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December 12, 2003

Hanoi, and the frozen north

Every time I arrive in a new country, it seems to be in the middle of some kind of national celebration. In Kathmandu it was Dasain, the rather bloodthirsty festival of the goddess Durga; in Bangkok I walked straight into a Halloween party on the Kao San Road. In Hanoi, my plane touched down just as the international football match between Vietnam and Indonesia was about to start. By the time I'd found a hotel, had a shower, and walked to a restaurant on the edge of the Hoan Kiem lake, the game was late into the second half. By the time I'd finished eating and wanted to get back to the hotel, Vietnam had won the game 2-1, and the road that ran all the way around the lake was packed with motorbikes, cyclos and bicycles, the riders waving huge Vietnamese flags and honking their horns. This was a problem, since the restaurant was on the inside of the road, while my hotel was on the outside. The bikes were so densely packed that crossing over the road seemed impossible, and I had visions of having to spend the night on a bench by the lake. Luckily many other people were in the same situation as me, and the crowd inside the ring-road gradually permeated outwards through the tiny gaps between the bikes in a kind of reverse-osmosis process that brought everyone safely to the other side. The celebrations continued long into the night, and yet again I found myself relying on my earplugs to get some sleep. It was only a first-round match, and I wondered what would happen if Vietnam reached the final.

During the normal Hanoi rush hour, the streets are only marginally less chaotic than in the aftermath of a national footballing victory. There is a constant stream of (mostly two-wheeled) traffic, and everyone uses the horn at every possible opportunity. I became convinced that all the drivers were blind, and were using their horns to echolocate, like bats. The only way to cross the road is to hold your breath and step out fearlessly into the traffic, which somehow always manages to veer to one side or the other. There are pavements, but they are mostly used for parking bikes or setting up street stalls, so pedestrians are forced onto the road. Tourists are constantly hassled by cyclo drivers and hawkers selling postcards, fruit, conical hats - all kinds of stuff - so walking around the town can get tiring. I liked to escape into the relative quiet of the little cafes that are all over the old quarter; the coffee is excellent, most of the beans coming from the highlands in central Vietnam.

After taking the obligatory tour to Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island, I had booked a berth on the night train to Lao Cai, from where I could get to Sapa for some trekking in the hills. It was 7pm, and with only two hours to go until the train left, my laundry was still at some unknown location in the city. The guy at the hotel had assured me that it would be back by midday, but this was before I realised how dodgy he was. In fact, everyone working at that hotel seemed to be operating some sort of scam; they'd already slapped a spurious "sales tax" onto my bill (I never saw that tax again anywhere else in the country), and were constantly hassling me to sign up for tours and excursions. It was impossible to walk out of the hotel in the mornings without answering a barrage of questions about "where you go today", "you want city tour?", "I book you train ticket" etc. etc. A bit of shopping around revealed that they were adding a hefty commission to any train or bus tickets that they sold - I booked mine elsewhere. By now I was fed up with the constant hard-sell and just wanted to get out of there, but first I needed my clothes back. Eventually the laundry turned up, only minutes before it was time to catch the taxi to the station. Everything was still damp, and smelled only marginally better than before - but there was no time to argue, and I was just pleased to be leaving.

I was travelling up to Sapa with Elles from Holland, whom I'd met on the bus from the airport into the centre of town. She was just as pissed-off as me with the hotel staff - her clothes came back smelling worse than when she'd handed them in, and she doubted that they'd been washed at all. We found our way to the compartment and occupied the two lower berths, as indicated on the tickets, but I was soon convinced that something weird was going on. About every 10 minutes a ticket inspector and a couple of other officials would arrive at the door of the compartment, look in, argue in Vietnamese while waving about a wad of ticket stubs, then disappear again. The process was repeated three of four times, but the only one of them who spoke English kept reassuring us that everything was OK. Maybe they were just concerned about the appearance of the compartment - not wanting to leave my damp clothes to go mouldy inside the backpack, I had spread them out to dry using any available free space. Underpants and socks hung from coat hooks on the wall, and a couple of t-shirts were spread out on the lower bunk. The unoccupied upper bunks were soon sold off by the conductor; apparently there is a system where people in cheaper seats can upgrade to a sleeping compartment by paying a (probably unofficial) "upgrade fee". Our compartment soon got crowded, as the two Vietnamese who had paid their way in invited their friends over and all cracked open cans of beer. I was considerate enough to move one of my wet shirts so that they could sit down on the lower bunk, but when they all lit up cigarettes I decided that respect for local customs should only go so far, and managed to herd them out into the corridor. With the population of the compartment reduced to only one per berth, we all managed to get some sleep.

Early the next morning the train arrived at Lao Cai on the Chinese border, and from there we transferred by minibus up the steep mountain road to Sapa. Sapa is the most popular base in northern Vietnam for trekking in the hills, which are home to many minority groups, and I was interested to compare the trekking here with my experiences around Mae Hong Son in Thailand. It's also officially the coldest place in Vietnam, but perversely, many of the hotel rooms have no heating. While I was there, the temperature at night often dropped to 3 or 4C, and in the mornings it took a massive effort of will to get up out of bed from under the thick duvet and run to the bathroom for a steaming hot shower. Most of the time, the town was shrouded in a layer of mist, like fine drizzle, and the dampness seemed to penetrate through clothes and make the cold feel even harsher.

Sapa is definitely a tourist town. There are restaurants serving pizza and hamburgers, and my hotel was just down the road from the Red Dragon British Pub. Every morning women from the local villages gather in the main street with armfuls of traditionally-woven blankets, shirts, hats and scarves, and wait for the tourists to arrive. The sales pressure is constant and relentless. An example: one woman tried to get me to buy a blanket - I smiled, refused politely and walked past; a few metres on, the next woman (who had seen me refuse the first one) shoved an identical blanket under my nose; after shaking her off, it happened a third time. Even when, one night, I walked the few paces from the door of the hotel to the phone box across the road, there was someone there waiting to sell me crappy silver bracelets. It started off being annoying, but after a while just became comical as I realised that the same woman had being trying to sell me the same blanket for the past three days.

The Lonely Planet guide to Vietnam has a special Hill Tribes section, listing 10 different ethnic groups, along with descriptions of their traditional dress, religious practices etc. The tour agencies and guesthouses that organise treks around Sapa must have read this section, since they all offer the same standard trekking package that seems designed to show tourists as many of the ethnic groups as possible. I actually saw a couple of tourists putting little ticks in their LP guide next to the tribes that they'd seen. Elles and I agreed that we weren't so concerned if we didn't collect the entire series, and so tried to find a trek that avoided some of the crowds (Sapa is a favourite destination for tour groups). It was difficult to find an agency that offered any variations on the standard packages, but eventually we found one - this trek was apparently less popular because it didn't go through as many villages, but had the advantage of better mountain scenery and fewer tourists. The weather was still cold, grey and drizzly, and I was worried that the trails would be slippery - but Tuan, our guide, reassured us that it would be OK. "Not difficult" he said. "No problem"...

Posted by Steve on December 12, 2003 10:08 AM
Category: Vietnam
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