Halfway Around The World 2017 – Sapa, Vietnam
My trekking adventure begins. Oh how I wish I knew what laid ahead…
At 8 pm, the porter at the hotel drove me over to the train station, checked me in and walked me right to the sleeper train.
I share a compartment of 4 beds with three students from Spain. I convince them I have a bone in my leg (family inside joke) and it’s difficult to climb up to a top bunk so they graciously swap with me. Score! Now the downside. As we pull out of the station, I realize that the mattress is slightly harder than granite. And the train wheels and the tracks are not in complete agreement about what’s going on and we make our journey northwest like a drunk trying to walk the line in a DUI check. Normally I can sleep through anything but this was about the worst I’d ever experienced. I got maybe 2 hours of sleep until we pulled into the Lao Cai station at 6 am.
The train unloads and I look for someone holding a piece of paper with my name on it. Our group of about 10 people gathers together and then we’re in a minivan and go straight uphill. The station is at about 30 meters above sea level, after an hour of switchbacks and cliffs and gorgeous scenery we end up in the town of Sapa at 1500 meters or nearly 5,000 feet.
We’re dropped off at our hotel, but only given a temporary room to have a shower and change and then we’re assigned our guide, called Song, and we head out for an easy 5 km trek around the town. She was no more than 4′ 6″, spoke quite good English and was very funny, telling us stories of how she kicked out her ex-husband after she discovered him cheating on her. Of course it starts raining so we all put on our rain gear.
Back to the hotel, we are assigned rooms and given the evening to ourselves. I wander the town looking for something to eat and come up empty in the face of water buffalo and horse meat so I bought some snacks and had a glorious sleep.
The next morning, we checked out of our rooms and were told to pack only what we needed for the overnight trek into the mountains. Mountains? Who said anything about mountains? I was given a story about an easy walk through rice paddies by the hotel. Song looked at my canvas boat shoes and said they would get wet and dirty and made me change into a pair of ill-fitting Wellington rubber boots. Oh damn, the shit just got real. Then we headed out, along with four little sherpa ladies carrying big baskets on their backs, purpose unknown. I gauge their strength, wondering if they can carry me out of the jungle after I shatter an ankle.
Of course it started raining as soon as we left. After about 5 minutes I stopped to adjust my backpack and when I looked up, my group was out of sight. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I was at a crossroads so they could have gone in any of 3 different directions. Squinting, I see a group down the hill so I continue after them. By the time I caught up, I realized it wasn’t my group. Fack! OK, I’m going to walk back to the hotel, have them call Song and tell her to continue on with the group and I’ll just stay at the hotel. As I’m walking back, two of our sherpas spot me, they had been sent back to find me. They take me through a “shortcut” to meet up with the group and after an hour we all come back together at last. Damn, this is strike #3 for me on this trip. I’ve got to up my game or I could have a more serious incident.
This is where the fun, I mean death march, begins. Up and down. Mud-covered narrow trails. Rocks. Jungle. Rushing creeks and rivers. Up and down some more. Rain. Sunshine. I guess I should feel lucky, I wasn’t attacked by any wild animals. I’m going to have a chat with the ladies at my hotel about how they market this trip. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re young, healthy, have well-broken-in hiking boots, climbed Everest without oxygen and have a significant portion of mountain goat in your DNA. Were the views spectacular? Yes. Did I have a sense of awe about the majesty of nature? You bet. Would I do it again? No fucking way. One guy in our group, a rugby-player sized Aussie with a bad knee gave up after about halfway through and Song called for a taxi to come and pick him up at a well-known bamboo shack on the side of the road in a village. I considered going with him, but I felt I could get to the end and prove something to myself, so I persisted.
We stop for lunch at a large bamboo-covered restaurant which was clearly the place to be for all trekking groups, probably a hundred people there.
We then continued the aforementioned up and down ad nauseam until we came to a big river crossing with a 100 foot-long rope bridge. Yeah, that was not good. It did have a beautiful waterfall, along with a building showing off local dance, hemp weaving, batik and indigo dyeing. The locals make Indigo from a root here and make their own beautiful clothes. You have to wear gloves in the dyeing process or your skin turns green for weeks.
At one point, we’re walking down well-worn stone steps in a village, past the indigo dye vats, pigs and water buffalo and I spot a guy squatting on the ground doing a splice on a fiber optic cable for Internet to the village. Damn. Talk about an abrupt leap forward.
We complete the day as we come down a 45 degree angle slope alongside a 3 meter wide water pipe leading to a hydro power station at the bottom of the hill. Makes sense to use of the abundant running water and generate some power here. We walk into a village and find our “homestay”, a two-story high, you guessed it, bamboo guesthouse. The bottom level had the eating area, two bathrooms with showers and four small private rooms. The upstairs was laid out with an array of foam pads and mosquito nets. I staked my claim in a corner and laid down on my pad and thanked the stars for getting me through the day. Of course ended up with four pretty bad blisters so I break out the band-aids.
Exploiting the miracle of modern technology, I pull out my phone, get on the bamboo WiFi and watch SpaceX launch the Air Force’s X-37B space plane and nail another ground landing of the booster rocket. I’m at the top of a mountain in a bamboo hut in the jungle of northern Vietnam and I just watched a rocket launch in Florida, in real-time. Damn.
We gather for dinner and then all crash hard early in the evening.
The next morning Song offers up an easy looping trek after breakfast. She looks at me, I give her the stink eye, she laughs and about half the group heads out with her.
They return about 2 hours later, we all pack up and take an easy hike, really, to another lunch place, then pile into a minivan for the trip back to the hotel. Yet another temporary room to shower and change.
Given that my whole body is aching, I head over to a massage place. Comparing the technique to Thailand, it was quite similar but there was a significant amount of slapping, which was weird.
We pile into the minivan and coast down the hill for an hour to the train. I shared the compartment with two young Thai people so we chatted a bit. The mattress was still just as hard but I was out like a light.
The previously arranged pickup never arrived so I walked, no more like hobbled, back to the hotel. I had to wake up the man who was supposed to be working at the front desk, only to be told the room I had reserved for my return was in use, maybe one would be available in 3 or 4 hours. Ugh.
I break out Google Maps and look for a coffee shop or something nearby. And this is when it starts raining. Just bucketing down so I take shelter under a shop awning. It’s 6 am on Sunday morning and almost nothing is open. I do find one place called Xofa, it was glorious! People were sleeping in soft comfy chairs, probably in the same situation as me, and the staff didn’t seem to mind. I find a couch, read my book for a while and then fall asleep in place. I woke up some time later and had a very nice breakfast. More reading then I hobble back to the hotel and the day shift ladies are back and I get my room and crawl into the very soft bed. Zero shattered ankles and I can say I conquered the jungle and lived to tell the tale!
Up next: The last days in Hanoi.
