This blog post will combine all the stuff that happened in our trip to Sa Pa.
Our trip started out taking a night bus to Sa Pa. I’d never been on a night bus before; basically, you sleep on the bus in these reclining chairs. I thought we’d get a horrible night sleep. Turns out it wasn’t that bad! The only thing was the seats were meant for Vietnamese people, so they were a bit short. But I was able to shove myself far enough up the seat to make it comfortable.
Here’s a pic of Sean in said seats:
We arrived in Sa Pa around 5 am. We were supposed to get picked up by a guy would would take us to a hotel, and from there we’d start our trek. Unfortunately, nobody showed up. This was from the internery Mr.Micheal had booked for us way back in Cat Ba, so we didn’t really have the name of the company or anything that was supposed to pick us up. It took us about 30 minutes of looking at our paper, staring at other people, and texting Micheal before we figured out what to do. Sean hadn’t gotten much sleep on the bus, so he was rightfully grumpy during this ordeal. I was a little worried, but in the end realized shit happens and if we couldn’t figure it out we’d make another plan.
Finally, we looked on the BACK of the paper, and realized it had the name of the hotel that we were supposed to go to. So we headed off to the hotel. Apparently a lot of people on our bus were going to the same trip, and they had all gotten picked up, just not us. Darn you Mr.Micheal.
But anyways, we ate breakfast, and geared up for the trip. I was going to wear my tennies for the hiking, but the guide said that we were going to be stepping in ankle-deep mud, so we rented some cheap rubber boots from her for $2. And thank god I did.
Oh, and remember that Indian couple that was on the party boat with us? Well apparently they took the same bus to Sapa, and were also on the trek with us! Don’t forget that, because they come into the story later…
So anyways we head off on the trek, and it is SUPER foggy. I was really worried we wouldn’t be able to see *ANYTHING*. Luckily, it cleared up as we went. Here’s some pics from the trip:
A cute doggo. I kept saying these dogs looked like Benjaman Button:
Other wildlife:
A somewhat decent view. This is about as good as the views got. But you can appreciate the scale of these rice fields. The valley went on for miles, and it seemed every viable square meter was covered in rice fields:
Here are some other pictures from the trek:
They also let us stop at one of the schools. I think it was elementary school. They were at recess, and when it was over, instead of chiming a bell, they hit a giant drum. I thought that was great:
Also kind of weird they just let foreigners roam around a kid’s school during recess, but what do I know.
I think this was one of my favorite pics from the trek. I wish I had a bit better zoom, but it’s pretty cool to just see one of the locals chilling along the rice fields:
More pics of us, yay:
On our way over, I saw this house with the rock in it. They literally built the house isn’t the rock. Why move it when you can use it?
They taught us a bit about making clothes on the trip. This here is indigo:
They use it to dye some of their plants. There’s a complex process of extracting the die from the plants that I don’t quite remember, but requires letting the dye to sit for a couple of months, followed by combining it with some sort of sand before using it for clothes. They said even a small field of flowers can yield a couple kilos of dye, which I thought was a good return on effort 😛 The whole process of growing and extracting the dye takes about a year.
During our hike we meet two girls from South Korea. One was from LA, the other from some city outside of Denver. They were English teaches in Korea. It was really cool to hear about their live stories.
We also got to see how the indigenous people made clothes. They sewed hemp using a manual sewing machine. Then they died it using that indigo died I talked about. Often the die would make the clothes very shinny, so to de-shine it, they would use wax. To apply the wax, they would basically get on this hover-board looking rock, and rock back and forth across the cloth. It looked really tiring, but the lady who did it looked really impressive/experienced.
They said in all it takes about a year of work to make a dress. ONE DRESS. Good lord.
The most entertaining story we heard on our trek was about how people get married. So some people have arranged marriages, and other times they “find love”. There is a “love festival” that goes on once a year where everyone in town gathers and meets other potential mates. If a guy likes a girl, he will kidnap her(yes you read that right). He basically takes her back to his family’s home for 3-4 days, and see if they get along. Since everyone in the village knows everyone, the guy’s family will tell the girls neighbors where she is so they don’t get worried. After that trail run, if the guy and the girl like each other, they get married. The guy pays the girls family 50 L of rice wine, along with an ox I think? and get married. Again, since everyone knows everyone else, they don’t give each other wedding rings after marriage. Everyone just knows. I thought that was pretty cool.
So anyways, after hearing this, I start talking to the Indian couple again. It turns out the girl works for some company near mine in SF! I don’t know what it was called(couldn’t quite understand), but I guess she travels around to lots of different offices to work, the SF office being one of them.
So anyways, I’m talking to her, and we get to talking about these arranage marriages. I was like, “oh, that’s somewhat similar to Indian marriages, right”? Seeing how you have to pay the other family, and the families are very close knitt, ect. She was like “NO. It is VERY different. The woman’s family pays the MAN for the marriage”.
And she’s right, there’s a big difference between the two cultures. I was just trying to make small talk, and I felt kinda bad I offended her. But I also felt like she also over reacted. Obviously I wasn’t trying to offend her, just trying to understand these different cultures and their similarities….
So anyways we keep trekking. Near the end of the 1st day of trekking we saw this bar. I thought it was a pretty funny name:
I also want to note that everything was SUPER FREAKING MUDDY during the hike. It was very hard to not fall into the mud. I think during the trek Sean fell into the mud twice. And one of our English-teaching south Korean friends fell once.
Anyways, we eventually get to the homestay. It wasn’t quite a homestay as it was a hostel. It had a few private rooms, on the first and second floor, with most of the second floor just being an open sleeping arrangement. We got there at around 4ish, so we basically had the rest of the evening(besides the cooking class and the dinner) to fuck around.
This is when the first trouble happened. Remember that Indian couple that had been following us since the begginning? Well I guess there was some mix up with the rooms, and all the sudden I hear from the Indian woman,
WE PAID 30 EXTRA DOLLARS TO STAY IN A PRIVATE ROOM WITH A BATHROOM. I DONT CARE HOW YOU FIX IT, IT NEEDS TO BE FIXED. CALL THE COMPANY AND FIX THIS NOW.
She was really laying into our tourguide/homestay people. So a couple things:
- First, while this isn’t technically a homestay, you’re still in someone elses house. You shouldn’t really be making demands from them
- Don’t be a laying into this people! That’s so dickish. It was obviously a mistake and they’ll fix it. But being rude to “custom service”(as our other english-speaking friends called it) isn’t going to get things solved any faster.
Anyways, everyone who had a private room decides to offer up their private room for this lady if it’ll fix her problem. Everyone was super nice about it. We technically had a private room as well I believe(on the paper it translated to that), and though it never ended up materializing when they assigned us sleeping arrangements, we offered it up as well.
Eventually they got everything squared away. But after that incident, we didn’t really see much from the Indian couple besides dinner and breakfast the next day.
Now in her defense, this is probably not what she asked for. She slept on an overnight bus like us and woke up at 6 am(not the best sleep), then had to trek through all this shitty mud to stay in one of these rooms. They were both carrying “roller” luggage, which is not ideal for a country like this, or for activities like this. Pretty amateurish if you ask me. So they probably were used to more “lavish” travelling. Which there is nothing wrong with. But if that’s what you’re expecting, and then you have to go through all this, I can see how you’d snap.
So anyways, that was fun.
And actually, the rest of the night got pretty fun as well. We all got to meet each other.
We met a female German solo traveler who was travelling for 4 weeks on her own(for the first time!). She was really nice. Apparently germans get 4 weeks off a year! Who knew!
We also met the english teachers in Korea that I spoke about before. They taught us a lot about Korea, like everyone in Korea *must* go into the army for about 2 years(or was it 9 months?).
We met a couple that had met in Australia on a work-board program. One was french and the other from the UK. They were both pretty cute 😛
We met a Canadian couple and their friend. There were cool as well, though I didn’t speak to them much 1:1. There might have been 1-2 others but I’m forgetting. All the accents and names and stories tend to blend together.
So the night devolved into drinking. First we played Kings cup(I had to drink the cup), then we payed some phone game that had fun requirements(like would you rather, do this strange thing, ask questions, get to know each other, etc). It was a pretty fun night.
We ended up going to bed at 10pm that night because we were all exhausted, and didn’t wake up till 9 am the next day.
Here’s some pictures of the girls:
On the left is Ahsley, a teacher in Korea. In the center is Johanna, the solo german traveler. And on the right is Natalie, also a teacher in Korea(she’s from LA).
Here’s a pic of us cheesin’ with Johanna:
So anyways, the next day we wake up, eat breakfast, leave. We do some more hiking, Sean falls in the mud again, you know, the usual. We eventually head back to Sapa. We originally had planned to go to Hanoi that night, but decided to try the cable Car on the suggestion of Alvaro(the Peruvian guy we met on the Junk Boat). We say goodbye to our friends :'(, then go to our hotel.
And then I shower for the first time in 2018. And what a great shower it was.
Leaving these people makes me really sad. They were all really cool, and I’d love to be friends with them. When you constantly meet people, and then never see them again, it can be hard. I find it emotionally draining really. I think someone like meet, I like to make deep lasting connections with people. I have a small number of friends but I’d like to think they’re good friends. But when you have a trip like this where you make a friendship and just end it the next day, it’s hard.
Although on the otherside, if you ever happen to travel to their part of the world, then you’ll have a friend there to visit!
So that night in Sapa, we decide to go out for some food.
Here’s our attempt at Hot Pot. I title it, “Two White Guys Fuck Up Hot Pot”:
The waiter constantly came over to show us how to do hot pot(even though Sean had done it before), we also set the place on fire because we couldn’t turn down the heat. Yeah know, white-guys-in-asia sort of stuff.
We call it an earlier night because we’re both exhausted again from the night. But not before I take my favorite picture of Sean on this trip:
The next day, we check out, pack up, eat breakfast, and head for the cable car. This car goes to the top of Fansipan, the highest peak in IndoChina. We sacrificed 1 1/2 days in Hue to see this cable car — basically we could spend a day here, or a day in Hue. I like mountains(sorry Jordan, gonna steal your phrase), so I decided this would be better. And Sean had already been to Hue.
Unfortunately, it was COMPLETELY fogged out. We couldn’t see anything.
The cable car ride up was cool though:
Kinda like you were floating in the air.
We got to the top, and took a couple of fun pictures:
Some random family approached Sean and asked him to be in their picture. First it was just the dad, then the dad and the mom, and then finally the whole family. Pretty funny:
Again, I was really disappointed in not being able to see the incredible views. When you think about it, you save up time all year to go on these vacations, and spend lots of money, and then you get there, and you can’t do the activity you wanted. But that’s just the nature of travelling. A lot of times things just go wrong, and to expect them to be perfect all the time is foolish.
I wrote a post on Instagram that summarized my feelings:
Not every day when travelling can be a winner. Sometimes things just go wrong. In this case, we planned an extra day in Sa pa and sacrificed a day in Hue to see the view from atop Fansipan, and got completely fogged out.
Part of travelling is accepting things won’t go as planned. I’m learning more and more to let go of my expectations and embrace whatever experience comes my way. And through these experiences I realize I’m not so much learning about the world around me, but about myself.
So that’s it! I’m on the bus now to Hanoi, Hanoi for a night and 1/2 a day, then Mui Ne. Onwards and upwards!