caffeine, so need a
proper coffee out here! While delicious and chocolately the coffee really has
no caffeine hit, and so I had to find a place selling Yorkshire tea just to get
my tiny caffeine hit. We didn’t make it to Loa Cai but had some beautiful rides
around the mountains, I really recommend it.
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| Weird chicken |
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| Stu and Emily back on the road to Hanoi |
That night we got the sleeper bus back to Hanoi, and I
properly dosed myself up for this one. It wasn’t as bumpy as I was nearer the
front this time, but I was at the top by a window and I could see the cliff
drop outside my window and so tried not to think about the bus swerving wildly.
The driver kept stopping in the pitch blackness for no reason and I had visions
of people rifling through our stowed luggage, and the crazy loud music and
movies they put on were so awful, whyyyy. But I did manage some sleep, they
stopped at Hanoi bus station at around 4.30am and let us sleep until around
5.30am, when they gave everyone a heart attack by prodding us off the bus
frantically.
I spent the day in Hanoi hanging out at Emily’s hostel in
the living room playing my ukulele and chatting to some travellers, and at 6pm
got the next night bus for 12 hours to Dong Hoi. Yes, two night buses in a row
people! Time to head to Central Vietnam....
