Vietnam

It happens every time. Whenever I have moderate-high expectations of a place I am inevitably disappointed. If, on the other hand, I have rock bottom expectations I am usually pleasantly surprised. I understand that if you expect nothing and get something you feel pretty happy. However, in the case of Vietnam I was braced for the worst and got the best.

Street food: fried tofu with mint leaves and white noodles.

Hanoi was a very pretty city with quite insane traffic. I met Julia as planned at a hostel in the Old Quarter and we spent our first couple days in Vietnam practicing walking at a consistent speed across lanes of possessed scooter drivers. We indulged in various types of street food, namely a lot of fried tofu and mint leaves. Discovered a very pleasing, and happily widespread, cafe culture. To get our dose of culture we visited the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh (raising the number of dead people I saw in a week to 2). Experienced incredible propaganda at the prison that held John McCain as a POW (apparently being a POW at Ha Long prison meant it was like Xmas everyday). And took in a water puppet show.

Halong Bay was one of the most talked up sights in Vietnam. To be honest for us it was one of the most disappointing. It was quite expensive to get there as you are almost obliged to take a tour. It was really cold and I didn't have proper clothes on me. We went on a kayak trip from hell -though did see some nice caves. It was nice but not all that.

Sapa, on the other hand, is all that and more. To think we were seriously considering skipping it all together! Sapa is the name of a town in the northern mountains close to the Chinese border. We took a very comfortable sleeper train to Lau Cai and a minibus up into the mountains to Sapa. It poured our first day and we quickly decided to check into a hotel (into the nicest room I've stayed in to date at $5 each per night).

Many of Vietnam's ethnic minorities live up in the mountains farming rice and other things. In Sapa hordes of Hmong women come to town wearing traditional indigo dyed coats with intricately embroidered sleeves to sell bracelets and other trinkets. It took quite a while to figure out the best way to check out the surrounding area. We finally settled on a 2 night/3 day guided trek with a local guide. Our guide Vu is an 18 year old girl from the local Hmong tribe. She was an amazing guide sharing with us stories about poisonous leaves and indigo plants as well as her very cynical views of marriage (apparently many unhappy wives turn to the poison leaves as a last resort).


Terraced rice fields and H'mong children in Sapa.

The first day of trekking was easy and extremely beautiful but also very touristy. The second and third days we were on our own in a world of terraced rice fields. In the afternoon of the second day as we were walking through a small village we heard chanting. Vu explained it was a local shaman and she took us into the house to have a look. A pretty incredible experience. We were supposed to stay with local families but our "homestay" was more of a rustic guesthouse. We slept and ate separately from the family. I did scam a cooking lesson from Vu at the second homestay and I learned to make springrolls. We woke up on the third day to pouring rain. This proved to be very problematic because we had hiked down to the bottom of a valley. Getting out was a very, very muddy affair. We were tired and dirty but also proud and extremely impressed with our days in Sapa.