Sapa Trekking with a Vengeance

Yan on the way up the mountain

Today we fell into one of those slightly out of control experiences traveling throws at you. Sapa is full of Hmong women from the surrounding villages who try to sell you small handcraft items. They are wily and persistent and have all kinds of tricks to make you feel obliged. If you won't buy right away they tie little ribbons around you wrists as a pinky promise and chastise you if you don't fulfill the promise. Anyway we struck up a relationship with Yan and agreed to go on a walking trek to her village this morning.

In the hills above Sapa

At 9 am the valley was full of mist so we postponed till 10. Then I met another woman who offered to do it for a third of the US $15 each, but when I went back she refused and later told me she had been told off for undercutting the others. So we took off with Yan who is a very intelligent charming 30 year old Hmong women and in a band with several others we walked in the now pretty hot morning all the way through town and then up a steep winding dirt track that got ever higher and steeper until Christine was nearly expiring.

 

High rice paddies looking down into the valley lowlands

After a heavy hike we emerged into a winding track up and down over the highlands with superb views off the entire surrounding area, into a fairly remotes valley and highland area and eventually back to the Sapa valley where we wound down and down past maize tea cannabis and eventually rice paddies to her village of Hao Thao.

Coming down into Hao Thao

We stopped at her sisters house and were treated to a delightful late lunch of vegetarian dishes and rice before being escorted by Yan and all her Hmong saleswomen entourage down to the road where they arranged motorbikes to bring us back the 10 kms or so to town.

Cooking in the kitchen fire

Apart from being a gruelling hot climb up and down it was a very engaging experience partly because Yan is vey talkative and can engage a very informative conversation and her family is very welcoming and friendly. I'm sure it was the best way to have a meaningful cultural interaction out of the overblown tourist orbit of guided tours of the hill tribes. Christine's knees are so stiff she has to walk down the stairs sideways!

 Family lunch for the weary trekkers

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.

Nilai to Hanoi (again)

We made it into Hanoi after a cosy stopover in a funky hotel, New Wave 2, in Nilai - a very nondescript Malaysian town 12 kms from the KL airport. The taxi driver seemed unable to find it but it proved a much easier stopover than going into KL which is an overblown city we have seen before.

The room was a green concrete box but clean and utterly silent after our late arrival after mindight and we slept for ten hours solid.

The flight into Hanoi was straightforward and the visa on arrival process worked fine for us although some people didn't have the right exact US $45 and one couple claimed to have had all their money stolen between the plane and the immigration point.

We managed to change $20 into some Viet dong and had a very elegant meal at the Black Duck Cafe just around the corner from the Hanoi Old Town Hotel. The night markets were pulsating with life.

Today we have wandered around in the sweltering heat photographing the insane motorbike traffic, visiting the markets and finding a few things to tide us over on the train to Sapa tonight. We have already blogged Hanoi on our last visit, so this was just another easy day hanging out in air-conditioned comfort with sorties out to see the old town.

Hanoi is always a fascinating place people living and eating on the streets, shades of the French colonial past, both stiflingly hot and delightfully shady. Full of inexpensive and extremely obliging restaurants, as long as you avoid the scams and ripoffs that sometimes appear without warning.

Return to Asia 2014

We are in the process of planning a third intrepid trip to Asia in May-July 2014. Here is an outline of the scope of the trip and some of the key internet sites we have used in setting it up.

Trip Plan
Our plan is to fly to Bali and then, after a four day rest stop, on to Hanoi via KL where we will head up to Sapa and the Hmong and other hill tribes. From there we plan to cross by land to Yunnan to visit the Yuanyang rice terraces made by the Hani people, including villages such as Quingkuo, Quanfuzhang, Bada, Duoyishu, and Mangpin, some of the local markets and the nearby old town Jianshui en route to Kunming. Here is an excellent blog of the rich varieties of national dress of the minorities in the area.

Scenes from Yuanyan with two Hani women, Xijian and a Miao performance,
a Tolou cluster and a Hakka woman washing vegetables.

From Kunming we will take a night train to Kaili to visit the local Miao townships such as Xijiang, Leishan, Matang, Zhaoxing, staying in one or two of them. From there we will travel north to Zhuzhou and Hengshan mountain, before taking another overnight train to Longyan via a bullet train to Guangzhou, where the Hakka Tulou roundhouse towns are. After visiting Xiamen and its islands we will travel north to Suzhou where we will visit some of the old canal (water) towns - Tongli, Zhouzhuang, Lushi and Xitang departing from Shanghai for South Korea.

We plan to then spend a week in each of Korea, Kyushu and Taiwan, traveling by rental car through the countryside, visiting national parks, old towns and temples, before heading back to Bali to recuperate for a few days. In Korea we will start on Eurwangni Beach on the same island as Seoul airport, traveling to Danyang, Andong, Songnisan National Park, Jeonju, Mokpo, Wando, and Tongyeong. In Kyushu and Taiwan we will circumnavigate each island, working between the coast and mountainous interiors. More details to come for these.

Eurwangni, Songnisan, Jeonju and Tongyeong

Visas
We got our Chinese visas directly in person at the consulate here, but for Vietnam have purchased a visa on arrival letter from Vietnam Visa Corp one of several agencies negotiating a group permission letter for $17 US each. This is reputed to cause a messy 50 min delay at the airport getting one's passports stamped for a fee of $45, but appears cheaper than the $100 fee each for sending our passports to the Vietnamese embassy here. We can get a visa on arrival in Bali for $30 US. These are the only two countries requiring a visa for us.

Flights
We have made all our air bookings directly with airlines,  rather than travel agents, to make sure we have genuine e-tickets with the airline we are flying on. These were all at or below the minimum found on internet travel sites. We used web sites like Fare Compare to figure out the lowest price fares available through agencies before booking them directly with the airline internet booking sites.  The eight flights put together have cost only us $1741 US each. The three airlines we have booked with offered the same budget prices, unlike many commercial carriers, which charge a premium fare on their own booking sites, although discounting some seats through agencies:
Jetstar: NZ-Bali return and Taipei to Bali via Singapore.
Air Asia: Bali to Hanoi via KL.
China Eastern: Shanghai to Seoul and Fukuoka to Taipei.

Vietamese Trains
The key site for understanding Vietnamese trains is the Vietnam Seat61 page. Vietnam Railway one of many many agencies offers both schedules and internet booking for a 4% fee. You can book the ordinary sleeper to Sapa here and the more expensive tourist carriages here. However we have decided to get our hotel in Hanoi to prebook tickets to be collected at the hotel.

Chinese Trains
The China Seat61 page has all the details about trains in China, including both direct station bookings and links to agencies doing internet booking. TravelChinaGuide has more up to date information about tickets.  China Train Guide has exhaustive train schedules. You can also check the availability of reservations (and arrange for e-tickets online if you wish) using either China DIY-travel (which provides an E-ticketing service for exchange for tickets at any railway station for a fee of $10 AU per ticket), or with ChinaHighlights (for 50% higher fees). This can be helpful as some routes get booked out almost as soon as they open 18 days before departure. We are probably going to risk booking all our China train reservations directly at Kunming station when we arrive, using a schedule of alternative options translated into Chinese should our choices be booked out, as we have a complicated schedule of short stops, making pre-booking very expensive. Ctrip also provides a booking service which includes hotels in many Chinese cities.

Japanese Trains
Hyperdia provides a scheduling and booking site for Japanese trains.

Ferries
We are still waiting on the Kobee hydrofoil between Busan and Fukuoka to open up its July bookings which can be made on sites like Ferrysavers.

Up the Mekong from the Delta

Tour boats on the My Tho arm of the Mekong delta

We made it through the Mekong Delta in a ravished kind of way. The tour left Saigon at 8 and the first thing that happened was they put us on a bus for Hanoi and only discovered half way up the street when they collected the tickets. Then we had to wait for half an hour at TNK Travel (we had booked around the corner at TM Brothers). Eventually a TM Brothers bus came and we got on very happily with some air con and space to put our luggage and musical instruments in the front.

Map of the Delta showing My Tho where we first went on the river,
Can Tho where the floating markets are and Chau Doc
where we stayed the night and set off up the Mekong to Cambodia.

We were then taken to My Tho and went out on the river to some neighbouring islands where we were rowed up some small canals and given coconut candy, lemon honey tea a small lunch and fruit. The whole thing was a ridiculous tourist circuit with endless crowds converging on the same spot, although the food was tasty and there were free opportunities to be photographed entwined in a python.

Two views of the river from the departure point

Fish farming operations along the river banks

Coming to the islands

We take small tour boats to go up the channel

On operation making coconut candy

Boa hugging

Green tea with fish

We get in even smaller row boats to get to the next 'event'

A restaurant built over the swamp waters

A very fruity lunch with a musical accompaniment

Video of a Musical Lunch

When we returned we had to wait 45 minutes because the bus wouldn't start. Then we were unceremoniously dumped in the back of a crowded public bus with no receipt to the border town Chau Doc traveling late and driving into the pitch dark.

This meant that we entirely missed the floating markets on a tributary flowing into the Mekong's other causeway at Can Tho, so I have included a few internet images to complete the Mekong Delta picture. Cai Rang Floating Market is open all day but it is busiest from sunrise to about 9am. The main items sold there are farm products and specialties of Cai Rang Town, Chau Thanh District and neighboring areas. Every boat has a long upright pole at its bow on which samples of the goods for sale are hung.

 During the early morning market hours, larger sized boats anchor and create lanes that smaller boats weave in and out of. The waterway becomes a maze of hundreds of boats packed with mango, bananas, papaya, pineapple, and even smuggled goods like cigarettes. Small boats that sell beer, soft drinks and wine go among the other boats to serve market-goers and visitors. Sellers tie their goods to a tall pole so that buyers can see from a distance what they are selling.


Internet images of the Cai Rang floating markets which we missed in Can Tho

The bus trip to Chau Doc was another experience. At first I protested when they wanted to dump our luggage including the medicines on the roof but having climbed up myself to make sure the pack was safe relented. Later they quite sensitively stopped the bus when it began to thunder and brought the luggage inside. Things got even more bizarre when we were ordered off the bus at a checkpoint which proved to be a vehicle ferry and made to go without the bus to the other side of the Mekong channel without the tapes and musical instruments.

However they sent one of the bus touts with us to make sure we understood there was some connection happening. The bus did eventually arrive on about the third ferry and we finally arrived in Chau Doc and to our delight the bus stopped outside the guest house we had been told was the one putting us up for free and we got a sweaty room with a fan for the night. They also helped us find the last restaurant open and we found a mad temple in the town square - a public park whilc doubled as a Buddhist temple with gaudy neon lights, goddesses and lots of people making offerings.

The night ferry rides across the Mekong channels

A temple in the park in Chau Doc

Early morning in Chau Doc

A quick breakfast of tea and toast before we depart

A crippled beggar woman and a stooped old lady in the markets

This morning we were awoken at 6 am had breakfast and then taken out on the river again for what proved to be a much neater experience, firstly to one of the fish farms which line the river and then to a Muslim Cham textile village on the shores edge. After that we spent 3 hours driving up the widely flooded Mekong to the Cambodian border, sometimes so wide and full of islands and channels that it seemed to reach to the horizon.

The border crossing was straightforward for $20 US for a visa on arrival + $2 for the guide to do all our visas at once and we then boarded another bizarre noisy Capitol guest house slow boat for another three hours of river to the ferry crossing at Nek Luong. The scenes along the river in Vietnam and then Cambodia were intriguing and different, the former developed to a limit and the other rural.

To display another contradiction in the communistic capitalist world that followed Deng Xiaoping's reforms all the way through South East Asia , the guide on our trip up the Mekong pointed out that despite Vietnam's communist government, the financial realities of education in Vietnam are at a capitalist extreme. People have to pay to send their children to school, because there is no such thing as income tax. The government has only just got around to drafting a law to charge company tax and only when this comes into effect will we see educational supplements.

Out on the river

Scenes at a fish farm

Scenes at a weaving establishment

The dried placentas of the children are traditionally kept in the roof

Heading up the side arm of the river that takes us to the main channel to Cambodia

The flooded river has spread out far and wide over the adjoining land as far as the eye can see

For a long time there is no left hand side to the channel just trees in the water

Many of the side tributaries seem to link to more flooded land areas

A local motor bike ferry

The boat takes off up a linking channel through flooded fields

Elephants and horses on the river bank. People on the shore are friendly and wave out.
(Lower right) Eventually the side arm of the river meets the vast main channel.

A panorama of the main channel

Dredging operations on the river

The Vietnamese border post

We wait in the cafe while the guide gets our passports stamped out