Sapa

After Ha Long Bay, Tamara and I were supposed to go straight back and go to Sapa that night, but we delayed out trip so we could sort some things out. One of those things was Mr Son coming to the hotel to talk with us and supposedly go to the Police with us, but he turned up, told the hotel staff about us in Vietnamese, and then called me a liar, and said he didn't believe me. I was so upset and angry, but I tried responding in English and he was so dismissive that I basically just abused him in Indonesian, calling him arrogant, a liar and a thief. Wish I'd managed to curse him and his family for 7 generations, but he left before I got a chance.

So we left the next night for Sapa, a rural town, near a whole lot of hill tribe villages, anf you go trekking and stay in a village. It was so excellent!! I walked for dozens of kilometres over 3 days, swam in waterfalls, met lots of Indigenous people, and managed to forget some of my troubles from Ha Long Bay.. Out guide was a local Black Hmong woman called Sem, and we stayed overnight in her village. All the little girls in the villages have the most amazing English, and they know just how to work you so that you eventually buy something from them. They spend the afternoon hanging around you, never hassling you to buy anything like the others do, and finally they give you a free cotton bracelet (which someone in my group called a commitment bracelet - ie you're committed to buy from them later!). Finally at the end of the day, you eventually get the request to buy, and after all that time, you really like them and you do.

However a Spanish guy I met on the walk said he felt como un dollar andando - like a walking dollar. I didn't feel it as much in Sapa as I have in Hue, but that's another story.

The whole area was amazing - mountains, rice paddys.. I just loved it. I met 2 Australian guys on the train on the way up. They live in Hanoi, and have done so for about 4 years. One of them works for a motorbike touring company. They gave me lots of good leads for travel advice, flight bookings, places to eat, tailors in Hoi An.. you name it, they helped.

The train was a very interesting experience. It was a 10 hour night train. We were in soft sleeper, which is 4 bunks, an ok matress. I walked through the train with the guys, and it was sooo Heart of Darkness. The hard sleeper carriages were 6 bunks, a much thinner matress, almost just rattan, and no air con, so all the bugs were coming in, attracted to the light. Then there was the seats - wooden benches, people squished in next to each other, no light, people lying on the floor.. it was really a lot worse than any train I've been on anywhere, even Indonesian trains were better than this part of the train. Then there was the bit where they had some food in a styrofoam box, and a wooden bench. There were Vietnamese men just sitting around staring as we came to buy beers, which came out of the box.

Generally all the men on the train acted really weird towards the western women. One of the guards insinuated that Tamara and I would be having wild orgies with the lone Norwegian guy who happened to be in our cabin. When a Vietnamese guy snuck into our cabin and slept in the empty top bed across from me, he then had stolen all my blankets and my pillow, and when he gave them back, he tried to grope me. I demonstrated how I would be punching him in the face if his hand got any nearer to my body, and he left me well alone, and was gone before the guards came back in the morning. The train's air conditioning was absolutely arctic cold, to the point where I had the bed socks from my qantas pouch on, my jacket, and the light sheet they provided and my sarong, and I thought I was going to die from the cold.

On the train on the way back, we had a better class of train, with free water, less arctic air con, and no groping men. This train was more of an express, which would have been great, except we arrived back at 5am, awoken by earsplitting music, and then announcements about Hanoi, it's history and the glorius links with the history of Vietnam. All of which would have been interesting / amusing if not at 5 am...