Patrick and Mary Go Round

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.

While we were in Hanoi, we stayed just north of the old French Quarter near St. Joseph’s Cathedral. In the neighborhood, there are many hotel options for all price ranges, yet we were very hard pressed to find a decently priced meal in Hanoi. Vietnamese food seems to be focussed on fish and sea life of all varieties, but good, cheap food is extremely hard to come by unless you’re craving noodles in beef broth — Pho — 3xDay. In contrast, we were tripping over great food all over Thailand and especially Laos.

I’ve been able to upload several items of note. First, we recorded a video of our experience arriving to Cat Ba Island without the use of a tour company, here:

Next, while visiting the “Hanoi Hilton”, Mary snapped my picture standing next to John McCain’s flight suit from when he was imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam’s infamous POW prison, here:

Finally, on our way out of town, we swung by the Hanoi Water Puppet theater for an afternoon show of tradition song, music and water puppetry. The art form was impressive and not just in the “I’ve been going strong for 10 centuries” sortof way. I was impressed by the puppets’ speed and the dexterity of the puppeteers given that they were sloshing through water several feet deep.

This morning, we arrived in Sapa (AKA Sa Pa or Cha Pa) on the overnight ’soft’ sleeper train from Hanoi. After we boarded the train, the car started to fill with smoke — not from some emergency or a small fire, no. The smoke plumed out of the 2 cabins next to ours FOR hours. We cranked the window down in the hall to relieve our burning eyes. Upon request of the conductors, the dozen chain smokers sealed themselves in their cabins long enough for us to get ready for bed. My last train memory was watching the smoke billow through our door frame and over the internationally vivid no-smoking sign.

We toured the town and have set-up a 3 day, 2 night trek up to the “Roof of Indochina”. Fansipan (or as I’ve been mispronouncing as Fancy-pants) rises to 3143 meters and we’ll hike most of the way up tomorrow with the remainder on Saturday. Sunday will be all downhill as we trot back into town after becoming “vanquishers of the mountain” (straight from the Vietnamese tourist posters). So, no contact for the next 4 days while we’re trekking.

On Monday night, we’ll take the overnight train back to Hanoi, sitesee a bit more and catch a flight to Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon) at 1:30 PM, Tuesday.

We’re back in Hanoi after a couple days away in Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site that includes 3000 limestone cliff islands about 30 km off shore.  To get to Cat Ba island, the only inhabited island in the bay, took a mere four hours, yet was the most complicated and cryptic portion of our travel thus far.  Hanoi has the fix in to get every tourist who wants to visit Halong Bay do so on a tour, so there was absolutely no help for the independent traveler.  We ended up taking a train from the Long Bien train station in Hanoi to Haiphong, where we taxied over to the ferry dock (and got ripped off by the taxi), and then got on the “last boat” going to Cat Ba at 12:30 pm, which was a slow ferry taking 2 hours, only to be passed by a fast ferry (that takes only about 45 minutes to arrive) about ten minutes after our ferry left the harbor.    I mention this for other travelers who are looking for good information on how to get to Cat Ba island by themselves, and are as discouraged as I was about the information in Hanoi and guidebooks as I was about how to do it.  This guy has a good post about DIY to Cat Ba that I found useful.

Anywho, we arrived to Cat Ba and the scene was really amazing.  Zillions of really small islands of just sheer limestone cliffs rising out of the water.  Cat Ba town was nothing particularly special, just a string of hotels, shops, and restaurants built in front of the limestone cliffs.  I think it’s a big destination for Vietnamese during the summer months, but it’s low season so we got great deals on everything. 

Halong Bay and Fishing Boats

We took a trek around Cat Ba National park, which was a really beautiful walk up and down four of the limestone mountains, then passing through a small village of rice fields where we had an awesome lunch from a local house, and then continued on to a small bay where we got on a boat and toured around some of the islands before returning to Cat Ba town.  

Rice Paddies

The town we passed through, incidentally, had four of the cutest puppies I’ve ever seen.  I was so tempted to scoop one up, but then we talked out the difficulty of crossing four more borders with a puppy and then the inhumaneness of a 15 hour plane ride home.  I was consoled by the fact that the animals in the valley were some of the healthiest ‘ve seen on our whole trip - the fattest chickens possible without RBHT. 

The cutest puppies!

I came down with a cold, so we laid low in Cat Ba for another day, and then decided that the cool, humid climate wasn’t going to help a cold so we came back a day early to Hanoi, where all the traffic fumes are sure to help! 

We checked out the Hao Lo prison, aka the Hanoi Hilton, which was obviously bizzare.  This prison was built by the French where they held, tortured, and executed Vietnamese ”revolutionaries” for about 50 years, and then the Vietnamese used it to hold U.S. POWs during the Vietnam War, including John McCain.   It was actually a really well done museum with English explanations of everything.  It was our first experience of propaganda - a whole portion of the museum was about how well the U.S. POWs were treated there (given good food, recreation time, health care, etc.).  Sooo…an interesting experience.

 Tomorrow we are taking an overnight train to Sapa way up north to hopefully do some trekking.

Yesterday, we woke up in Vang Vieng, Laos, hopped on the morning VIP bus to Vientiane and arrived in time to grab lunch, walk around and find the airport. Our flight from Laos to Vietnam took a mere 47 minutes, but it seemed like we were transported to another land (literally and figuratively). We arrived safely into the Hanoi Airport and cleared immigration then customs without so much as a raised eyebrow. Contrary to the claims of several travelers and the Lonely Planet South East Asia on a Shoestring guidebook, you are allowed to purchase a Vietnamese visa upon arrival. We had picked ours up at the Vietnamese consulate in Luang Prubang, Laos, and think we’d had the cheapest possible option ($35 for 3 day processing). No idea what a visa upon arrival would cost in Hanoi.

So then, we grabbed a shuttle bus from the airport to Hanoi’s Old Quarter and immediately tumbled into the insanity that Hanoi calls traffic. It’s insane… imagine cars, buses and taxis everywhere, weaving in and out of lanes as if each one is carrying a pregnant women nearly ready to deliver. On top of that image, add in the constant honking of every horn on every vehicle with an added bonus of having literally thousands of moped scooters driving FROM every direction TO every direction, all the time, everyday. It truly makes New York City look as timid as a newborn kitty cat, in comparison. On our way into town, I marveled at the huge sign that displayed very useful information like time/date, air quality, yesterday’s and year-to-date number of traffic fatalities (0 and 210, respectively).

The bus door swung open and we were surrounded by the hustle [when everybody selling anything assumes that you want to purchase their service at an inflated rate, right away] and immediately put up our defenses for the deluge of “special for you, very nice, very cheap, where you go” offers. Once free of the madness, we were able to walk to the Catholic cathedral, which has many nice hotel options, nearby. We settled into our room, clicked on the A/C and had beef noodle soup (Pho) before snoozing out. We just slept and slept after travel-day-border-day, woke up late and noticed some rain coming down. Today marks the trip’s 18th week anniversary, the 6th week in SE Asia and the first rain we’ve seen since January. Considering all the smog and the heat, we were glad to finally see some real morning rain. I think we’re gonna mix well with the Vietnam weather, which seems a bit cooler and more variable than the hot and humid places we’ve been in Thailand and Laos.

We spent the rainy day at the Museum of Ethnology and laid down plans to head to Halong Bay (tomorrow) and then take the train up north to Sapa, next week. Other sights we’re planning to see in town include Ho Chi Minh’s Mosseleum and the infamous POW prison, formerly referred to as the Hanoi Hilton. [Side note: I did see the Hilton shuttle bus at the Hanoi airport and was curious if it's a nice place to stay... I guess to avoid any confusion, they refer to it as the Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel.] We’ve also discovered that Vietnam is covered with limestone, which is a new obsession after we spent 3 days learning how to apply limestone to defeat gravity. Lots to do in our 2 weeks in Vietnam!

The time has come — Patrick and I are shoving off once again, this time for South East Asia and India.  We are very thankful that Patrick has been able to totally recover from his pesky organ episode, and that our family and friends have been there for us in this unforeseen extended stay in Rochester.

In realizing it’s time to go, a most important question has popped up — what the heck time is it there?  Our flight leaves from JFK to Hongkong on Thursday at 1:30 pm, and after switching planes in Hong Kong, we’ll arrive in Bangkok at 11:55 pm on Friday night.  So how many hours will we be traveling for?

After consulting wikipedia’s world time zone map, we have learned that Bangkok (and the rest of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam) are all 12 hours ahead of our time here in New York.  So, with some math, we figured out that when we arrive into Bangkok at 11:55 pm on Friday night, it will only be 11:55 am on Friday morning back home on the East Coast.  So a mere 24 hours of travel to get there, nothing we haven’t done before.

Then, to look ahead to April 9 when we fly into India, it looks like we will be just 10.5 hours ahead of the time here at home.  I’ve never heard of time zones changing on the half hour, so we will have to see that with our own eyes.

So it’s time to go, and good to know what time it is.