Not Long Left in 'Nam

Saturday, August 27th, 2016

We arrived in Hanoi super late and Friday night and went straight to bed. On Saturday, we got up, had a delicious breakfast at our hostel and then wandered the streets to do some shopping and sight seeing. 

I had been to Hanoi before, but Jenna never had. I was anxious for her to see the absolutely manic traffic. She didn't like it but wasn't intimidated by it. Jenna lived by the motto of crossing the street in the middle of traffic and merely sticking her arm out as she went. I'm glad she pulled me along with her in this city, or I would've never made it off the curb. She had another day left in Hanoi whereas my flight to Bangkok was scheduled for later today, so we ended our trip at a tea shop in 'Nam. It was delicious. It was amazing. It was sadness. It was laughter. It was realization-- I was having to say goodbye to another wonderful country and another wonderful companion. Jenna had been my first friend in Cambodia and now I was going to leave her. Tears and tea were totally not a good look for us, yet there we were. 

A Sapa Sunrise

Friday, August 26th 2016

Jenna and I decided to get up to watch the sunrise-- it took place about 5:30 in the morning. It was one of the most beautiful sunrises I've seen. We could get a perfect 360 view because our homestay was secluded on its very own raised slab, chiseled into the side of the valley, above the rice paddies. Jenna did some yoga, while I just enjoyed the views.

We went back to bed after the sunrise and slept in way too late. We felt so bad when it was 9am and we were just getting out of bed-- La Sapa had mentioned leaving by 8am the night before. I helped La Sapa start the fire and watched as she cooked tofu and greens for breakfast. I've only ever eaten questionable tofu so I was a bit nervous that this was going to have to be my sustainability for the rest of the day, but I dug in and was pleasantly surprised. The tofu was delicious! I actually really, really enjoyed eating it. After breakfast we cleaned the dishes and then set off for our hike back up the mountain.

We hiked back through the village and started our climb up the mountain. Our plan was to head to a waterfall, have some lunch and then take motos the rest of the way up-- for this, I was so thankful! The waterfall was filled with tourists which was slightly disappointing because up until this point Sapa had felt like our very own secret getaway, completely removed from society, technology and tourists. Lunch was delicious though. And then, as promised, we hiked to meet our motos.

Technically it was illegal to be transporting us through the mountains via moto, but as long as the police weren't around it wasn't something to worry about. I was definitely nervous as we sped over gravel, through massive water swells and zipped around debris that littered the incredibly skinny road running along the side of the mountain. I had to trust that these guys knew what they were doing. So I leaned back, relaxed my grip and enjoyed the view of the valley and mountainside rushing past me.

We made it back to town just in time to meet La Sapa's sister and her friends. They were selling jewelry and headbands they had made in the villages. Jenna and I were so grateful for our homestay experience that we bought mementos to remember our time by-- I got silver homemade jewelry and Jenna and I got the famous blue dye headbands to match (obviously!)

Rewind to before we left for our homestay excursion. Jenna and I had run a few errands in town. We both needed hiking boots, jackets and leggings for our trek. Jenna and I found the craziest, most vibrant patterned leggings ever- we just had to have them. However, Jenna dragged her feet and didn't decide until the morning of that she was all in for the leggings. She bought them and immediately put them on with her hiking boots so we could embark on finding our trekking guide. Fast forward to during our trek. Jenna's hiking boots did not fit her feet well and were majorly hurting her. She decided to take them off and swap them with her sandals. Only problem... she realized she didn't have her sandals. A look of horror spread across her face. Oh no! She had left them at the legging shop in town. Not only was she down a pair of sandals, but she was in massive amounts of pain. How did we improvise you ask? Jenna squeezed her size 9 feet into my size 6 chocos. She let her toes hang off the tops and her heels hang off the backs. She looked like an ogre with her swollen feet wandering around in my shoes. Fast forward to our arrival in town after our excursion. We headed straight for the leggings shop to find Jenna's sandals. There are no words for the happiness that consumed Jenna's entire being, so you'll have to settle for this photo instead.

We spent some much needed time at our hostel showering, relaxing and repacking. We had to catch a bus out of Sapa to Lao Cai and then take a train to Ha Noi. We had checked out of our room before leaving for Sapa but kept our bags at the hostel. When we returned Jenna had wanted to put on her gym shoes for the series of excursions that would be our evening. However, when she opened her bag she realized they weren't there. Seriously? Come on Jenna, what's the deal with you and your shoes? She asked the hostel owner if she could go back to the room to get her shoes. To her dismay, it was currently being rented by another couple and the hostel owner could not let us into the room. Our only option, and hope for retrieving Jenna's shoes, was that the couple would return to the hostel before we had to board our bus so we could ask them ourselves to enter the room. We sat. We waited. We waited some more. Finally our bus arrived. I told Jenna we needed to board but she wanted 5 more minutes. I headed to the bus and told her to follow behind. I boarded the bus and stalled the bus driver for what felt like forever. I was waving my hands furiously out the window to Jenna. She came running at the last second, shoes in hand, to board the bus before it pulled out of the town centre. Phew! What a close call.

For both of our sakes, I took charge of Jenna's shoes for the rest of the trip. We definitely didn't need any more photos like this to commemorate our time in Sapa.

Trekking with the Hmong

Thursday, August 25th, 2016

Jenna and I got up early to walk the town centre- today was the day- we were going to find a guide and make the trek to Sapa. Like any young, ignorant tourists, we walked aimlessly with a list of "absolutely nots" (no beds) and "hard no's" (no running water) until we realized that we weren't going to know what to expect (or not expect) until we got there. We just had to go with our guts and hope it worked out alright. Alright, in my head however, was not being chased down the street and heckled by an old woman with a cane. I tried to keep my head down and book it but damn this woman was fast. I chanced a quick look around and spotted a young girl milling about in a crowd of vietnamese mountain women (we later learned these women were called Hmong). This was it. She was our girl. I gave Jenna a wave and made a beeline toward the crowd. "Hi, Hi!" I exclaimed, like a giddy school girl. "Can you please take us to Sapa?"
She looked at me shyly.
She hesitated.
She wasn't sure if she could take us.
Oh no. Please.
I looked around. The old woman and her cane were gaining on us.
I looked at the girl pleadingly one more time.
She supposed she could take us to stay at her sister's.
Sold. We're in.
The plan was to walk through the rice paddies down the side of the mountain until we came across a lunch hut. After eating we would hike the rest of the way to the small village we would be staying in.
Jenna and I were really excited and tried chatting with our guide, La Sapa, but she was incredibly shy. Jenna and I also realized that the hike took a bit more focus and endurance than we had initially thought. La Sapa walked us through some of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen in my life.

All the while however I was trying not to think about the fact that one misstep would lead me to my doom. At some points, our trail curved and became skinnier, at some points, it was blocked and we had to climb over branches and stumps, at others it was flooded and we had to jump from rock to rock and at other times still it was covered in mud that we sank down into. To make matters worse, while Jenna and I struggled, contemplating every step, our guide was moving swiftly and gracefully in flip flops. You heard correctly ladies and gentlemen, flip flops, of all things! Jenna and I both had hiking boots yet we were still stumbling along far behind. La Sapa finally opened up to us and admitted that she was so nervous because we were her first treking tour. She explained that she still lived at home with her parents and that she normally walked the two hours into town to sell the jewelry that her father made, not to pick up tourists and trek with them to the villages. La Sapa had spoken to her sister after we had insisted she take us and her sister had offered for us to come and stay with her so that's where we were headed. La Sapa was also nervous because she didn't think her english was good enough to be a guide on a treking tour. Quite the opposite actually. La Sapa's english was amazing and her patience with us as we trudged along was admirable. We were able to relate to her because we were young and so was she. We told her about life in the United States and she shared so many interesting things with us about life in the villages of Sapa. There are 12 different tribes in the villages, all of whom speak different languages. All of the Hmong are also required to learn to speak Vietnamese. La Sapa said that all of the villages keep to themselves and that it is unacceptable to marry someone from a different village. Yet, as we walked through different villages on our way to our final destination, La Sapa was very friendly to the inhabitants. What should have been a two hour hike to lunch took us four (woof!) and boy were we hungry by the time we got there. Luckily, they had rice and chicken and vegetables for us. I've never eaten so much food so quickly. La Sapa was fascinated by our stories as we were with hers.

After lunch we continued our trek. She showed us wild marijuana plants and encouraged us to rub another wild plant around in our palms. After, she laughed, as we examined our now blue stained skin. She explained that this was the type of plant they used to make blue dye which is the color they use for many of their clothes and headbands.

As we entered the Hmong Village we would be staying in, we walked by a series of small huts, churches, school houses, blacksmith shops and butchers. The kids were out and about because they had just gotten out of school and the adults were curiously peeking out their huts at the two foreigners walking through their town. We had made it. 6 hours, 5 blisters and a sunburn later, we had made it to our homestay. La Sapa's sister was incredibly nice and spoke english very well. Her husband did not speak much english, nor did her children. However, her three younger children were infatuated by Jenna and I. The older son, quiet and reserved, seemed to prefer watching from afar while he worked on assembling a fence made out of bamboo. Jenna and I were tired, but there was still more to be done. We weren't going to be able to make dinner unless we cooked it. We weren't going to be able to cook it unless we started a fire. Wow. And I thought the hiking was tiring. Our host insisted that we not help and instead relax, however I couldn't help but feeling bad that they were preparing our meal while we sat outside and watched the sunset. Jenna and I opted for playing with the kids while we waited for dinner. We then all sat at the table together and had a huge spread. They didn't normally eat like this, La Sapa's sister explained, but when they have homestay guests they do. Everything was incredibly delicious. After, water had to be boiled over the fire so that the dishes could be washed. Jenna and I played hide and seek with the kids (which was comical because the hut had three rooms, two of which were unaccessible for our game). I thought there were only so many times we'd be able to hide behind the wooden support beam holding up the hut before it got old, however, it never did. Finally La Sapa's sister put the children bed. There wasn't much to do because after the sun went down the village was very dark. Jenna and I were beat so we climbed into our shared bed, drew the mosquito net and cuddled up for warmth.

Lao Cai Vietnam: Only a plane, train and taxi ride away

Tuesday, August 23 & Wednesday, August 24th 2016

Jenna and I booked an afternoon flight out of Bangkok on Tuesday (we had to eat the cost of our Monday flights because we didn't have our visas-- that's twice now I've done that. third time will definitely be the charm, right?!) We landed in Vietnam but had quite awhile before our overnight sleeper train, so Jenna grabbed some "bia ha noi" (beer from Ha Noi) from one of the airport vendors to try.

We headed to the train station and had an awful run around trying to get our tickets. Once we got them, we waited for a few hours to board the train. Normally, when we took overnight sleeper trains, Tash, Jenna, Ben and I would take them together, so it would be the four of us in one car. Tonight, however, it was just Jenna and I rolling the dice on two random train roomies. We hit the jackpot. Our bunkmates included an older solo gentleman who spoke spanish and a younger train attendant who spoke vietnamese. Jenna was creeped out that we were sleeping with a train attendant so at one point tried to lock him out of our bunk. Jenna's an incredibly heavy sleeper however, so all this did was ensure that she slept through his incessant knocking and that I would be the one to have to get up and open the door. How does one say "I'm sorry my friend attempted to lock you out of your room" in Vietnamese? An awkward shoulder shrug and a pointed finger at the perpetrator sleeping blissfully unaware while donning an eye mask and earplugs would have to suffice. This also ensured that I was completely and totally unable to sleep the rest of the night for fear that the vietnamese train attendant would try to retaliate.

We arrived in Lao Cai about 7am the next morning. Jenna and I had read up on all types of ways to travel from the train station in Lao Cai to Sapa, our first stop on our Vietnam itinerary. Once you exit the trains you are immediately swarmed by tons of taxi and bus drivers, all trying to offer the lowest fares to Lao Cai. There are rules about which ones to take and which ones not to take and which ones will rip you off and which ones will get you there safely. Jenna did not want to take a bus for fear of it falling off the side of the mountain and sending us crashing to our death, so I engaged her fantasy and settled for a cab. Like most times in SE Asia, what you see is not what you get. The taxi man who we arranged a ride with was not the actual driver, nor was he standing in front of the actual car we would be taking. But, nonetheless, we made it safely up the mountain without crashing to our death (The mountainous gravel "roads" are scary and treacherous though, barely wide enough for two cars to pass one another, sometimes riddled with fallen tree branches or flooded by gigantic puddles).

We stopped along the way to take some pictures because the setting was absolutely gorgeous. The photos don't do the vast green expanse justice, nor do they capture the perfect fog that was rising over us and the dew that had settled beneath us. The perfectly layered rice paddies scaled the mountains and went down for miles and miles until meeting in a valley well below us. We were in awe.

Our taxi dropped us in the center of Lao Cai and we were immediately approached by women who wanted to take us to their villages in the mountains.

We decided that we had to get to a hostel first to find some information before booking with one of these women. Thank goodness we did. We found a hostel with a nice downstairs cafe that looked out into the small, bustling city center that was Lao Cai. We had breakfast, warmed up and used the wifi to do some research. Jenna and I both needed some warm weather gear, so we opted to stay for a night in Lao Cai (in a private room for $2 each per night) and to try to book a Sapa tour for the following day. Thank goodness we did, because we needed rain jackets, hiking boots and warm leggings for our excursion. After dropping our bags in our room upstairs and using the bathroom (it had a massive hole in the wall that exposed us to the outside world while we were showering and using the toilet. Hey, Hey Vietnam!) I laid down for a nap and Jenna headed out to do some exploring.

Later in the day, we set out together to have a nice lunch of pho which was so yummy! We then went to a local grocery and bought some food for our trek- peanut butter, bread rolls and fruit. The night ended with Jenna and I eating french rolls with peanut butter (spread not with a knife, but instead by using the opposite end of a toothbrush) in our beds, listening to the outside world via the hole in our bathroom wall.