Apr
We left Hanoi 2 days ago on an overnight train bound for Lao Cai, in northern Vietnam. It’s only about a 300km trip, but over old, war-torn tracks, the train can only travel at 30-40 km/h, so the trip takes a good 8-9 hours. We shared our sleeper cabin with 2 Brits who traveled with their own bottle of cheap rum, but we all managed to get some sleep after chatting and watching a movie on my MacBook!
We arrived in Lao Cai, and took a bus the additional 38km to our final destination of Sa Pa in the Hoang Lien Son mountains. Unfortunately, the weather was miserable – misty and drizzly and chilly. We checked into our hotel, and decided not to do the trekking trip that day. Instead, we bummed around Sa Pa on foot, visiting the Sa Pa day market and hanging out at various cafes.
This morning, the weather was even worse, but it quickly cleared up, and we decided to take a guided tour to Ta Phin to learn about the H’mong and Red Dao peoples. It was a fascinating trip, mainly because our private tour guide, Dan, was well studied in these minority ethnic cultures. We visited two families in their homes, one of the H’mong tribe and one of the Red Dao tribe. We learned about witchdoctors, marriage and religion, or lack thereof in the H’mong tribe. On leaving, we of course left a small gratuity for each family to thank them for their hospitality.
We returned to our hotel for lunch, then donned the warmest clothing we had packed, and hit the open road on a couple of motorbikes, lead by our tour guide Dan. It was very entertaining watching Pete operate a motorbike for the first time. He started the trip off crashing directly into the back of me.
We rode the twisty, mountainous roads with vertical cliffs on either side – one straight up, the other straight down! The views of the Muong river valley were magnificent, including water falls and endless rice paddies and mountain-side corn fields – not quite like it’s done in Iowa and Saskatchewan! It soon started to drizzle again, so we cut the bike trip short, and returned to the hotel to dry off and wait for our shuttle to Lao Cai for our overnight train back to Hanoi.