I'm typing at 1:22 pm on 30 December from our hotel room in Sapa Vietnam. It is a beautiful, mountainous area in Vietnam (very different from the rest of the country), near the China border. More about that later.
We took our boat tour of Halong Bay yesterday morning. It was a good time. It is so beautiful there. The highlight was when we got into 3 rowboats on the bay and had local fisherpersons paddle us through a water cave that let to an almost-fully-enclosed-by-rocky-island pool. The pool is 1.5 feet deep at low tide and 6 feet at high tide. The floating fishing village residents (yes...their homes are floating on this beautiful bay...they even have a floating school) use this pool to teach their children to swim. They also go into this area when typhoons come as it provides protection from the waves and the wind.
After the boat tour, we had lunch, and then took the bus back to Hanoi. We went back to the hotel that is storing our luggage and did a quick switcheroo of stuff (that was pretty funny...we were changing stuff out of our luggage in the hotel employee locker room). It was a bit like fruit basket upset. Then we said goodby to Charlie, our friend, Betsy's dad, who has been traveling with us and had to get back to the states earlier than the rest of us. We miss you, Charlie.
After eating dinner in Hanoi, our tour guide, Hang (a.k.a. Jack), took us to the train station for the overnight "sleeper" bus to Sapa (actually Lao Cai, down the mountain from Sapa). We left the restaurant and boarded the bus to go to the train station. After a minute of driving, the normally laid-back bus driver started yelling at Jack (our tour guide). We came back to the same location that we got on and Jack was embarrassed to tell us that we were already at the train station and we could just walk from there. This was more entertaining than the next phase of the evening.
Once on the train, Jack informed us that we had 13 (very small) bunks for the 15 of us. Also, it turns out that I didn't have the nicest, cleanest sleeper train arranged for the group. There was much discussion (as we really wanted to get some sleep that night, as we are touring most of the day today), and the best that we got was an "extra bed" placed in our sleeper compartment (this took a $10 bribe). The "extra bed" consisted of a worn out folding chair with a tin box placed at the end of it. A piece of plywood was put on those, and then a "cushion" (that looked like it had been in the forest for two years) was placed on the plywood. Julia slept on this. Another child had to double-up with a parent.
(I'm typing the rest of this now). The train doesn't go very fast. It covered around 200 miles in 8.5 hours. Many times the train was going very slow up a steep incline. Other times there were sharp turns. Not many adults got sleep on the train. The children slept most of the time on the train, but we arrived at our destination at 4:15AM and had to get up (no hotel room until noon). We got out of the train to find ourselves on a cold, rainy, platform, and our tour guide was scheduled to meet us two hours later. Yikes.
Fortunately, I had the phone number of our local tour guide, Gordon, and woke him up. He quickly called a friend who had a restaurant a block away from the train station who led us to the restaurant for breakfast. We were at the restaurant until maybe 7 or so, and then we took a bus up the mountain from Lao Cai to Sapa. Many of the tired passengers were motion-sick on the way up, and right as we stopped, one 5-year old boy was poised to puke in a zip lock bag...but the bus stopping helped him hold it together. Once here, many realized that it was colder/wetter here than expected, so they quickly bought some north face jackets here (real or fake is the discussion here).
(I'm resuming typing this at 9pm at the end of the day). We couldn't check-in to the hotel until noon or so, so we went to a waterfall (another twisty mountain road), which was quite beautiful, but shrouded in the fog/mist. We saw a couple of accidents on the way up (we're thankful for safe traveling so far), and on the way back down we almost ran into several large water buffalo. We had lunch, and then finally got to check in and get a shower and a nap (for some). After that, we (except for Helen, who had a fever, and my mom, who wasn't feeling well) hiked up Dragon Mountain in the center of Sapa city. It was quite a hike, but it was beautiful. There was ice forming on the top of the mountain! Julia got cold, so I put here fleece sweatshirt on her. That brought many laughs to the mostly Asian tourists here. We really are missing out on some great scenery given the fog/mist/rain that we have here. I hope tomorrow it is clearer!
This evening we had another great Vietnamese meal at a local restaurant (except for my mom, who is now feeling some better and hopefully she is back and ready to go tomorrow). We really are excited to spend the night on beds in a hotel. It's funny what we take for granted. Not so much looking forward to another night train back tomorrow night. I am sure we will survive it.
As I write this, many of you might be thinking that it was a crummy day. There were definitely some crummy things about today, but we are all in good spirits and we are still glad to be traveling together. It is really a privilege that we have to be able to take a trip like this. In three weeks we are seeing more of Vietnam that most Vietnamese people will every see in their lives. For that we are very thankful.
Peace,
Doug
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