Hill tribes and terraces in Sapa

Sapa is a town in the very north of Vietnam (practically touching China) where the French established a hillside retreat from the choking heat of the lowlands. As a result the pretty town is somewhat reminiscent of a ski resort in the Alps, all wooden balconies and coffee shops (real coffee! not local gloop!) and is the start point for treks into the surrounding valleys. These valleys are of particular interest as they are home to several different minority groups and spectacular cascading green terraces which the locals have built over hundreds of years to facilitate crop growing.

After the train arrived in at the ungodly hour of 5am we were bussed to possibly the gloomiest looking hotel ever and waited two hours for our breakfast. At around 9am, our guide arrived and with a small bunch of other tourists we set off into the mist. 

As soon as we began to leave the town limits a little group of (tiny) women in black garb attached itself to our group, one for each member of the group. This seemed perfectly normal and there were bunches of other such ladies attaching themselves to other tour groups as we went through the town. 

Uncertain face

At first I was a little apprehensive; because I really didn't want/need to buy anything and clearly these ladies were not walking with us for the good of their health (or to observe clumsy westerners in the wild). But seen as we were walking 10km it seemed very rude to not engage with them so I struck up a conversation with Mae who was walking beside me. 

Getting followed down the road

She had good English, picked up mainly from tourists, and four children at home. It transpired that every morning the ladies went to the market and afterwards accompanied the tour groups down the mountain into their village. They were quite fun once they got going, teasing the Swedish man with us about his Buddha belly (he was fairly good natured about it, so no harm done!) and asking all type of questions (are you married, what's your job, how many brothers and sisters do you have... and so on). This was a good distraction from the disappointing fact that the weather was awful, with very poor visibility, so we were missing all the awesome terraces. Bloody rain follows us bloody well everywhere!

Gifts for me!

The Hmong (the tribe name) ladies made us little trinkets from ferns as we descended and they bounded down the hill with great agility, helping us along the way. When we got down into their village (past a huge Chinese financed hydroelectric plant) and sat down for lunch, the onslaught began. Buy this, buy this lady, buy something! I gave in of course (a pushover or a good Samaritan, I can’t decide) and bought a little purse from Mae. Ah I’ll use it for something..

The table behind us getting all the attention

After lunch the trail continued its way into the valley. The villages we passed through were dirty but sort of charming, with simple wooden houses and lots of animals scurrying about. Most of the several local tribes trace their origins back to China and speak a different language than Vietnamese.  

Children and terraces

Damien and terraces

Our accommodation for the night was with the lovely Moon family, who were one of the first families from their tribe to offer homestays. I was glad we were bringing some money into a local household this way as the morning’s exploits had made me a little uncomfortable about the effect that tourism was having on the local tribes. There are hundreds of tourists passing through Sapa and trekking down into the valley, however their tourist dollars do not seem to trickle down into the very tribes they come to see. As a result, the only way the locals can profit is by selling trinkets, in a manner that is very similar to persistent begging. I don’t feel that their culture is being preserved, it’s like they are frozen in time, wearing traditional dress purely for the flashing cameras and the opportunity to sell something.

But back to the homestay, over an open fire the family cooked up a dinner of delicious stir fired vegetables, chips (CHIPS!) and chicken. It was a feast. After raising some rice wine toasts with Mr Moon, we sat down to a few competitive card games with our lovely guide Huin.

Damo loses the rest of travel budget

The next day the weather had perked up a bit and we could see further into the curving terraced hills. The hike continued into the valley and was more strenuous than the day before but with great views.

Whose backpack is best??

Hmong lades.. I never saw any of the men!

I really enjoyed hiking through the muddy terraces taking in the vista that had finally revealed itself to us. It also was fab to connect with our lovely guide, it was just the three of us for the day and he was as interested in our lives as we were in his. A question we’ve been asked a few times by Vietnamese people is “how many parties do you have in your country?” Funnily enough they don’t mean booze-ups, they’re talking about political parties. When your representation system is confined to one party, it’s understandable that this would of interest, and so I usually fill them in on the major parties we have and how you can establish a new one. It’s was also fascinating to Huin how much a person would pay for motorcycle insurance in Ireland!

A little girl walks her ducks

After a restful evening and a colossal thunderstorm we awoke to beautiful sunshine on our last day. Of course! We had a short trek down into another valley, getting the best pictures of our trip, but appreciating that the one good thing about the cold is that it's way easier to hike in! (Unfortunately I have to reduce the quality of the photos or else the blog will not accept them, so just imagine the below as much greener!)

Looks like a painting

I loved Vietnam so much I bought the teeshirt!

That evening we began the next marathon travelling session. Only 10 hours on the train, 12 hours hanging around the hostel and a 1 hour flight until Vientiane, the capital of Laos. We do plan these things well!

I was quite sad leaving Vietnam after nearly a month travelling there. It is an incredible country full of diverse food, people and scenery and a very rewarding place to visit. If you ever get the chance, go! 

Pretty Hoi An, gritty Hanoi and gorgeous crazy Halong bay!

After an awful bus journey where the driver did his darned best to kick us off the bus, insisting we hadn’t paid, when we had (I swear), we arrived into Hoi An, another coastal town. Hoi An is celebrated for its quaint old town and picturesque narrow streets strung with red lanterns. It’s the Vietnam that the brochures sing of, and very lovely at that. We spent three nights in the centre, admiring Chinese, Japanese and French architecture, cycling to the beach and eating some decent grub. However we didn’t bother getting any clothes made from the 1,000,000+ tailors plugging their wares in town!

It's very pretty, as you can see

Lovely lanterns

We took a lot of photos

Yer wan on the right looks a bit mad

Japanese bridge

Beachside grub

In no time we found ourselves ensconced within a rickety Vetnamese train steaming up the northern coast towards the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, chatting to a very friendly Frenchman. We had an evening of snatched views of an untouched coastline, peppered with little villages here and there. I genuinely was surprised at the gorgeous beaches in Vietnam so far, lovely sandy stretches with an ocean of bath water temperatures.

Through a train window, darkly

Stupidly I procured a taxi ride to the hostel from a Vietnamese guy who approached us on the platform. Rookie mistake! As we walked towards the exit I realised he had no teeth and smelled quite strongly of booze. In sleazy broken English he said “you very beautiful”. Ugh.

Once out of the station he handed us over to another guy, so we thought everything was fine until this dude placed Damien’s rucksack in the front seat obscuring our view of the meter. I had heard about dodgy meters in Hanoi so I whispered this to Damien this and we both kept an eye on it as the driver pointed out various sights in a futile attempt at distraction. And lo and behold the little red digits jumped from 38 to 99 in a split second! When we arrived at the hostel a full blown argument ensued and in the end we paid 100,000d for a trip that should have cost about 60,000d but had a meter reading of 160,000d. Not the best introduction to Hanoi!

Home for a few days

We stayed in a busy hostel in the old quarter and went on a little walking tour with them. Hanoi is a really lived in city, with narrow busy streets choked with parked motorbikes, pedestrians, street food and small market stalls. You could feel the Communist influence more here and it seemed more claustrophobic than the airy boulevards of Saigon. Nonetheless I really liked the city; once you dug a little deeper there were lots of Asian wonders, small temples tucked away on corners, a street full of yellow flags, a huge market with live fish, crabs and frogs for sale (I really wanted to liberate the poor ugly frogs), a hardworking and steely populace and in the middle of the city a gorgeous lake where allegedly some prehistoric looking turtles live.

Market in central Hanoi

The surprisingly pretty lake

Lying about four hours drive from Hanoi is Halong bay, a UNESCO world heritage sight consisting of dramatic karst peaks rising like lost mountains out of a green ocean. It’s an incredible and unmissable natural wonder.

Unfortunately very gloomy day when we visited

So we decided on a booze cruise to go and see it. Well, not quite a booze cruise, officially a trip organised by our hostel out to their private island in the bay and two nights sleeping on the island. The tagline of the excursion is “party long, party hard”, but hey, we’d been well behaved for a while, so why not!

After a few fun nights drinking bia hoi on the streets outside the hostel (possibly the cheapest beer in the world, 20 cent a glass!) we boarded a bus with about 40 other revellers and endured four hours of maniacal Vietnamese driving until we arrived at the boat dock. Decked out in ridiculous multicoloured sombreros we cut quite a sight boarding the little boat that would take us to the island. Happy hour started as soon as we boarded!

Damien is in the wrong continent!

Unfortunately the bay was clouded in mist, but as we edged closer, the jagged peaks became clearer and the stunning seascape revealed itself. After a swimming break (during which one girl got stung by a jellyfish) we reached Castaway island. Our initiation ceremony awaited! This consisted of making animal noises, chugging a beer and running through a tunnel of people intent on injuring us. Imaginative. After this, and some dinner, the evening generally descended into madness not much of which I can remember but there definitely was a huge drinking game involving around 60 people! A colossal thunder storm began to rage outside and a rumour began to circulate about phosphorescent algae in the sea. With fifteen beers acting as an insulator we jumped in and splashed around and I actually couldn’t believe my eyes. Every time you splashed or moved at all, the water sparkled like there were hundreds of little fairy lights twinkling just under the surface. It’s one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen and totally otherworldly. Amazing.

Private island in the bay

The next morning the day was brighter and the bay even lovelier (but we had sore heads and no dry clothing!). We took a sea kayak into a nearby cove and later on Damien tried his hand at wake boarding. We ended up in a boat with four people who had wake boarded for years and were awesome! So the pressure was on for poor Damien. But incredibly he stood up in no time and had a brilliant ride for several minutes behind the boat. A boat of beginners went out later and none of them managed to get up so that’s testament to his skills! (You can pay me for the accolade later Damo ;) )

Naaarrrrlllyyyy

Another night of drinking ensued, but worn out I went off to bed early leaving Damien with his new gap yeaaaarrr friends.

Aren't they freshfaced

The next morning it was time to leave the crazy island, but the hardcore partiers weren’t going to let the early start put them off! Dan, our guide/minder/bad influence questioned why the Irish weren’t drinking. I told him we’d gladly start if he bought us a beer, expecting him not to, but of course, he did. Sláinte at 9am so…

Back in the hostel, we showed up, grabbed a kebab and awaited our pick up for our next tour, to the highlands of Sapa. No rest for the wicked!

This is a naff photo!

The Easyriders – Dalat to Hoi an?

The sleeper bus to Dalat was actually quite comfortable if a little cramped. These beds are definitely not made for big westerners! We wanted to head to Dalat in the central highlands of Vietnam because we’d heard of a motorbike tour you could do from here to Hoi an with a group called the Easyriders. The Easyriders are mainly ex South Vietnamese soldiers who struggled to find work after the war. Now they ferry tourists as pillion passengers around the mountainous roads of Vietnam!

Dalat night market

Dalat street food

Most tourists travel through Vietnam on the coastal highway, but we wanted to see a bit more away from the beaten track and the Easyriders seemed like a great way to do this. We weren’t sure how to get in contact with these guys so imagine our surprise when one of them greeted us straight off the bus! He offered us a trip into town to our hotel and as he was cheap we agreed. Not sure if he was the genuine article or not, we didn’t let on we wanted to do a bigger trip so as to suss him out first.

Traditional Vietnamese coffee

After checking in to our hotel, our new friend Mr.Sao offered to buy us a coffee and talked about the tours he could offer. He seemed like a nice guy and had a little book with glowing reviews from other travellers. It didn’t take long for us to agree on a price ($65 pp/pd), and we set our departure date for 2 days time. We then met Mr.Sao’s friend and fellow biker Mr.Jean, who funnily enough had a cupla focail of Irish! The guys offered to take us on a day tour of Dalat the next afternoon so we could get an idea of what our 6 day tour would be like.

Dalat from above

The following day we wandered around Dalat before meeting the guys in the afternoon. Jumping aboard the big bikes we sped off to see the sights around town. The sights were a bit of a non event to be honest and the most interesting place we visited was a waterfall. The highlight for me was how you got down to said waterfall. It had its own little gravity assisted roller coaster which made the ride down very enjoyable, much better than the 15 minute walk. The Easyriders were pretty knowledgeable and chatty, and we both felt assured that the following few days would be an enjoyable experience in their company.

Roller-coaster to waterfall

Day 1 of our journey and it was Paddys day, so I felt it only right to don my trademark Irish t-shirt (“where the craic is mighty!”) for the 170km trip to Lak Lake. The guys expertly strapped our big bags to the back of their bikes and off we went. It wasn’t long till we left the outskirts of town and instantly we found ourselves in rolling hills with green fields below. 

Dalat farms

The Dalat region of Vietnam is one of the highest yielding areas in Vietnam for vegetables and fruit, so we stopped to have a look at some farms along the start of our route. The trip wasn’t just about looking at the scenery though, whenever we felt our bums were getting a bit sore, the bikes soon stopped and we were at another interesting stop. On the first day we visited a flower farm, a coffee plantation, a silk factory and a waterfall. The most bizarre was a weasel coffee shop. The weasels are fed only coffee beans, during their digestion the beans react to the enzymes in the weasels’ stomachs and it actually makes the beans more fragrant and tasty. It just looked like big piles of weasel poo to me, but there you have it, each to their own. The coffee made from these beans is very expensive, around 5 times the price of a normal cuppa.

Anyone for some weasel coffee?

Poor little guy

We reached Lak lake just as the sun was setting and were shown to our homestay. We’d tried to do a few homestays in Vietnam as we thought they gave you a good insight into the lives of the locals and afforded you some interaction with regular people. This homestay however, was just us sleeping in an old shed, with zero interaction from anyone. 

Our cosy homestay

You know a place is bad, when even your guides who told you they were also staying in the shed, head off later to the nearest hotel to spend the night. Ah well, we made the most of it, and had a couple of beers down by the lake, and watched a very competitive game of football.

Football down by Lak Lake

We awoke on day two, to find the guides’ beds not slept in, and bleary eyed we were glad to get out of our luxury shed. However both of us perked up when we realised there were elephants meandering down the road outside the hut! Turns out that the indigenous tribe that we were staying with herd the elephants from the jungle across the lake into the town every day! As we sat with breakfast of very strong Vietnamese coffee (not the poo variety) and a spicy pork roll we watched these lumbering, gorgeous creatures being driven across the lake and right up the road beside us.

Elephants arrive to Lak Lake

Ready for day two we saddled up and made for Buon Me Thuot City, 120kms away. Immediately after leaving the lake, we were surrounded by rice paddy fields as far as the eye could see. The different shades of green and yellow were like a child trying to use all his different coloured crayons at once.

Caution! duck crossing

Workers harvesting rice by hand

We learned from Mr.Sao how the locals harvest the rice, and how they know it’s ready for picking. Day 2 proceeded like day 1, stopping at various small enterprises along the way. We visited a man who fought with the Viet Cong but now for some strange reason keeps large snakes and scorpions in his house. Mr Sao insisted we get familiar with the snakes. Cora did not like this!

We saw a small woman making flower pots using nothing more than some sand and cement and a little bucket. The technique was ingenious and she made them all on the floor of her house. That’s all she did all day, make 24 flower pots and hope to sell them on. It’s amazing here that all these small businesses exist and they survive somehow, there’s no big companies buying out the little guy and I think it makes for a more varied economy and culture.

Making flower pots

We reached Buon Me Thuot, and checked into our little communist style hotel, and had a well deserved shower. Dinner was with the Easyriders as usual at the local springroll restaurant. That’s all they sold, just like the chicken rice place for lunch only sold chicken rice, if you want rice with beef??... then you go to the beef rice place down the road. It’s a funny country to find something to eat. I thought the spring rolls were nice, but something didn’t agree with Cora and she spent most of the night throwing up in the hotel. So much for being rested for day 3! Poor thing..

Mr.Sao takes a well earned break

Day 3 and as I brought the bags downstairs to load up, Mr Jean had some bad news: his mother had taken ill and he needed to go home. Unfortunately for us this meant our 6 days tour to Hoi an was now a 3 day tour to Nha Trang, a beach resort on the coast. We tried to find a solution that would allow Mr Jean to go home and us to carry on, but our friends were not very good at thinking outside the box (maybe a communist thing), so we set off on the 170km away from the highlands and towards Nha Trang.

Transporting some jack fruit

Trying my hand at making rice paper

The scenery on day 3 was actually some of the best, vast green hills either side of a great driving road as we meandered along. Everytime we passed a house, kids would rush to the road to wave and shout “Hello hello!” and then react in utter excitement when you said hello back or god forbid waved! It was gas. A few more interesting stops today included a rubber tree farm and a brick factory (more interesting than it sounds) where all the bricks were made by hand.

Hello Hello!

After stopping at a war memorial, Mr Jean pointed out the fields that had been damaged by Agent Orange during the war. It was certainly apparent that the vegetation was weaker here and sparser than non affected areas. Knowing the effects of Agent Orange from the War Remnants museum, this was a sobering thing to see.

Upon reaching highway 1, we joined up with the rest of the traffic clambering its way up the coast and arriving into Nha Trang was like arriving into Blackpool, given where we had come from. The Easyriders dropped us to a nice enough hotel, and we said goodbye to Mr.Jean who started straight back to Dalat down the coast road.

Lunch stop

We made the most of our time in Nha Trang, even managing to go to a late night Karaoke bar with some other members of the Easyrider gang and Mr.Sao. It felt very like the Hangover 2, only that we didn’t wake up the next day not knowing what had happened and we did get home at a respectable time. The Vietnamese guys can’t drink that well, and after 3 party cans they called it a night. We spent a day relaxing on the beach before booking a night bus to Hoi an where we had originally intended on ending our motorcycle trip.

Travelling with the Easyriders was a great way to see more of Vietnam than we would have done by pubic transport, and although we didn’t get to finish our trip, our 3 days with them was thoroughly enjoyable. Travelling by bike is an amazing way to see a country, you get to feel the warm wind in your face, catch the scent of coffee blossoms as you fly by and see lots of little details along the road that you would miss behind the protective screen of a car window. (Cora wrote this last sentence, obviously!) All in all highly recommended!