Around Sapa

Tuesday we took a night train from Hanoi north toward Sapa.  The train leaves around 11 pm, and arrives around 6 the following morning.  The train car we had is very much a vintage experience, but comfortable.  We had two lower beds in a four-person room (no one else, so we had the whole room to ourselves).  Fresh linens on the beds, water bottles and snacks all included.

We bought a beer to share, did a little reading, and were soon asleep.  Only complaint was the noise.  You know how, when the train passes through Ashland, you hear it rumble?  On the train, the rumbling doesn't stop, but we mostly slept anyway.

The train goes from Hanoi to Lo Cai; we were picked up there and rode a large van the 45 mins up to our hotel in Sapa.  We enjoyed a large buffet breakfast at the hotel, showered (they have an area of shower rooms for guests arriving on the morning train, too early to check in to a room), loaded up our day packs, and at 9 am joined a group for our first trek.  One of the main tourist activities around Sapa is trekking (really, a day walk) to what are termed "minority villages:" more or less traditional villages inhabited by Hmong and other ethnic groups in the nearby mountains.

Our guide was Liu, and she set a brisk pace as our group of about 10 walked out of town.  The initial climb was very steep (is the US the only place that uses switchbacks?) and the descents were steep and slippery on the clay soil.

By the first rest break our group had dwindled to seven: two young brothers from Switzerland, a German, a younger Thai couple, and us.  We were accompanied on the walk by a few Hmong women who would occasionally help us on the steeper and more slippery sections.  Before our lunch break, they pulled handmade shawls and other items out of their packs and invited us to buy from them.

Although we were expecting mountain trails, much of the time we were walking along surfaced paths and under-construction roads.  Sapa has exploded as a tourism destination in recent years, and there is more construction activity in the vicinity (roads, water lines, hotels and other buildings) than I have ever seen anywhere before.  The route we were on today is very popular, and we were frequently leap-frogging other groups.

We enjoyed a very nice lunch at the Chapa Ecolodge (where Ellen and I would return to sleep), and finished our 14 km trek in the Hmong village of Lao Chai.  This was a little disappointing.  We expected a more traditional experience, but our path through the village was little more than a string of shops selling local handicrafts or food and drink.  At the end, a van shuttled everyone back to their accommodations: the others to the hotel in Sapa, us to a junction from which we could walk back down to the Ecolodge.  We had a very nice bungalow there, and enjoyed a yummy dinner in their small dining room.

A van picked us up the next morning shortly after 8 and shuttled us back to the hotel in Sapa for another trek. This one was to Cat Cat village, right at the edge of Sapa town, and was quite a disappointment.  Cat Cat is a constructed village, sort of a mini ethnic Disneyland.  Many of the Asian tourists rented traditional dress to wear as they walked around.  Can you imagine the howls of cultural appropriation if we visited (e.g.) Navajo lands and rented their traditional ceremonial dress to parade around and take selfies?

This day's trek finished by early afternoon, so we had time to take a first funicular, a very long gondola ride and then a second funicular to near the top of Fansipan,  at 3143 m. the highest point in Vietnam.  It was very windy and cold, mostly in the clouds with occasional breaks for views, and the walking paths are almost all steep stone steps.

I'm told it was about 600 stairs from the summit back down to the cable car: hard on aging knees.

Our third day's trek was the best by far.  It was just the two of us and our guide Liu, and we were on a route that is not overrun with visitors (we saw only two other pairs of trekkers with their guides at our lunch stop, none while we were walking).  We walked through another Hmong village, and finished in the Dzao village of Ta Phin.  From there, a car brought us back to Sapa town.

with our guide, Liu

Liu is 21 years old with two children: almost 3 and 1 year old.  She and her family live in a village a few kilometers past Lao Chai (where she grew up).  Her husband farms, mostly rice and corn which they eat.  She understands and speaks excellent English, all learned from talking with tourists.  On this day's trek we had opportunities to talk about the recent growth in Sapa and trekking tourism, and the impacts on Hmong (and other) cultures.

Ellen carries embroidery thread to hand out.  Always appreciated

Hmong and Dzao women

After cleaning up we walked around town for a bit, and enjoyed an early dinner with a young couple from New Zealand we'd met.  After dinner we were shuttled back down to Lo Cai for another night train to Hanoi.  Once again we had a nice compartment to ourselves, and this train was a little quieter.  A half hour before our arrival in Hanoi an attendant knocked to wake us up; 15 minutes later they came back with tea.  We were met at the station a little after 5:30 and cabbed back to our hotel in Hanoi.  Too early to check in, so we had breakfast and walked around town until about 9:30 am.  After cleaning up in our hotel room, we spent the rest of the day doing a little more exploring in Hanoi, and researching and booking a room near Ninh Binh for after our upcoming boat trip on Ha Long and Bai Tu Long Bays.  We had an excellent Vietnamese dinner at the restaurant Highway 4, and then joined the Saturday evening throngs enjoying vehicle-free weekend walking around the Hoan Kiem lake.  We will be picked up for the shuttle to our boat trip early tomorrow morning.

Most of you know that Ellen and I tend to travel quite spontaneously and independently, so it's been a departure for us to make advance bookings.  But we worked with the staff here at the Hanoi Golden Moment Hotel to book our Sapa arrangements (travel and transfers, lodging and trekking), and they did an excellent job.  While in Sapa we worked with them to book our upcoming three-day boat excursion around the Ha Long Bay area.

And finally, a technical note.  The default code for "following" this blog did not seem to work.  After a little research I tuned the HTML code, and the "subscribe" box now seems to work just fine.  If you sign up, you should receive an email within a day after each new posting is added.  It's easy to unsubscribe.