We vanquished the mountain. [Haha – reference to advertising on trekking to Fansipan mountain]
We headed out on our trek up to the top of Fansipan mountain, the tallest mountain in Vietnam and mainland South East Asia, last Saturday with fellow hiker Chu from the UK, our local guide named Nam, and Sau, our porter from a local black Hmong tribe (his name means “six” - he was the sixth child in the family of course).
After some pouring rain during our first two days in Sapa, we were nervous about the weather continuing to be poor, but we were incredibly lucky and walked for three days without a single drop, returning to town by the time it started to rain again. The first day of walking was relatively gentle at first through forest to a camp at 2250 meters where we stopped for lunch, and then a steeper climb up a ridge line to a camp at 2800 meters where we spent the night. The sky was amazingly clear and we could see mountains in all directions. This was a really welcome change to the rest of our very flat experience in South East Asia.
We camped in a bamboo shed along with three other groups of trekkers. It was so cold by the time we arrived that we could barely do anything but huddle together for dinner, drink a few sips of “happy water” [read: rice vodka], and try to snuggle in our sleeping bags for some sleep (we had relatively decent sleeping bags compared to a French group of trekkers whose sleeping bags looked like a thin blanket). Everyone slept on raised bamboo platforms that squeaked every time anyone moved all night. Patrick, Chu, and I got at least 5 hours sleep (actually, Patrick fell asleep by about 7:15 – no shock there), but some people reported no sleep at all due to the cold wind cutting through the shelter all night and constant movement from others.
Snuggled in for the night
The next day it was a steep walk up to the top, where we were greeted by a group of Vietnamese journalists who were trekking to the top themselves and snapped my photo when I was bent over and almost there. It was slightly cloudy when we reached the top, but the view cleared off while we were there and we could see amazing mountains in every direction, including a range very far away in China.
Happy to be on top of the montain
After the obligatory photos and some jumping up and down on the top, Nam informed us that we would go “another way down” to the camp at 2250 meters. This turned out to be an incredible steep path straight down the front of the mountain requiring us to use our whole bodies, legs, arms, backs, bottoms, to get down carefully over rock faces and tree roots. I love scampering around on rocks, but the difficulty of it wore on me. Our general dislike for the route culminated with crossing paths with two poisonous snakes before reaching the camp (one of which our guide missed and Patrick sighted, sending me immediately up a tree). It turned out that our guide Nam, who had brought groups up Fansipan 43 times in three years, had (1) never seen a snake on the mountain, and (2) hadn’t walked the route we took down in five months. So much for being a guide! [Note to other travelers: I think all the tour companies in Sapa are probably similar, but I would give a B - to my experience with Sapa Pathfinders.]
Steep way down...that is a river below me
We finally reached near the camp without any further tangles with snakes, and were rewarded with seeing three wild water buffalo and two wild horses. I’ve never seen a wild horse before, and it was truly beautiful. They had really long and bushy manes and tales and seemed really gentle and free. We arrived back at camp and had a good dinner, and played a new card game with Nam and some of the Vietnamese journalists who shared the camp with us.
Wild horses in the national park
The final day we made our way back to Sapa. Another steep path down the mountain, but fortunately no snakes this time. We passed through a village of the black Hmong people. It was in a really beautiful valley that was terraced on the sides for growing rice. We saw fields of the indigo plant that is widely used among the hill tribe people in South East for dying cloth, and waved to women and babies all dressed in their traditional outfits. It was amazing how the black Hmong people (black refers to the fact that the base color of their clothing is black) resembled the indigenous people in Peru, who, 11,000 years ago came from Asia. Many of the kids in this village looked like they could have shown up in Seeds of Hope any morning.
We made it back to Sapa where we shared a meal with the workers at the Sapa Pathfinders, parted ways with Chu who was headed up to China, got a couple of hot showers, picked up some laundry that was blissfully waiting for us, and got on a bus to head back to Lao Cai where we got on an overnight train back to Hanoi.
Arriving in Hanoi after three days of trekking and a “recovery” night on the train at 5 am is not advisable. At least we were so tuckered out that we fell asleep by the time the train pulled out of the station. We were also in luck that we shared the compartment with two older Vietnamese couples who were also all business about getting to sleep. We hung out around the big lake in the middle of Hanoi until we could get a cup of coffee and realized that we had stumbled upon the Hanoi Sports Club (HSC – probably not affiliated with WSC or NYSC). The lake was packed with people running and walking around it, people generally flailing themselves about in stretches I had never seen before, and participating in organized groups of Tai Chi. It was THE PLACE to be at 5:30 am.
By 8 am, it was time to roll over to Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum – a site we had been saving for our last morning in Hanoi. We arrived just as the mausoleum opened and found ourselves at the end of an incredibly long line – several thousand people visit the mausoleum every day. The experience compares almost exactly like going to visit the national archives in Washington, DC to see the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. The obvious difference is that in Hanoi we walked past the preserved dead body of the man who led the Vietnamese people out of colonialism to communism, and in DC we walk by documents that led us out of colonialism to democracy, Same same, but different (as goes a popular phrase here).
Rubbing elbows with Ho, so to speak
We bid adieu to Ho, and headed to the airport for our flight to Saigon. We arrived by lae afternoon and found the traffic to be, almost unbelievably, more chaotic than what we experienced in Hanoi. Two main things that motorbikes do in Saigon that they don’t do in Hanoi: (1) move perpendicular to the flow of traffic, and (2) ride on the sidewalk. Not to worry, we were safely in a cab making our way to a hotel, though it was hit by a motorbike, just a tap really.
We got ourselves involved in the Cuc chain of guesthouses where you can go to any – Cuc 64, Cuc 127, etc - and they will direct you to one where they have room just around the block. Our room was in a totally random unmarked building that appeared to have a costume shop going on downstairs. But it’s a great deal, as they provide lunch and dinner, and the women running them are super nice and make you feel like home. In fact, when the bus came to pick us up to go to Pnohm Penh, one of the women walked us to the car and checked to make sure we had our passports, just like mom would do.
Saigon had way friendlier people than those we encountered in northern Vietnam, which was helpful as we were finding ourselves joining the ranks of other travelers without many good things to say about Vietnam. We visited the War Remnants Museum, which was really well done and free from practically any propaganda about the war as we had found in museums in Hanoi. They had really moving exhibits on the scale and history of the war, on photojournalists killed in the war and their last photos, on the human and environmental damage caused by the war, prisons, on anti-war movements, children’s art about living in a peaceful world, and remnants of US tanks, bulldozers, planes, guns, and bombs. I walked away from the museum completely disgusted that anyone chooses to kill people or injure people, especially with chemical agents or torture, and that anyone chooses to create conditions that terrorize and kill children. There are so many things that happened in and surrounding that war that involved people stooping below anything that resembles what it means to act as a human and respecting the life of another. I think it’s really important, especially since I wasn’t alive back then, to come here and learn about what we, humans, have been capable of doing in the past so as to keep on passing the lessons never to do it again.
Now we’re onto Cambodia! Vietnam has certainly been a place that was not always incredibly nice and friendly to be traveling through, but also I think opened us up to how a place and culture can be really different from what we’re used to.
NEWS FLASH: To anyone who has made it through this incredibly long post, I think you deserve to rewarded with a little bit of hot gossip. Patrick and I have decided on our location for the Fall of 2009. We will be moving to…..drumroll….back to DC! I’ve decided to go to George Washington Law School starting in the fall, and we’re really excited to be headed back there in a few months.
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