Our Big Explore: Trekking in Sapa, Vietnam

Thursday 17^th Oct.

Something we definitely learned in China, is that travel time and distances, is always much longer than we are told. So we got up early, to make sure that we would catch the bus, between Kunming and the Chinese/Vietnamese border. According to what the hostel staff told us, it would take us 1 hour with public transport to get to the bus terminal. So we counted on 2 hours. We had to change bus once, and it took ages before the next bus approached. We could see that a lot of people were waiting for the same bus, so we got nervous, if we all could fit in there. It came after 45 min. and we only just fitted in there. It was a very old wooden bus, no suspensions and very few seats. Its engine were more dead than alive, and it was uphill to the bus terminal, so we only drove 5-15 km/h. Exciting ride and we were glad, that we had enough time. It took 2h 15min.

We bought our tickets and ate breakfast 2 yoghurts, 1 banana and some crackers (digestive) each. The bus didn’t arrive at the gate, and we kept asking different people if we were at the right spot. When it was suppose to leave, we got guided by other passengers, and found our bus in the back of the bus terminal. Then we realized why the bus hadn’t entered the gate, there were 3 mechanics buried in the engine compartment, they were literally greased in oil from head to feet. The driver was yelling at them and going out of his mind. Finally, 30 min. delayed, the bus was rolling. After just 2 hours we had a break, which was odd because we already were late, but in the break the driver was working, or pretending he was, on the engine. While the other passengers were eating from the dirty street kitchen, just outside the most disgusting toilets, we were walking around the small houses, and watched the most awful sight, until now. A truck filled with small cages, stocked together with several hundreds of dogs in, some barked, some was fighting for their lifes, and some gave up already. It was like a knife got twisted in our hearts, like the worst nightmare you can imagine!

1½ hour delayed (5.30pm), we arrived at the chinese border town Hekou, and had no clue where to go. The town looked very small, and the taxi drivers only wanted 20 Yuan (18kr), to take us to the border, so we decided to walk, the apparently short distance. A woman told us that it was around 1 km. This became the longest kilometer we ever walked, probably 5-6 km, and 2 hours later we finally got to the border office. Now the nerves began, we read that we shouldn’t expect any service after 6 pm, we got there at 7.30 pm. We didn’t have a return ticket out of Vietnam, which is necessary to get the 15 days visa, that Scandinavians get for free. We first got a stamp in our passport = no turning back to China.

We had to cross a bridge before we got to the Vietnamese border, which means that if we didn’t get in to Vietnam, we would most likely have to sleep on the bridge, or we didn’t know what would happen actually, we could definitely not get back into China. We agreed that I should lead the word, since Miss Thomsen were more nervous and grumpy.

Finally after 20 min., just watching the border controllers flipping our passports in every possible direction, we got the approval stamps, and could now legally enter Vietnam.

We got met by a lot of taxi drivers (yeah they speak English in Vietnam), that wanted to drive us to Sapa, actually our next destination, but because it now was so late, there was no more public busses running this day, and the taxi’s wanted 200.000 Dong each (52,25 kr.), it’s so easy to convert the vietnamese dong into danish kroner, you just have to devide the amount with 3850, then you have it in kr.) for the 38 km uphill drive, we knew that the bus prices should be between 40000-60000 Dong each, so we decided to find a hotel in the Vietnamese border town (Lao Cai) for the night, and then take the public bus the next morning.

Now this was easier said, than done… We had no map over the city, it was dark, we already had walked way more, than any other day with all our stuff, so our backs and feet was killing us, and we only had 2 yoghurts, 1 banana and 0,5 l. water each the whole day.

After 30 min. we finally found a little hotel (more likely a motel), it costed 200000 Dong for a db. room, this sounded pretty cheap, so we quickly decided for it, but before we just wanted to check the room, Lisbeth did so, and when she and the receptionist, walked down the stairs to the lobby again, Lisbeth was completely white in her face (more than usually) – she just looked at me and said: Come on Erik, we’re leaving…

So we did, me without asking any questions, I thought there probably was a good reason. When they had entered the room, a 15 cm. big lizard were crawling up the wall… Hmm… I thought she had prepared herself a bit more for animals, than she obviously had… So after 5 min. walking I told her, that she really had to man a bit up, because the animals would most likely only get bigger, and more common from now on. Unfortunately I was right.

At the next hotel, I had a 90 % de ja vu, only the price of the room, and the animal wasn’t the same, else the exact same story, as with the first hotel. This time a big frog was sitting in the middle of the room, when they entered it!

In the end, after 2 hours searching, we found a room for 250.000 Dong, with no visible animals in it.

After getting our backpacks of, and locked into the room, we went out for some quick dinner, at a local street kitchen (it was 45000 Dong for both of us) – had a long hot shower when we got back, and then passed out in our beds.

We left the hotel in the morning, struggled with our backs for a couple of km.’s and realized that the public bus, was only running one time in the afternoon. So we had to pay the price for a minibus, which we were trying to avoid the day before, but what are you gonna do! We had to go to Sapa.

We bargained with the driver, and got it for cheap, 100000 Dong for the 38 km drive. We waited for a while before we actually left, and that didn’t surprise us at all. The road was really narrow, muddy and unfinished, plus we were driving in the mountains with sharp corners, so all in all a quite exciting trip.

Everything is cheaper in Vietnam – awesome for our strict budget.

We stayed at Green Valley Hotel, 5 min. walk from town. It slowly began to rain, as we got higher up in the mountains. High humidity, cloudy and colder than anywhere else we’ve been. Like a grey and sadly rainy day in Denmark. Great to feel like home actually!

Sapa is full of foreigners and booming of tourism, it’s one of the best trekking areas in Asia, with loads of rice paddies, valleys, mountains and local villages with minority groups. It’s mostly misty and cloudy, but even though Sapa is still a fascinating destination.

We got approached by a local woman, from the H’mong minority, and she offered us to trek with her, and have a homestay, with her and her family the next day. That sounded very interesting, and much cheaper and realistic, than what the travel agency could offer us. We should pay 1 million dong for the trip.

The rest of the day we were writing on our blog and researching, that’s basically what we do, if we’re not on a trip, or out on adventure. Most of the time, we find a bar/restaurant with free wifi, and hang out there most of the day. We encourage each other to write the blog, and are really happy that we do it, cause it’s definitely something that we will look back at in the future - so that’s what we call a working day!!

Saturday 19^th Oct.

In the morning we packed our small bags, and left the big ones at the hotel (free luggage storage).

We got picked up at our hote, and left town, with our host and guide for the next 2 days (it was only us, and a french guy doing the homestay).

We just got out of town, and then the journey began. They (3 H’mong women) led us up on small, steep and narrow paths. As we got higher and higher, there was more mud, and it became really slippery from time to time. You really had to watch your steps and always look one or two steps ahead. The tiny H’mong women made it look like a walk in the park, but for us it was a really tough challenge and demanding. Unfurtunately it was misty, so the visibility was bad, and every now and then it rained. We enjoyed the trekking a lot, and the weather conditions didn’t bother us that much, we found it very exciting anyway.

We met a lot of farmer animals on the way, and couldn’t stop thinking about, how well they treat animals here, compared to China.

As we were walking in the rainforest, the women were telling us about all the plants that they use for sewing, head-ache medicine and colouring clothes. We walked through small places, where wild cannabis was growing, and they use the straw for thread, in their sewing.

They impressed us with folding every little straw, into animals and hearts. (Broder Salsa ville være gul og grøn af misundelse).

We got to our hosts home around 3pm. (after 15 km. of trekking). A wooden house with concrete floors, no isolation, tons of bags with rice, very dark, no toilet (only in the fields outside), open-fire in the “kitchen” (also the only heating source), no closets – only lines for hanging clothes, cold arrangement.

Just outside there was huge rice paddies, and the only water they have, is the rain water coming from the mountains.

Our host and her husband, (who wasn’t there), were self-sufficient, and had 4 children, no one in the family could read or write.

They served us a delicious lunch, with their own rice, vegetables etc. We hang out in front of the fire most of the afternoon, and got really sored in our butts, of those small stools.

They had dried corns hanging over the fire, and her friend used them to introduced us, to their kinds of popcorn, and after that we introduced them to European popcorn. See the video below.

Dinner was well served as well, and as a dessert she introduced us to the H’mong peoples, so called happy water, which was rice wine, with different tastes. One of them tasted like “kleine feigling”, so we agreed every time she offered us more.

At bed time, the children arranged some blankets on the floor, and we realized later, that it wasn’t for us, it was for them. So we got one of the two beds in the house, the French guy got the other, and the family slept on the cold concrete floor.

At 4.30 in the morning we woke up, by the noise of the male chicken outside, the rain pouring down the roof, and the smell of open-fire inside.

Breakfast was leftovers from the day before, fried-rice mixed with eggs, we had a hard time eating rice in the morning, but knew that we should eat some, since we were going trekking again.

The trek was much easier next day, we stayed on the concrete roads most of the time, and we walked through 3 minority villages. They are extremely small people, and they’re all wearing the same clothes, bracelets, huge earrings, scarfs rolled around their head, and their little wooden baskets. They all sew their own clothes, and the thread is from the natures straws.

We had much better visibility than the day before, and the scenery with all the rice terraces was stunning, and much more beautiful than we dare to imagine. It was a tough trek, since we mostly were walking uphill. The trek was 11 km and we got home to the hotel 1.30pm.

Now it was time for a rest, in our awesome bed with bed heating (a big blanket underneath the sheet, just like seat heating in cars) what a great invention. As told before it wasn’t warm there. The hotel did our laundry, all our clothes was either muddy or smelled like smoke.

Demanding trekking

Our host is in the middle

Fresh picked cannabis

Cooking food

Living room

Master bedroom

Rice terraces

Waterbuffalos everywhere

A real collector zone

Sunday seewing meeting on the corner

Trekking Video

Monday 21^st Oct.

We slept in and had a solid breakfast at the hotel, checked out and went to one of the many restaurants in town, with wifi. Here we were chilling all day, until we had to catch the sleeper bus to Hanoi at 6pm.

We were satisfied with our time and trekking in Sapa, besides that the weather could have turned out better. Now we were really looking forward to the beaches and cold drinks.

The bus drivers that should take us to Hanoi, were really rude, aggressive and unpolite to us. They were 2 young boys, really immature and thought they owned the world, and the bus of cause. They didn’t seemed to like tourists at all, and definitely not us. At one point the one driver came and took Lisbeths sleeping blanket, and told us we could share one, eventhough there was enough for all in the bus, but it was basically just to annoy us. I told him to give it back, and he threatened us with throwing it in our face, and seemed pissed off, for no reason. This was just in the beginning of the journey, so we realized quickly that it would be a living nightmare, to get to Hanoi. Most of all because of the drivers, but also because of the unfinished narrow mountain roads, and their terrible driving habbits.

We were put in the back of the bus, with a german guy and a chinese couple. All tourist in the bad spots, and all Vietnamese in the good spots, that’s not really how you attract more tourists. We only had small periods of sleeping, and were exhausted when we got dropped off at 4.30am in Hanoi, or actually 4 km outside of Hanoi.

The driver was giving us shit again, because he saw that we locked our backpacks together and to the bus - just to feel more safe. But he was freaking out again, so while I was trying to unlock our bags, Lisbeth was keeping him away from me, otherwise he was in my face all the time, and pulled in our bags.

It’s really normal to lock your bag here, because you can never trust anyone.

Well, we had to take a cab from there to the bus station in the city. We shared it with the german guy, since he was going in the same direction. We catched the next bus to Haiphong, and finally got some sleep, only for about two hours though.

We weren’t sure, if we would spend a night in Haiphong, or just leave to Cat Ba Island immediately. We walked around in Haiphong for a while, to check it out and find some breakfast. Haiphong didn’t seem interesting enough for us, so we decided to travel further on to the island.

Found the harbour shortly after breakfast and a motorbike ride. Bought our tickets, and this was the first time we got scammed. We payed for a speed boat, that would take 1½ hour. After 1½ hour we stopped by a harbour, and we could tell on our map, and our compass, that it wasn’t our destination. Well with a little nervous feeling inside, we stayed on the boat without knowing where it was going.

We didn’t want to ask any of all the weird, smelly and curious bong smoking fishermen, they were already creepy enough, and we didn’t want to let them know, that we were nervous about the trip and them.

They got really close to us, and we were really alert, and holding on to our bags. One of the guys was asking me, if we should change watched, cause he saw that mine was with etc. compass, that’s where it started to get really strange, because him and his friend was whispering about us (or the watch), pointing and laughing. We actually both got paranoid, but were trying to act cool, meanwhile we were arranging what to do, when we got off the boat, and how to react if they would come near us. At that point we were sure that they would definitely steal my watch. When we approached the harbor, and we finally realized that we got dropped off the right place (just an hour to late, and with paying 70000 dong too much each), we could relax a bit more. At the end it all turned out good.

We assume that they were just curious fishermen, that didn’t see tourist a lot. Weather on the island were smoking hot, which we had been looking forward to, the last couple of weeks.

The trip from Sapa to Cat Ba Island is around 600 km and took us 21 hours to travel, we were damn tired and thirsty. First bar we saw after 2 min. walk, we agreed that we needed a beer more than ever, and it tasted like heaven.

While enjoying our beer, we watched people (our favorite occupation), and saw a lot of round-eyed tourists, such a relief to see, now we really felt safe and could finally relax.

After 2 cold big Tigers (600ml beers), we walked to our hostel, and got a 8 bed dormetry. We slendered to the beach to have a swim, and cool our bodies down. We were both knackered, and couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer, so at 7.30 pm we went to bed.