Cooling off in Sapa

Just got off the night train to Sapa. The journey was not too bad in the hard sleeper with heaps of Chinese and Vietnamese travelers - two to a bunk in one case. The air conditioning worked well enough to make us shivery after a stifling day in Hanoi.

Sapa is rapidly becoming overblown from rapid development as an Asian tourist destination

Hanoi was charming as usual with motorbikes everywhere but very much too hot. Vietnam is notorious for rejecting any slightly off banknotes even when they are good tender. We had hassles at the bank when they turned down a couple of our worn and torn US banknotes, but we repaired them with sellotape and discretely gave them to the hotel for payment.

We had a nightmare when we went to catch the train because just as it was about to leave and we had walked away out on the tracks and down the platform, there was no LC1 train at all just one SP3 tourist train. I ran headlong back to the station and a ticket guard came out to the train to sort it out. What had happened is they had decided to tack LC1 onto the front of SP3 and give the carriages different numbers.

Sapa overlooks a stunning valley

We were besieged by bus touts at the Lao Cai station when we emerged but managed to talk them down to a tolerable compromise by being resistant 75,000 each instead of 100,000 although the price should be 60,000. Then the driver got stopped by the cops half way to Sapa. Finally we got besieged by hotel touts and went with one who turned out to really help run a hotel and gave us a nice deal for 180,000 or US $8.50 a night with hot showers and wifi.

Hmong women trying to sell small crafts or walking tours

We were escorted all the way there by Hmong women wanting to sell us little bags and take us to their village for $15 each a day. They are very mischievous and tried to run off with one of our beloved luggage trolleys, one of which lost its wheel crossing the rail lines in Hanoi.

There are people wearing all manner of tribal dress here in slightly doggrel form with the odd tee-shirt underneath and western sun hats: Hmong, Dzao, Dao and so on.

Two Dzao women

I wandered out of town in the now hot midday sun and took some pictures of the sweeping valley Sapa overlooks and the rice terraces here and there. Tomorrow one or both of us may take a walk to some of the villages with one of the Hmong women who want us to go to theirs for US $15 each a day trip.

Phou Bia and Vang Vieng

We left Luang Prabang on Saturday managing to score a 10 am minibus, with only four of us, for a sumptuous relaxed trip through powerful scenery, sweeping from valley to misty mountain top, with copious opportunities for photo stops.

Local Hmong dress

Hmong women on the road into Phoukhon

This area is one where disaffected Hmong tribesmen, remnants of the decades-ago 'Secret War' against the Pathet Lao in Laos have occasionally staged bus bombings, as a form of protest against their continued persecution. The story of the Hmong diaspora has become an infamous episode of the Vietnam war. After being inveigled into fighting for the CIA, when the US then pulled out of Vietnam, thousands of Hmong fled to Thailand. Some were eventually given refugee status in the US and other countries, however many thousands more ended up in miserable conditions in Thai refugee camps. While some Hmong in Laos endeavoured to resettle, over ten thousand went into isolation in the high country around Phou Bia (Beer Mountain) the highest and most inaccessible region in Laos, which we shall see shortly.

The Lao authorities have continued to persecute these Hmong using land mines and attacks with heavy artillery and subjecting both repatriated Hmong refugees to incarceration in re-education camps and those caught in the mountains to possible rape, torture and execution.

Apocalypse Now Laos - there are many more YouTube accounts.

A series of images of and from Phoukhon in the mist

A series of images of Phou Bia the highest mountain in Laos
and the hideout for Hmong descendants of the CIA's Secret war.

Panorama of the mountain now well-covered in cloud

Internet image of a closer cloudless view

As we approached Vang Vieng, from Phou Bia on, the hills became Karst limestone pinnacles.







Vang Vieng itself was a disappointment, fit only for kayakers and tubers (floating down river on inner tubes), a two horse town with cheap guest houses and expensive identical restaurants. Fortunately we got a guest house called Thavisouk off the main road and yet a block away from the river celebrations with good security (barred and providing a padlock hasp for our combination lock) as the town has reputation of tops for thefts and rip offs in Laos.

Van Vieng main street and the remnants of the boat races

The two guest houses advertised by the lonely planet as having superb river views (in the distance above) looked both insecure and hard to roll our luggage to over a muddy bumpy side alley down to the water.


The river celebrations were a drunken loud nightmare of marquees in the mud, with only a few candle offerings to float on the river in a couple of hawker's carts. We may have missed the best evening because the days of the festival here were slightly out of synch with those in Luang Prabang.

Panorama of the river boat race course

A lake on the road to Vientiane