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SAPA PART 1
For me Sapa was the best part of the trip so far. By the time we started this excursion we already had our jobs assigned. I was the one taking care of the money, Susana negociating the prices and Maria was
managing the complaints department.
Sapa is a place in the montains known by its natural beauty, the rice fields and the spectacular views.
We took a night train from Hanoi. The trip lasted for about 10 hours or so and we were sharing a cabin with 4 beds (the forth one was for a german guy who wasn't exactly the chatty type). I wouldn't say the beds
were exactly clean but we've seen worse. If you ask any of us I'm sure the three of us will say without any doubt last year in Brazil, on a boat navigating the Amazon river...that was the worst time ever...but that's another story.
Anyway, we got to Sapa early in the morning. They picked us up at the train station and they drove us up the mountains for 1-2 hours...it turned out that Sapa is at more than 3000 meters over see level. For the metric system handicapped people, that´s about 10000 feet.
As soon as we got to Sapa, our van was quickly surrounded by odd looking women in some kind of what I could only describe as a local folkloric dress carring some kind of basket on their backs...we were like the objects on sale before the opening of Bloomingdale's on the first sales opening day. I suppose that's what it feels like to be a rock star. 20 odd looking women staring at you through the tinted glass of the van...
The first thing we've noticed when we got there was how cold it was. When we pictured Vietnam in our minds we also pictured ourselves in shorts and T-shirts but Sapa is close to the border with China up in
the north and it´s all high mountains.
But as we´ve learnt in this trip, Vietnamese people are always ready to provide whatever the casual tourist may require...for an overly inflated price you could get your hands on a good pair of woolen gloves, top end coats, trekking boots, woolen hats, ... anything really!!, and after some serious haggling you could get them for a very good price, so María and I decided to go to a local shop and get some much needed gear. 15 minutes later (10 of which were haggling for the price as usual) we came out from the shop with some amazing gear for a very reasonable price.
Once ready to go we went back to the hotel where we met the rest of the group. A couple of Canadians, brother and sister (Casey and Sam) and the guide, a tiny 18 year old and very funny girl called Zi and off we
went for the short trek.
From left to right: Sam, Zi,Casey, Yago and Maria. Susana taking the photo.
As you can tell by the below picture, the weather wasn't the best but it got better during the day.
We did a short trek 2-3 hours thoughout the mountains and the rice fields where Casey fell into one of the rice fields and had to do the rest of the trek all soaking wet,
then we stop for lunch for a couple of hours (tradicional Vietnamese food, quite nice actually),
we did another hour after that and visited a couple of villages and schools and finally we got to our destination, the local house were we were to spend the night.
The house didn't have any insulation but they were using some kind of blankets thick as hell and heavy like made of lead...actually, takingthe covers off in the morning was the equivalent of a 15 minutes session at your local gym!
SAPA PART 2
Just a little bit before darkness i.e. 6 pm, they brought us dinner, and as always it didn´t disapoint us. After dinner with a lot of time to spare until bed time we decided to play cards for a while.
This is what a real Vietnamese kitchen looks like:
Some of the games involved some deception and if you got caught you would have to get more cards from the deck, the funny thing was that Zi, our guide, sometimes didn't even try to lie (which is part of the game), she would blush and just go and collect the cards from the deck without saying a word bringing a lot of laughter from the rest of us.
A couple of hours later one of the other guides brought her group to our house because in ours they could play Karaoke...between that and the nice apple rice wine that was passing around things started to get a bit more animated.
This is what happens when you drink apple rice wine:
Next day we woke up a bit later than usual,we had a short walk in front of us and our host decided to provide us with all the neccesary energy for it, hence the wonderful pankakes for breakfast. Honestly, what else would you need in a breakfast for champions...maple syrope would have been great although they had some kind of watery honey which turned out to be quite a good replacement for the maple syrope.
Something that I found quite surprising not only in Sapa but generally in Asia is the lack of dairy products, everywhere we went in Vietnam for example, if you wanted milk they would bring you condensed milk because they don't sell fresh milk anywhere, you don't find it in the supermarkets (perhaps you can find it in a supermarket within a big town).
So, should you fancy a nice cuppa in the morning or the afternoon...be prepared to mix your tea with condensed milk or to have your tea with no milk...your choice.
Anyway, once we took care of the pankakes we geared up and started the walk...we went to visit a waterfall, then a village and finally we stop by some road where a van came to pick us all up and take us back to the hotel where we could all have the hot shower we had been dreaming a bout for 2 days. :-)
After the shower we got some sandwitches for the trip to the train, we packed our things and got into another van which drove us for 1-2 hours down the mountains until the train station where we took the night train back to Hanoi.
All in all I think this was the nicest excursion within this trip...for me anyway.
