Vietnam Vietnam

Part 6: Sapa

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6th November 2006

Jimmy the Scott is a fighting fit hard-core traveller. He is probably over 60, though except for his white hair nothing gives up his age - he is all wiry lean muscle - travelling for last two years and one more years to go. He lives in Jersey island and travelling with his partner - though she stayed back in Hanoi to complete her Christmas shopping. He talks like Geoff Boycott - in his words - "I am into JUUMPING - I JUUMP from any where - Bungee JUUMPING, Para JUUMPING, Gliding any thing - I had a good life, if the man upstairs want to take me he will take me I have no regret - I had a good life".

That was Jimmy the Scott. My other two companions in the compartment on the train to Sapa were an oldish French guy called Pieter and his young Thai companion Ung or something. They are travelling together for last eight years. That's all they said about themselves - however, Jimmy's wry comment "Its nice to be young again" - probably sums it up.

The train was comfortable, I slept well though I was having sort of a mild sore throat from the day before. We woke up as the train arrived at Lao Cai station around 5:30am. Lao Cai is at the Chinese border and the rail line continues from here to Kunming in China.

Me and Jimmy's Sapa tour was organised by the same company "ODC Travel" - an ODC agent picked us up at the station and then a minibus took us to Sapa, about 30km away and 2000m up. Sapa is cold and foggy nestled in a narrow high valley surrounded by Vietnam's highest peaks (though not so high, only around 3000m). Sapa's surrounding peaks normally remain behind a veil of fog and are rarely seen.

We were booked in a hotel called Bamboo hotel - a lovely old French colonial building - like most other buildings in Sapa - god only knows why they named it Bamboo Hotel, though I have seen importance of Bamboos in rural Vietnam - or who knows, may be the Vietnamese want to remind tourists how they BAMBOOED French at Dien Bien Foo (which is part of this region).

After breakfast me and Jimmy went on our different ways, we booked for different tour programs - he immediately set off on a two day trekking trip with a group. my program was - a half a day trek today and another a bit longer trek tomorrow and then overnight train back to Hanoi. Since returning from the 2003 trip I have not done much trekking and I was not sure about my current state of fitness so I chose this less taxing program.

My instinct was right, my fitness has definitely gone down - this morning we went down to a minority tribe village  called 'Cat Cat' village just outside Sapa. These are Montagnards people, locally some they are called Blackmai people because they always wear black dresses. Their village is located on the slope of a narrow gorge like steep valley. There is a road down to a point in the village where there is a office of the Village's Peoples Committee - the guide said its a curtsey for the outsiders to let the  committee know before entering the village. From that point there are networks of winding stone stairs all through the slopes of the village. As we started going down the stairways my heart sank, how am I going to climb back all these stairs? These stairs are probably built at government/ initiative -  the village is now getting electrified - here I must mention anywhere in Vietnam I never saw electricity ever flickering, let alone load shedding or complete cut out - how contrasting scenario from other developing courtiers.

We visited few village households - these are entirely self sufficient villages - they produce everything they need - rice on their terraced mountain slopes, clothes woven from certain tree fibres, natural dyes to dye their clothes. They live humbly like most hill tribes and sell their exquisite products to visitors in Sapa - often aggressively, particularly the old ladies, they grab tourists by arms and don't let go till they buy something from them, though the attitude remains very friendly and pleading. These people are on average much shorter than average Vietnamese - most under 5 ft.

Coming up the stairways were tough, I took a motorbike ride back to Sapa from the point where village road started.

In the Afternoon I walked around Sapa - had some very tasty grilled chicken with lemon and salt. Vietnam must have very good laws and regulation with regard to food hygiene for a developing country - from large hotels and good restaurants to footpath vendors, wherever I had food, food quality is very high - many western tourists also vouched for that - everywhere people use bottled purified water for drinking and cooking, even on the boats in Mekong Delta.

In the evening it started drizzling - it was foolish on my part to walk around town without a cap in that cold drizzle in Sapa. By late evening I was feeling fluish.

7th November 2006

I woke up with a mild fever, cough and dribbling nose - what a misery - I skipped the days tour and tried to patch myself up with lame-sip, paracetamol and sleep. In the after noon I felt little better - as scheduled, around 6PM we were driven back to Lao Cai station and took the 8:30Pm train to Hanoi. I was hoping things will not get worse in the train and I would not keep my fellow passengers awake with my sneezes.

This time Two young Canadians and their Vietnamese colleague was my compartment companion. These young Canadians have just finished their graduation and took up positions with a Canadian Government aided water purification project in a small town south of Hanoi. They were returning from a mountain village near Sapa after awarding a Canadian scholarship to a school there. They don't yet speak Vietnamese - the only other English speaker in the remote town where they work are an Indian Punjabi family. The Punjabi gentleman runs a textile mill there. The Canadians were ashamed that they could not yet speak English, while the three year old twin daughters of the Punjabi couple already fluently speak three languages - Punjabi, English and Vietnamese.

I manged to keep the number of sneezes down.

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