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Prepare to Log the Planet....
Travel Log
Travel Log
January 6, 2002
Sapa
Our trip to north Vietnam was a six day trek through hilly, windy, bumpy roads in a mini-van with three Vietnamese escorts. Hung our guide, Bo our driver, and Dan, a French-Canadian photographer of Vietnamese descent who is helping our guide create a web presence. The truth is that we spend almost three of our six days on the road, but we did manage to see a great deal of the north and particularly the incredible natural parks and the Hill Tribes living there.
We began by driving 200 kilometers (in 8 hours) to Ba Be national park. This is a beautiful, still partly isolated from the growing tourist industry because of it’s remoteness. The park is formed around three connected lakes and a river that runs between them. We took a day long boat trip through the lakes and river and made three unforgettable stops. The first was at a small tribal village of the Tay tribe. There we were invited into a local family’s hut on stilts for tea. The hut is made of bamboo and is actually a bit larger than our house. Below the house is the farm, with pigs, chickens and even a Vietnamese buffalo roaming around. A small fire was lit in the main room, with a pot of corn soup on the fire and loads of orange corn drying above it. When we arrived the eldest son was writing invitations in a local dialect in Chinese characters (the Vietnamese use Roman characters to write) for a ceremony to rebury a dead relative. The ceremony takes place in the middle of the night three years after death. The bones are dug up and put into a permanent grave.
Our second stop, after about an hour on the lakes, was a hike to a waterfall. And the cave that the river runs through. We left the boat and hiked into the cave to see the thousands of bats flying overhead.
The whole area was virtually tourist free, since this is the off-season. After Ba Be we made our way to Sapa. It is only 250 kilometers, but it took us two days of driving. On the was we stopped at a local tribes market, where we caused a huge commotion just by being white. Maayan led the local kids back to the car like the Pied Piper and they all watched in awe as she sung some songs in Hebrew. We later made a stop in Lao Cai on the Chinese border, and enviously watched people pass over to the other side (China has been temporarily closed to Israelis).
We eventually arrived in Sapa. Sapa is located in one of most beautiful areas in the country. Towering mountains, deep, green valleys and rice terraces carved over generations into the hillsides make for a breathtaking (and sometimes rather frightening) ride up to the 1,700 meter high town. In Sapa we finally saw a few tourists – but not many. Sapa is cold, very cold, and we were not dressed for the occasion. Perhaps after Canada it would have been easier – although Dan said that it was cold even by his Montreal standards – so that’s pretty cold for desert folk like us. The heaters they gave us gave off more light and less heat than a 100 watt light bulb. Our room registered 11 degrees celsius. Outside it was less.
But Sapa was worth the killer frost. We took a day hike down into the valley to visit the Black Hmoung Tribe. Since these people are used to tourists, they children didn’t get excited about seeing white girls, but rather the money they had. Still Maayan managed to get a gathering of local girls in their amazing local garb, learn all of the names and ages. The hike brought us through rice paddies and into the homes of the Hmoung. It was an amazing day.
The following day brought us to Bac Ha and the other Flower Hmoung tribes weekly market in Can Cau. People from all over the region and from beyond the Chinese border 8 kilometers north, bring everything from buffalo to tribal cloth to sell and trade. The flower Hmoung women where extremely colorful clothes and head-wrappings. Every gets there early (we arrived at 7:00 in the blistering cold after a one hour drive from Hac Ba) for breakfast, and some of the girls and come with cassettes of courting songs to find a husband, making the whole scene a sensory overload.
We then returned the 10 hours to Hanoi for two more days in the city.
We are soon departing Vietnam and returning to Thailand. I could stay another month easily. It’s an incredible country that we will never forget. There is so much more to see – particularly the south. Someday.
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30.12.2001
We just returned from Halong Bay, were earth shows what amazing things she can create. It wa beautiful, even thought the kids were much more impressed with climbing 244 stairs (Uriah counted) and then walking another kilometer almost straight up in the National Park on Cat Ba Island.
They also really enjoyed the visit to the old war hospital, from the "American War", carved out of a cave inside a mountain. The hospital itself looked a lot like an Israeli bomb multi-floored shelter, but the guy running, an ex-Viet-Cong officer was hysterical. He even sang us a few war songs.
Tomorrow we head up north to the mountain tribes in the Sapa area and we'll be back in Hanoi on Jan. 5.
Happy New Year to all - Hanoi getting ready for some big celebrations.
26.12.2001
We have arrived in Hanoi. What a great city. Noise, commotion, action, and cool looking red flags. I think I'm going to like this town. Upon arriving, our laptop screen broke. Now we're really screwed. I don't think I want to invest $1000 in a new one right now. So these entries may be much shorter.
But being in Vietnam makes up for losing a computer (the truth is it still works, but I can only see about 20% on the lower-left side of the screen).
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