Thoi & Bill’s Trekking Tour Of North Vietnam’s Hilltribe Region February/March 2009

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I’m Bill and my wife is Thoi and we went to Vietnam on Thursday the 26^th of February, 2009 to do an 11 day trekking tour in North Vietnam. 

We arrived in Saigon, Vietnam on Friday the 27^th of February.  Our flight, including layovers, took 21 hours and we were up for around 39 hours by then.  The time in Vietnam at this time of the year is 15 hours ahead of California time.  Vinh, our driver in Vietnam ever since 1995, picked us up at the airport in Saigon at 2pm and took us to his home where we stayed for several days before heading up to Hanoi to begin the hike.  Although Vinh has air conditioning in each of the bedrooms, just as we arrived the power had gone off, so it was really hot.  And since we had just been in air conditioning all the way on the airplane, in the airports, and in the car, the heat was quite a shock to our not yet adjusted systems. 

Just after arriving on Friday and well into the evening, Yen, Vinh’s wife, took Thoi and I to several fabric shops to locate the correct material and color to make shirts, pants and silk pajama’s, plus a couple of business suits for Thoi, and one suit for me.  This took quite a bit of effort as none of their fabrics are labeled as to what they’re made of and if you ask for something like Cotton, they don’t know what you’re talking about.  So we had to just go by the look and feel of the fabrics to try and get as close as possible to what we needed.    

We then took the material for my suit to a suit maker where they measured me for it.  During the next few days, Yen would also take the other material to various tailors to have the clothing made while we’re hiking. 

After dinner on Friday the 27^th, Vinh wanted to do Karaoke, so although we were dead tired, we managed to sing with him until 9pm when we just had to call it quits and go to bed.  We were up for about 46 hours by then. 

On Monday the 2nd of March we got up around 4:50am and had wonton soup for breakfast at Vinh’s house.  We then left for the Tan San Nhut (Saigon) airport and arrived there around 8:30am.  When we went to check in at the Vietnam Airlines counter, the agent told us that our flight to Hanoi, scheduled for a 10:30am takeoff, had been canceled, and that we would have to take the next flight at 11:30am.  

When we arrived at the Hanoi Airport and began waiting for our luggage to come out, a Vietnamese person began talking with us…in English.  It turned out that he is from San Francisco and since we were both going to the same part of Hanoi, he asked if we would like to share a taxi with him and his wife, who was from China.  So, although being a little bit wary, we finally decided to do so.  The fare would have been about 240,000 Dong, but since we split it, including tip, we only paid about 160,000 Dong, just a little less than $10. 

In Hanoi, we stayed at the Majestic Salute Hotel, which is very nice, but the pipes were really noisy whenever anybody ran the water. 

We were scheduled to meet with Jessica, a representative of Active Travel Vietnam (a travel agency) at 5pm that evening in the hotel lobby, to pay the remainder of the trekking tour that we had booked.  When she arrived she told us that due to the dry conditions and high winds in Sapa recently that we may have to do the homestay’s before doing Mt. Fansipan, which was opposite of the original plan.  What I’m talking about here is that we had booked an 11 day “Trekking Tour” where we would first do a 3 day backpacking hike up the highest peak in Indochina, Mt. Fansipan, at 3,143 meters (10,311 Ft.), followed by 5 days and 4 nights of trekking through several villages of the ethnic minority Hmong people (hill tribe people) and staying in their homes for the 4 nights.  The remaining days to make up 11 days also included one day to rest between the mountain and the homestays and train transportation to and from Hanoi. 

On Tuesday the 3^rd of March, we walked around Lake Hoan Kiem twice, and then walked further South in search of a market.  I don’t mean a grocery store; I mean an open-air vegetable market which are usually all over Vietnam.  We finally found an area where they were selling all different kinds of food (street vendors), but still no market to speak of. So we bought a baguette of bread and walked back to the hotel. 

The weather in Hanoi, ever since we arrived, has been cold with a heavy mist and fog, definitely not good photography weather.  In fact, because of this, everything is wet, just as if it had just rained. 

That evening we went downstairs to the lobby to checkout from the Majestic Salute hotel and waited to meet our tour guide who was going to take us to the train station.  Her name was Thi.  She arrived right on time, wearing something that looked like an Alaskan parka with the white furry hood and all.  We all took a cab to the train station.  From here on until we returned to Hanoi 11 days later, everything was already paid for in the cost of the tour. 

When we arrived at the train station, it looked like pure chaos.  It reminded me of scenes of the NY Stock Exchange trading floor.  Luckily Thi was there and got us our train tickets and walked us right onto the correct train and coach.  We had to walk across a dozen or so tracks, some with moving trains on them, some not, to get to our train, all the way carrying our heavy luggage.  Thi made sure that we were in our cabin before taking off.  We had a four sleeper cabin.  We had one Vietnamese guy who didn’t speak English or French, a Frenchman who doesn’t speak English or Vietnamese, myself who speaks only English and only a little Vietnamese, and Thoi who speaks English and Vietnamese.  It made for an interesting time to spend 10 hours with them.  Luckily most of that time was spent sleeping, as it was a night train to Lao Cai, a town near the China border and the “jumping off” point for Sapa. 

The next morning, Wednesday the 4^th of March, after the 10 hour train ride, we met our tour guide for the rest of the trip, Thanh, just outside the train station around 5:20am.  He directed us to a private car with a driver and we proceeded on a VERY foggy and dark, one hour drive up in altitude and through winding, mountainous roads to Sapa.  The elevation in Sapa is 4,800 feet. 

After checking in at the Bamboo Hotel in Sapa, Thanh walked with us to a local restaurant for breakfast.  We then scheduled to meet with him at 4pm to get more details on the tour and the revised itinerary. 

After breakfast we walked around Sapa town for a while, checking out the area.  The fog rolls in and out so quickly that we had to keep putting our jackets on or taking them off to keep from sweating too much.  The local young girls and older women won’t leave you alone.  They want to try and sell anything they can to you, and they don’t give up easily.  Their outfits are very colorful which makes you want to take their pictures, but if they see you trying to take a picture, they’ll hound you to buy something. 

The persistent fog made getting any decent pictures nearly impossible.  After a fairly lengthy walk in the morning we stopped at a local restaurant and had some lunch.

At 4pm, we met with Thanh at the Bamboo Hotel lobby and he outlined what was going to happen during the rest of the tour.  He showed us a map of the villages where we were supposed to stay the nights.  He told us that the government had closed the mountain to hikers until further notice due to high fire danger, so he recommended that we do the village to village trekking with the homestay’s first then see if the mountain is available by the time we finish 5 days later.  Two or three of the originally planned homestay’s were in the same national park area as the mountain so they would be out of bounds.  But he showed us 4 other villages/homes where he recommended that we should go to, two of which rarely get visited by tourists as they usually go to the ones in the national park.  So, not having much say in the matter, we agreed with Thanh’s decision and went with it.  We would do the homestay’s before doing the mountain, if it’s open by that time. 

The only problem with doing the mountain last, however, was that Mt. Fansipan was the entire reason we came to Sapa in the first place and the homestay’s just seemed to be a nice way to “wind down” after the big hike.  And because it was considered extremely strenuous, for experienced hikers only, we wanted to get it out of the way while we were still fresh and not worn out from a week’s worth of hiking and homestay’s.  Unfortunately circumstances dictated otherwise so Thanh told us that he’d meet us around 10:00am the next morning to begin the hike. 

Thursday March 5, 2009.  We had a complementary breakfast at the Bamboo Hotel in Sapa, then we prepared our backpacks for the week’s hike and went downstairs to check out of the hotel around 9:45am.  We only had to wait a couple of minutes for Thanh to arrive…wearing his backpack.  He didn’t drive up; he walked up from…somewhere.  So we checked our remaining luggage bag with the hotel, donned our backpacks, grabbed out trekking poles, and followed Thanh.  We figured that he had a car around there somewhere or would hail a cab.  But, no, we just started, right out of the hotel, hiking down the road toward Lao Chai village for about ¾ of a mile where we then turned to the right to take a steep, dirt path down into the terraced rice fields.  That was the beginning of five consecutive days of hiking.

The fog was thick at some parts of the hike, then there was sun on others, but most of the time it was at least very hazy, making picture taking difficult at best.  We hiked 6.14 miles that first day over a 5 hour period, including breaks.  We were walking for 3 of those hours.  In addition to my backpack and essential personal items, I was also carrying with me 7 pounds of camera equipment in two separate padded bags, including my camera body, two lenses, a polarizer for each lens, a spare battery, two spare memory cards, and a small tripod.  I ended up using each item at least once during the hike, so all of that equipment was needed. 

Along the way, at one of the villages where people were selling stuff, they had a large scale setting on the ground.  Thanh immediately went over to it and kneeled on it to see how much he weigh’s.  So, since he did it, we decided to weigh our backpacks since we had no idea how much they weighed.  Mine weighed in at 8 kg (17 pounds), not including the 7 pounds of camera equipment that I had been carrying separately.  So that made my pack a total of 24 pounds while Thoi’s pack weighed 7 kg, (15 pounds). 

We went through Y Linh Ho village, Lao Chai village, and stayed in Ta Van village, home of the Zay people where we had a huge meal of Vietnamese food.  We had six different items, including cha gio (fried spring rolls), fried tofu sautéed with tomatoes, a chicken dish, a pork and onion dish, a beef and shredded vegetable dish, a bok choi like dish, and watermelon for desert. 

This particular home can accommodate about 11 people, all in the space of about 25’ x 25’.  Mattresses are literally set “shoulder to shoulder” on the floor with a mosquito net over each one.  There was a separate, small building outside with a small shower and a toilet. 

The couple who ran the house was very friendly.  The man of the house was already there, but his wife was out.  It turned out that she was out working the fields while he started dinner for us.  Just as dinner was about to be served, she came in from the fields and started talking with us.  It was very interesting to see the man, in Vietnam, doing the housework and the woman doing the field work. 

None of these houses had any heat and although we’re in Vietnam, we’re in North Vietnam…in early March, so the weather can be really cold, and it was.  While we didn’t have a thermometer on us, it felt like it was in the low to mid 40’s at night.  And in addition to not having heat or insulation, these houses are built with large openings in between the slats that make up the building and large ventilation holes where the fog just runs right through them during the night, making it really cold for sleeping and putting a chill on everything.  The fog was so thick that during the inevitable “bathroom run” during the night, we could barely see the outhouse from the house.  I have never worn so many layers of clothing and jackets to sleep in before in my life.  Unfortunately Thoi had a hard time sleeping. 

Friday March 6, 2009.  We had a huge breakfast consisting of rice, several vegetable dishes, and “pancakes”.  These “pancakes”, however, were actually just very thin crepes on which you then had to cut up your own banana and pour honey.  You then have to roll it up and cut it into bite size pieces to eat it.  They were really good, but definitely not the pancakes that we’re used to here in the USA.   

Actually that first night we didn’t really know how things worked, so although we were the only people staying at this house, and there were 10 other “beds”, we only used one blanket for the two of us.  So after that night we learned that we should just take what we need (meaning more than one blanket), but in addition to taking a second blanket, we also learned another lesson; that when they put us upstairs, despite that there were about 15 or 20 mattresses throughout the room, we chose a corner one, away from the major openings.  It was warmer there. 

Since we left this first homestay at about the same time as a couple other groups, the first hour or so seemed more like a parade than a hike.  But this section was fairly strenuous, and a good thing too as it kept us warm against the cold temperature and thick fog.  The weather this day went from very thick fog to just a very heavy overcast; certainly no sun.  We hiked 7.37 miles this day over around an 8 hour period. 

We also hiked through the Giang Ta Chai village, the Su Pan village, and stayed the night in the Ban Ho village, home of the Tay people. 

Here at the Ban Ho village they are doing major construction in the area, building a dam for a hydro-electric plant and all of the required infrastructure including roads, the power plant, power poles, etc.  As we understand it, they presently have to buy power from China which is apparently too expensive to continue with.  So the solution is to build this hydro-electric power plant in the only fairly large river in the entire area.  The downside of this, in my opinion, is that they’re destroying the landscape of the entire valley where many of these villages reside.  And if they destroy the landscape, this will likely reduce the desirability of this area for tourism.  The primary things to see here are the terraced rice fields, and if the weather had been better, they would have been beautiful.  But they’re gouging large sections out of the hills surrounding these villages and destroying this scenery.  So because of this, I figure that they’ll lose money in the long run if tourism decreases as a result of this. 

On our way to this homestay, we ran across a group of people, including several French people.  While following this group, we all hiked to a grassy hill, overlooking the valley far below where we all took a break to set down and take in the beauty of the scene.  It reminded me of the opening scene in the movie, “The Sound of Music”, where Julie Andrews is singing in the grassy hills of the French Alps. 

We saw a large variety of different types of hikers during our time on the trail this time.  For instance, in this group of people there was one woman who simply didn’t seem capable of negotiating some of the slightly steeper sections.  She was extremely slow and people had to help her all the way.  We were stuck behind her much of the way as we couldn’t get around her for a while. 

At this homestay, two of the French couples from that group we saw earlier were also staying at the same place as we were.  Only one of the men, a doctor, spoke much English.  He spoke very good English and we had some good conversation during dinner and the next morning. 

Late that afternoon, all of us walked from the homestay to a nearby “hot tub” facility, overlooking the soon-to-be-dammed river.  The water comes from a natural hot spring and we were supposed to go to a hot spring, but since they’re doing the construction on the river and surrounding area, they built cement tubs to contain the water from the hot spring.  The air temperature was probably in the high 50’s or low 60’s, and overcast.  We all took turns changing into our bathing suits in the one outhouse near the facility and then went into one of the two large tubs.  The water felt like it may have been about 85º at the most, which in a hot tub where you’re just setting there “soaking it in”, actually saps the heat from your body, making you colder.  We all took turns moving underneath the water inlet to the tubs as it was a little warmer than the tub water.  But after setting in it for about 15 minutes or so, I had to get out as I was getting colder by the minute and we had to brave the outside 50 something outside air temperature until we could get dried off and changed.  I was freezing for a little while after that, until we started walking back.  This small “hike” back to the homestay did help to get my body temperature back up again. 

Saturday March 7, 2009.  Today, after a breakfast of “pancakes” and rice with various other meat and vegetable dishes, we began to hike again and make our way across the valley floor.  But before we headed for the valley floor, we went up a different trail to Lavie Waterfall where we spent about 30 minutes shooting pictures and enjoying the rushing water.  It was here that I was able to set up my tripod and experiment with long exposures to blur the water and give a very ethereal look to it. 

When we finished up with the waterfall we began a fairly steep path up the Southern mountain surrounding the valley to the Nam Toong village, home of the Red Zao people.  We toured their village for a little while, then we took a much steeper trail, literally straight down the mountain, back to the valley floor. 

At the base of the mountain, in the valley, we crossed a suspension bridge, resembling the Golden Gate Bridge, only a lot smaller, over the Muong Hoa River and proceeded up the northern mountain, nearly straight up for another couple of hours.  We walked up and up and up for what seemed like forever, through beautiful, water filled, terraced rice fields.  Then Thanh pointed up at least 3 or 4km away and said, “We’re going there.”  Then, a few hours later when we got “there”, Thanh said, “We’re almost there.”  Of course he’d neglected to mention that we had at least another 2km down a slippery, muddy, dirt road, and then at the very end, just for good measure, we had to climb up a steep, muddy path to get to the bamboo hut in the Sin Chai village where we stayed the night.   

After arrival at the bamboo hut, Thanh proceeded to prepare a large meal of rice, chicken, potatoes, cabbage, and bamboo shoots.  The chicken was about as fresh as it could possibly be, short of running after it, catching it, and biting into it because when we arrived, there as a live chicken in a box waiting for our arrival.  Thanh then had me hold its wings and feet while he slit its throat.  I held it up so that the blood would drain out of the chicken and into a bowl.  Later on, he would cook this blood with vegetables in a soup.  Initially I held the chicken too straight up and Thanh said, “Lower it a little or it may poop right into the bowl of blood.”  During this time, the chicken, in the last throws of its life, flapped its wings so hard that I lost hold of one of them.  So Thanh had to help me get a better grip on it again.  Finally it stopped moving.  Then sure enough, when the chicken went limp, it pooped. 

Thanh then plucked all of the feathers, gutted it, chopped it into pieces, and stir fired it with seasonings of some sort.  It was really good chicken.  We also had fresh bamboo shoots that we bought at a little road-side stand just as we arrived at the peak of the mountain.  Of course something like bamboo shoots in this sort of a location does not come in a can.  These are fresh from the field, so they’re muddy and have to be peeled by hand before cooking them.  Before Thanh had me help him with the chicken, he had shown Thoi how to peel off the outer layers of the bamboo shoots, one layer at a time.  He then had me help him with the chicken.  So after finishing with that I went to help Thoi to peel the remaining bamboo shoots since she had a large pile of them to do.  The way Thanh had shown Thoi to peel them was very slow and difficult to get it peeled properly.  Then after struggling through quite a few of them, an older Red Zao hill tribe woman, who apparently helps out there at the bamboo hut, came by, set right down, picked up a clever, and started slicing and peeling them very quickly.  She didn’t say a word, but just showed Thoi and I a MUCH faster way to peel them.  After that, we all finished the pile in just a few minutes.  Thanks to her, we had dinner a little earlier than we might have.  The entire meal was very good. 

The temperature throughout most of the hike ranged from mornings in the 40’s to afternoons in the 50’s, maybe low 60’s.  But once we get hiking each day, it takes only a few minutes before we have to stop, take off our backpacks, and remove our heavy jackets, underneath which we have short sleeves.  And, depending on the terrain, we could be dripping with sweat throughout most of the day.  This, however, creates a situation where when we stop for any length of time, such as for lunch, and start up again, we have to don our heavy jackets again because we’re soaked with sweat and cooled down from the stop. 

The sweat situation caught up with Thoi this evening at the Bamboo Hut.  As usual, we sweated quite a bit during the hike to the hut, but we got there fairly late in the afternoon and it was cold and foggy, meaning that there was no sun around to dry out her sweat-soaked shirt and jacket that she hung up on a line for the next morning.  I saw this and decided that the best course of action was for me to put on her shirt, under my jacket, to dry it using my body heat.  Although it was very cold for the first few minutes, I soon warmed up and was able to dry her shirt within about 30 minutes or so.  Because of my success with her shirt, I decided to do the same thing with her jacket, which was really nothing more than a light windbreaker.  Repeating the process, I was able to dry out her jacket in the same way while she used another jacket that she had brought with her and wrapped a sleeping bag around her, to try and remain warm.  We also took full advantage of the heat given off by the gas stove while Thanh was preparing dinner, in order to remain warm. 

This day we hiked 9.5 miles over about 6 hours and 45 minutes, including a lunch break. 

Sunday March 8, 2009.  Today we awoke to a very cold and foggy morning.  Thanh took a lot of leftovers from the night before and made up a huge batch of fried rice with it.  It was very good. 

We hiked back down the mountain from the Bamboo Hut to the Thanh Phu village, home of the Tay people, where we would do another homestay this evening.  Along the way we also went through the Nam Keng village, home of the Xapha people.  But because it was only a short hike to our homestay, we arrived around 1:30pm, dropped off our packs, and walked another 2 miles to the My Son village, where they don’t see many foreigners.  In fact it was a bit amusing that as we were walking along through the village, we ran across  a group of little children, and I mean little.  The oldest had to be around 7 or 8 years old.  They were either working or play “working” with a hoe and other tools, in the yard.  Just as the oldest girl there saw Thoi stop to take a picture of them, she stopped working/playing, put her toddler sister onto her back and ran toward the house.  Apparently she was trying to protect her little sister.  Then a little later on, when we came back down that same road, on our way back to the homestay, the little girl again took her little sister, put her on her back, and ran toward the house.  Children around here have great responsibilities even at a very young age.  Today we hiked a total of 7.8 miles over a period of 5 hours and 51 minutes. 

After our 4 mile round trip walk, we arrived back at the homestay to find another foreigner, named Chris, setting on the front porch sipping tea, along with his Vietnamese guide, Dung (pronounced Yoong).  Chris is from Brisbane, Australia and he was doing just two homestays, and then returning to Hanoi by train prior to attending a retreat in Hoi An, Vietnam.  So the homestays were just a “pick up” tour for him to kill a little time before his retreat, but he ended up leaving with more than he’d bargained for.  I’ll get back to that a little bit later. 

Chris’ tour guide, Dung, had left Chris alone this afternoon to go into Sapa for the night.  So while the man of the house, his name was something that sounds like Nah, was talking with Thoi and Thanh, Chris kept asking for them to interpret for him throughout the afternoon and evening. 

The evening went well with dinner and much drinking of “happy water” (rice whiskey).  But then, through the evening’s conversation with the host family, with Thoi and Thanh acting as interpreters, Chris came to know that the family has three daughters, 13, 15, & 17.  The older two are studying in Sapa and 15 year old Nhit is doing very well in school and has all sorts of certificates hung on the walls of the house to prove it.  But the family can’t afford to keep her in school once she starts high school next year.  When Chris heard that, he started asking Thanh, Thoi and I how he could help.  He trusted our advice because it came out through the conversation that Thoi had built two houses for her people in Tay Ninh and Trang Bang (South Vietnam).  So since we had some experience in the area of helping people here in Vietnam, he wanted to know everything about how to do it. 

Since it became quite late and Thanh had had a lot of happy water, he had gone to his bed to rest while the rest of us continued talking. 

Although Chris wanted to help Nhit, it was conditional.  He was very adamant that if he was to support Nhit up through college, it has to be what she wants to do and not what her parents want her to do.  He was very clear that she has to be allowed to freely choose her own future, whatever that may be, even if that means not going to college, or working in a coffee shop, for example.  But it has to be what she wants to do. 

We had to try to explain to Chris that children in Vietnam, especially those coming from the poor countryside, have it ingrained in them to help their parents in any way they can, especially as their parents get older.  So it’s VERY difficult to know whether her decision to go to college, if she decides to do so, would be what she really wants to do or what she feels obligated to do to both please and be in a better position to support her parents as they get older.  Finally Chris had to concede that it would be difficult to tell, but he just wanted to be sure that she’s happy with her own future. 

Later on, we had to ask Thanh to come back to the table and help us with coming up with some real numbers on how much it might cost to support Nhit through high school and college, since he had just finished with college himself in the nearby area.  After much calculating we came up with some final numbers.  Chris thought about it for a minute, and then said, “I can do that.”

Also that evening Chris kept asking if Nah could take him out to plant corn with him the next morning rather than doing the hike he was scheduled to do.  So Thanh, who also works for the same tour company as Chris’s guide, called Dung to let him know of Chris’ plans and not to arrive until about Noon the next day.  Throughout the evening, Nah kept saying that he couldn’t take Chris out to plant corn, mostly because Chris is a guest and he didn’t want him to have to do manual labor while on his vacation.  But Chris kept pushing the issue and really wanted to do it, so Nah finally gave in and said, “Okay”.  It was the next day before I found out from Thoi that it just wasn’t the right time of the year to plant corn, so Nah took Chris out to turn dirt all morning, which we later found out from Chris was a very hard morning of work for which he was very sore afterward, but he still enjoyed it. 

Monday March 9, 2009.  Today we got up, had some breakfast, and packed up our backpacks in preparation for the last leg of our homestays.  We then said goodbye to the owners of the homestay and also to Chris, who, considering how much “Happy Water” he had the night before, was very chipper this morning and excited to go out to “plant corn”. 

We were scheduled to meet a car at 10am at the base of the mountain that we had climbed up during the previous days.  We arrived a little early, so we waited a few minutes for the car to arrive.  It was sort of funny, we hadn’t ridden in any sort of a vehicle for nearly a week, yet we were 33 miles from where we had started.  So it felt kind of weird to be riding in a car, all the way back to Sapa.  This drive took about an hour, after which we checked back into the Bamboo Hotel. 

Throughout the 5 days of homestay trekking Thanh had been in cell phone contact with his office checking on the status of the mountain.  Finally just as we were finishing up the homestays they opened the mountain to tourists again. 

Tuesday March 10, 2009.  Today after having a large, complementary breakfast at the Bamboo Hotel’s restaurant, we went back up to the room to wait for 8am so that we could pick up the laundry we had sent out when we arrived the day before.  Right at 8:00 I went downstairs to see if they actually had it done at the time requested.  When I arrived at the front desk, the girls running the desk just handed me the bag of completed laundry.  It was entirely unexpected, but very welcome as we really needed these clothes so that we could begin to organize and pack the backpack for the mountain climb portion of our tour later on in the morning.  I say that it was unexpected because at most hotels when we have our laundry done, it takes much longer to have it done. 

During the homestay portion of our tour, both Thoi and I wore a backpack.  I was actually using Thoi’s internal frame backpack, which is smaller than my large pack that I use if we’re camping on a non-supported hike, as we didn’t have to carry food, tents, or sleeping bags with us, while Thoi used a smaller day pack that she had just picked up on sale specifically for this purpose.  But for the mountain climb portion, due to the expected difficulty of this leg of the tour, Thoi decided that she wouldn’t wear a pack since we would have porters to carry food, water, sleeping bags, and a tent, so we would just pack whatever we needed for both of us into the pack that I was carrying. 

After packing up the pack, we went downstairs around 9:35am to check out and wait for Thanh who was supposed to arrive at 10am.  But when we arrived in the lobby, he was already setting there waiting for us.  He told us that he had already made a reservation at the Bamboo Hotel for when we return from the mountain.  So we checked our one bag of luggage at the hotel, I put on the pack, and we followed Thanh down the street.  We walked through much of Sapa town until we arrived at the tour company where Thanh works, to wait for the van to arrive to take us to the trailhead of Mt. Phan Xi Pang, otherwise known to English speaking people as Mt. Fansipan. 

The drive consisted of 10km of very bad, dirt and gravel roads.  Sapa is at an elevation of about 1,650 meters (5,413 feet), while the trailhead is at an elevation of 1,900 meters (6,233 feet). 

We started the hike around 10:45am and we hiked for about 2 hours before reaching a camp where we ate a very good lunch consisting of French baguettes of bread (Vietnamese banh mi) with sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and cha lua (a fairly dense meat loaf, almost like a bologna) sprinkled with salt. 

Then after lunch, we hiked for another 3.5 hours to reach the “base camp” at an elevation of about 2,800 meters (9,186 feet).  In total, we hiked for 6 hours with only about a 30 minute lunch break.  We arrived around 5pm.  If you did the math, you’ll see that we climbed almost 3,000 feet in just 6 hours.  Now doing this sort of climb at sea level where the air is nice and thick and full of oxygen would be difficult for most people, but we’re doing all of this climbing at an elevation where the air is significantly thinner which makes everything you do more difficult.  The hike was grueling, made up mostly of nearly vertical climbing almost all the way.  It’s got to be the most difficult physical challenge we’ve ever undertaken.  But I have to hand it to Thoi, for somebody who hates to hike up steep areas; she’s been a trooper in this hike. 

After dark we had a huge dinner of stir fried pork with vegetables, beef with vegetables, fried tofu with tomatoes, another vegetable dish, and rice.  We had all this while wearing every piece of clothing and jackets we had with us, it was so cold and windy. 

We stayed in one of three tents that were set up and tied together so as to avoid being blown away.  Over night the winds gusted to nearly 70mph and the temperature was somewhere around 37 degrees.  It was so cold that we had to wear everything we had with us, in the sleeping bag, and Thoi was still cold.  I was okay because I was wearing a long sleeve thermal underwear T-shirt underneath a long sleeve hiking T-shirt, full length thermal underwear underneath my hiking pants, a heavy fleece jacket, and an outer shell jacket.  It was a difficult night and Thoi didn’t get much sleep at all. 

Wednesday March 11, 2009.  Finally morning came so we got up around 6:30am and had a large, steaming hot bowl of noodle and egg soup.  We left to start the summit leg of the hike at 7:30am without the backpack since we would be returning to this camp on the way back, after summiting.  This was an extremely strenuous section of the hike.  It was nearly straight up in many places.  We arrived at the summit at 10am, just 2.5 hours after starting.  According to the plaque at the top, and my GPS, we were at 3,143 meters (10,312 feet) and at that altitude every step you take requires much greater effort than at sea level. 

We arrived at the summit just a few minutes after a camera crew and several women, likely hosts of some VTV (Vietnamese Television Network) program, had arrived.  We had been passing them, and then they would pass us all the way up the mountain over the past two days.  So it was no surprise when we saw them there. 

We waited for them to finish doing their shooting, then we took the flag that is there at the peak and had pictures taken of us there.  During lunch the day before, as I’d mentioned, we had banh mi with the French baguette of bread.  Well the bread came in a small, white paper bag.  I saved that bag for the purpose of using it as a piece of paper to write a message on it if we made it to the peak.  So since we did make it, I took out this paper bag, which was folded flat, got out my pen and began writing on it.  I had to go over each letter about 10 times just to make sure that it was thick and dark enough to be read in a picture.  I wrote “Grandma & Grandpa Made It, 11 March 2009, 10AM”.  While I didn’t know it at the time, Thoi later told me that one of the VTV camera people was taking pictures of me while writing my note. 

At the peak is a triangular shaped metal marker with the words “Fansipan” and “3,143m” on it along with a large North Vietnamese flag. 

After summiting and spending about 30 minutes there at the top, we returned to the campsite where we spent the previous night to pick up our backpack and to have a lunch of egg noodles (mi).  It then took us another 3.5 hours to go from this base camp campsite to the camp where we had lunch the day before and where they have a “store” where I bought two cans of soda and a 1.5 liter bottle of water.  To down those soft drinks felt very good as I was not drinking much water so that Thoi would have the majority of it.  The reason for this is that they only provided us one 1.5 liter bottle per person per day and we had already used three bottles between the two of us and they only carried so much water with them, so we had to ration water in order to have enough for the entire hike.  There were very few places where we could have gotten more water, and then it would have to have been treated, boiled, and/or filtered. 

While still at the base camp for lunch, I negotiated with another tour guide to get some more water to tie us over until we arrived at the store camp.  She is a guide from the Red Zao tribe, wearing the traditional garb for her tribe.  She gave me a full 0.5 liter bottle of water and the remainder of a 1.5 liter bottle, which turned out to be about half a bottle. 

We hiked for 11 hours and 10 minutes this day to get to our final camp site.  We arrived at our camp site for this evening in the dark, around 6:40pm.  Although we had flashlights with us, we decided not to use them since our eyes were adjusting to the darkness as it was growing darker and we didn’t want to use the flashlights and risk destroying our night vision and having a much harder time seeing.  We could almost make out the contours of rocks, roots, logs, and other hazards of the trail as we climbed down, and down, and down until suddenly we saw a light coming toward us.  It was the Red Zao tour guide coming to meet us; as she knew that we were supposed to arrive there also that evening. 

We had a large dinner of chicken, a pork & vegetable dish, egg rolls, potatoes, rice, and several other items.  With the elevation at this camp site at 2,481 meters (8,139 feet) and the elevation of the trailhead at 1,940 meters (6,365 feet), we had 1,774 feet yet to climb down the next morning.  We managed that distance in just 1 hour and 23 minutes. 

Thursday March 12, 2009.  This morning we had a breakfast of, what else, “pancakes”, and several other Vietnamese dishes.  After taking some pictures of our three porters and the other group’s two porters, we packed up, put on the backpack and hiked for just 1 hour and 23 minutes to get back down to the trailhead.   

As we were approaching the trailhead we started to hear and see the signs of civilization, including dogs barking, peoples voices, and power lines.  So we knew that we were close.  It felt so good to stop and know that in just a little while we would be in a nice, warm, cozy bed.  But when we arrived at the Bamboo Hotel at around 10:30am, they said that we would have to wait until 12:00 noon before our room would be available.  We asked if there was any way we could at least take a shower.  They said no, but for $10 more they could get us into a nicer room right away.  We said, “We’ll take it!” 

The first thing we did was to take a shower, then I gathered up all the dirty clothes and wrote down the quantities of each different item in preparation for bringing the laundry down to the front desk to get it started early enough that they could complete it by 8am the next morning. 

We had been very lucky as we found out only after finishing up with the mountain section of this tour that they had closed the mountain again just one day after we began our hike to the top, again for fire danger.  But we were already up there so there was nothing they could do. 

Friday March 13, 2009.  We met Chris again on our last day in Sapa, coincidentally, as he was entering our hotel just as we were leaving.  We also found out at that time that he had a chance to meet with Nhit in person.  So now he knows who it is he’s supporting.  He said that she seemed like a very nice girl. 

Sapa is at an elevation of 1,500 meters (4,921 Feet).  In the morning we walked with Thanh to a garden area in Sapa that is at an elevation of 1,800 meters (5,905 feet).  So just the day after doing “the mountain”, we did almost another 2,000 feet of climb and decent just as an after thought tour.  Our legs were not very happy with this. 

Later on that day Thanh took us to Lao Cai where he showed us the China border, right across the Red River.  We then had dinner with Thanh at a restaurant right across from the Lao Cai train station.  We boarded the 7:30pm train and after talking a bit with our “bunk mates”, a Vietnamese girl from Hanoi and an American woman from Bend, Oregon, we went to bed until around 4:15am when they woke everybody since they were getting close to the Hanoi station. 

Bill & Thoi

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