Tina and Hetan (Tina’s husband) met me in Hanoi on February 16th and after our trip to Halong Bay, Hetan returned to Canada and Tina and I continued traveling together through Vietnam. It was really a magical trip and the two of us (sisters and husbands excluded) may be the most compatible travel buddies ever.
When Tina left to return to Canada from Hanoi on January 26th, a cold and cloudy day, I felt the type of heartsick loneliness I had not experienced since the end of visitor’s day at summer camp in 1987. I dragged myself around the deserted streets of Hanoi – everything was closed for Tet holiday (Vietnam’s New Year) – and finally sat down in an empty café to do some work. When Mr. Bojangles began to play through the café’s speakers, it seemed to be the saddest song I’d ever heard and felt I might start weeping into my condensed milk-sweetened coffee.
I realized that sitting around Hanoi by myself for four days of Tet might not be the most uplifting of travel experiences and so I booked myself on a train to Sapa that evening. Sapa is in hilly northern Vietnam and is home to many ethnic minority peoples and is known for its incredible terraced landscapes. I’d seen photos of Caryn’s trip to Sapa and had fallen in love with the place immediately.
Tina and I had actually spent half of the day before trying to find me an organized tour to Sapa, but we made the discovery that all the reputable tour agencies closed town for Tet and gave their employees a week vacation. Those tour companies that were still open in Hanoi were scary and desperate and it was clear that if I booked myself on any of them I’d end up being shipped to Sapa in Bovine Crate class and sleeping on the soiled mattress of some erstwhile Sapa massage parlour. In one memorable encounter we entered “Discovery Tours” through a long dimly lit hallway where a young Vietnamese agent bargained furiously against herself:
Okay, I sell to you for happy new year price - $100. Okay, no, I sell to you good, good - $80. Yes, I think $75. You like for $70?
Then she took a business card out from the drawer (which, strangely had the name “Fansipan Tours” on it) and scribbled down $65US before handing it to us.
Discouraged about tour prospects, I sat at the café and began researching hotels in Sapa and found one that had excellent reviews and even organized the train travel and hiking for its guests. I emailed Thai Binh Sapa Hotel and 10 minutes later received a response from its wonderful owner. He arranged for me to pick up my train tickets at the station that evening. I shared a comfortable 4-bed cabin with a friendly young Swiss couple and a humourless 40-something radiologist from France. We arrived in Lao Cai at 5 a.m. and a minibus driver met me holding a piece of paper with my name on it and drove me to the hotel where I was greeted with coffee and a warm fire in the lobby fireplace.
That day I wandered around the small town of Sapa. In the centre of town there were tons of children dressed up in their traditional clothing and playing games. I watched one young boy climb up a tall and smooth bamboo pole to reach the bags of candy at the top. I also hiked down to a small village. The next day I went hiking with a group from my hotel. It was a great group. There were four from England who were all part of a volunteer organization and were teaching English and doing other charitable work in Vietnam. There was also a woman who had worked as a nurse with Doctors Without Borders in Sudan and now runs a B&B with her husband in Greece. The same group did another, more treacherous, hike the following day that involved balancing on thin muddy rice paddy walls and scrambling up slick rocks between villages. It was spectacular (I’ll have to upload photos).
After the first hike, I returned to Sapa and decided to go for a walk up to a nearby garden. On my way there I encountered a young Vietnamese woman who was busy hiking up the garden stairs in her high heels. She asked me where I was from (the way most conversations begin) and we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the gardens together and Ling practiced her English (and she taught me a few phrases in Vietnamese). Ling works at the hotel across from the Thai Binh Sapa Hotel and was on her day off – she works 7 days a week and gets 2 days off per month. She has two jobs in Sapa and works from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. each day. She hopes to earn enough money to buy a motor bike so that it is easier for her to go home to visit her family and support her mother. She has one sister who works in HCMC and her two other siblings died tragically years back – one in an “accident on the street” and one in an “accident in the woods.” Her mother lives alone as her father now lives with his “other wife” – Ling’s aunt (though from what I gathered, her aunt and father are not legally married).
Ling asked me to go around Sapa with her in the evening and she gave me a small tour and then we went for karaoke and then for some street food (sticky rice with peanuts, BBQ zucchini). She also gave me a present for Tet – a small red envelope with 10,000 dong. I was really, really touched by the gesture.
While sitting in the hotel lobby the next morning I also met another young Vietnamese woman who was visiting Sapa with her family from Hanoi. Trang had the best English of any Vietnamese person I’d encountered on my trip to that point. She struck up a conversation and told me that she’d like to show me around Hanoi when I got back into town.
My trip back to Hanoi was not quite as plush and comfortable as my trip there. Though I’d paid too much for my train ticket back (I was told that only ultra deluxe class was available because of happy new year) when I got to the station the shady ticket agent told me he’d booked me on a later train “VIP.” The tickets don’t say on them the class or style of cabin so it was not until I boarded my train and saw the sticky sheets, rickety upper birth and dirty floors that I realized that I’d been duped. Luckily for me (but unluckily for them) my cabin mates had had been similarly scammed and ended up in my cabin- a warm Jewish newlywed couple from Argentina who were partway through their 2-month honeymoon trip. We arrived in Hanoi at 4:30 a.m. and they were kind enough to bring me with them to their hotel – which was a very nice, clean and inexpensive hotel in old Hanoi.
Trang and I exchanged emails and she told me she would pick me up at my Hanoi hotel on her motorbike the next day to show me around. She arrived on a shiny blue Vespa with a cute (though hardly protective) helmet for me. Two years ago the Government made it mandatory to wear helmets – but from what I can tell, anything from a cloth cap to a bicycle helmet will do.
I’ve never exactly been one who dreams about the open road, speed, and wind in my hair (preferring the subway and other forms of safe and passive transit) but I think that I was meant to ride a Vespa. I can’t imagine a more enjoyable way to get around.
Trang is a fun and bright 26-year old woman who won a prestigious scholarship in her penultimate year of university which allowed her to spend two years studying in Australia where she completed her undergraduate degree and MBA. Trang seems to run with an impressive crowd as her boyfriend is studying on a scholarship in Indiana and her friend is in Amsterdam (also on scholarship). Trang works in finance in one of Vietnam’s top banks and hopes to marry her boyfriend once he graduates and gets a good job. For now, she lives with her parents, spends time with her friends walking around Hanoi, karaoke-ing, going to movies and dinner and purchasing a few new English DVDs each month after she receives her paycheck.
Trang took me to some of her favourite spots in town. After visiting the amazing Museum of Ethnology, we went for rice rolls and ice cream, listened to some live music in the 5-star Hilton hotel (until we began to arouse suspicion and then we used the WC and slipped out) and we ended the night with a trip to the nail salon and a night drive over one of the bridges across the Red River.
I feel so lucky to have had such a good last few days in Vietnam and to have met such friendly and generous people.
I’m now in the Singapore airport. Sadly, I only have a 2 hour stop-over in Singapore – which is not nearly enough time to make use of all the awesome facilities here. I’m heading back to Chennai where I’m supposed to stay at a host family living there.
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