‘La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la….I just can’t get you out of my head’
Sapa, Vietnam (Northern Vietnam)
Sapa is in northern Vietnam and lays 38km from Lao Cai, China (border town in South West China). Sa Pa is surrounded by the Fansipan mountain (about 3000m high), the Ta Van River, dotted with Hmong villages, valleys, and rice terraces. Sa Pa is surrounded by an endless amounts of natural beauty.
During my three day stay in Sa Pa I rented a moped which took me through Hmong villages, caves, and mountains. After the first day crusing Sa Pa on mopeds, I booked a tour to visit local Hmong villages. The tour consisted of a 2 day 2 night trek/home stay. The first day of the trek we were led by a local Hmong girl, who guided us through the hills of Sa Pa, up, down and around rivers, mountains, rice terraces, dodging pigs, chickens and water buffalo…until finally making our way to our home stay….. the house of Mr. Tim! Upon arriving at Mr. Tim’s home we were offered homemade garlic fries……they know just what westerners need after hours of trekking! After we finished our snack of delicious garlicky, hot, crisp, garlic fries we set out to explore the village. We ended up at the local ‘pub’ playing pool and drinking Hanoi beer with the locals. After playing pool we headed back to Mr. Tim’s for dinner. Dinner consisted of many plates of Vietnamese staples (I say staples because, I again had the same plates the following night at my 2nd home stay). The various plates consisted of Tofu w/tomatoes (which was yum), pork and veg, beef with noodles, eggplant, soup and of course rice. But the real ‘topper’ was the rice wine that kept flowing from dinner until the a.m. hours! What began as an innocent night, turned out to be quite interesting. It all began when Mr. Tim started filling our cups with rice wine at dinner. Visualize this…Mr. Tim a fairly petite older Vietnamese man…but has an insatiable appetite for rice wine, which he refuses to partake in alone (Mr. Tim does not know the words or phrases ’no, stop, thank you Mr. Tim i have had more than enough rice wine, or wow I think I have over indulged in rice wine’)! So it went something like this, when Mr. Tim fills up his cup, then Mr. Tim fills up your cup, when Mr. Tim drinks, you in return drink! Just during dinner alone, Mr. Tim filled up our cup ATLEAST 10 times….and a couple times during dinner, i tried to discreetly discard a few cups into my rice, but you cannot fool Mr. Tim, because just as I poured my cup into my rice, Mr. Tim caught me and filled up my cup again and made me drink while he watched……i guess as the saying goes ‘if you cannot beat them, join them.’ And join I did!
As dinner ended the festivities began…..Mr. Tim is a man that knows what he likes, rice wine, backpackers and dancing to Kylie Minogue or more specifically the song “Can’t get you out of my head”. Who would of thought we would be the party-house of the village……one minute we were having dinner a bit of rice wine (ok, a lot of rice wine) and the next minute, “la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, I just can’t get you out of my head’ was blasting from the television, bottles and bottles of rice wine were passed around and backpackers from various other houses in the village were ‘crashing’ our party to participate in the festivities! It was quite humorous….all I can remember was Kylie being played about twenty-five times during the evening (including the video for the song), way too much rice wine and backpackers coming out of all corners of the village to dance to Kylie Minogue at Mr. Tim’s house!
Needless to say the next morning was a blur (after far too much rice wine distributed by Mr. Tim), but I must say that it has been my most memorable home stay to date!
After Sa Pa, I went to Hanoi to book a tour through Ha Long Bay. The tour I booked was through my hostel, which as a result included all backpackers…..which made it quite a fun trip. The tour was for three days two nights. The first day/night we stayed on a traditional Vietnamese ‘junk boat’. The ‘junk boat’ had three levels, a kitchen, dining room and eight double rooms. We took the ‘junk boat’ for a two-hour cruise and at which point we stopped and went kayaking through caves. Each kayak had two people, I shared mine with ‘Jack’ a English ‘bloke’……and well prior to boarding the Kayak we were instructed if we would like to go swimming once we were in the kayak, it was necessary to get off the kayak a specific way or we may overturn the kayak…………..well apparently Jack was not paying attention to this portion of the instructions, because as we were sitting in a cove (me in the front of the kayak admiring the beauty-Jack in the back), Jack decided to go swimming, unbeknown to me….because before I know it, i was flipped out of the kayak into the water, the kayak turned upside down and Jack gasping for air and choking on the water he had just swallowed. Now, the first question in this situation would be: “how many backpackers does it take to turn a kayak back on its side?’ Well, it took eight and about fifteen minutes to get the water out of the kayak and turn it up right! After we sorted out the kayak, we headed back to the boat to sun bath and jump off the tippy top of the junk-boat.
The next day in Ha Long Bay i went rock-climbing for my first time. I didn’t exactly know what to expect from rock-climbing. However, i soon found out what it entailed……..small holes for big hands and feet. Yep, that’s right apparently there is some technique to rock-climbing, which of course, I have yet to acquire yet. Some might think the fear in rock climbing is the height of the rock, but on the contrary, for me it was where am I going to find the next hole in the rock and how am i going to be able to fit my size 8 foot in it and my one hand all the while trying to remember to use my upper body to keep me up and not my knees that where dragging back and forth across the jagged rock. After getting past this challenge it was a ‘breeze’ until I had to find the next small hole in the rock! I did finally make it to the top, with scraps and blood on my knees……but I made it nevertheless! After the rock climbing we took the ‘junk-boat’ to Cat Ba Island and stayed over night.
Unfortunately, I did not have time to see anymore of Vietnam, because I spent the remaining amount of my time in Laos. I had intentions of returning after visiting Laos…..but I fell in love with Laos, as result I could not bear to leave.
This was it for my adventures in Asia, as I flew from Laos to Australia on December 19th, to spend Christmas with friends I met in India.
Tags: Vietnam
