While in Hanoi, we decided to make the trip out to Sapa, an area in Vietnam famed for its natural beauty, and an extremely popular site for treks. Rather than do the simple hike through a few villages which most people do, we set our sights on a 3 day, 2 night mountain trek with a guide and porter (the porter would carry our sleeping bags and the food for our meals). Our target, Mt Fansipan is the tallest mountain in Indochina. It has some gorgeous scenery along the way and the summit offers amazing views of both Sapa (where the mountain is), and even China! However, Mt Fancy-pants is much easier to say and to remember, so that's how we referred to it for the duration of our trek.
Our trip had a rather inauspicious start: we boarded the night bus to Sapa in Hanoi only to discover that a) the sleeper bus we were on had partially reclining seats rather than the fully-reclining bed-seats we were used to, making it much tougher to get a food night's sleep and b) our seats were at the very back (the worst seats on the bus), where they couldn't fully recline because they were up against the back of the bus. Additionally, the seats in the back were up on a little platform, which meant that I couldn't rest my feet on the ground, making it difficult to be comfortable enough to sleep. Kind of annoying to be getting a bad night's sleep before a big trek. At about 5AM we made a stop where a bunch of people got off. I was psyched, as this meant I could grab a better seat. Unfortunately, about 15 minutes later they switched us to a different bus, which was already almost completely full! I ended up on a seat with my huge backpack in my lap, and Mie and Sanne were forced to sit on the floor. Again, not the best way to start off a 3 day trek, but we made the best of it, joking around with our fellow travelers who were also stuck on the floor.
At about 8am we arrived at the Summit Hotel in Sapa, the base for our trek. After fueling up with a big breakfast, we headed off on the trek. Oh, quick fact: remember the amazing scenery and the incredible view from the summit I mentioned earlier? Something our guide books and travel agent had failed to tell us is that that's what you can expect when you hike in the winter. In the summer, you can expect views of clouds, and that's about it. And yes, you get rained on. While we were less than thrilled by the prospect of 3 rainy days of hiking, we went off on the hike anyways.
At first I was very careful to stay as dry as possible, even taking off my shoes/socks to wade through a small stream. However, I soon realized that keeping my shoes dry wasn't going to be possible, and was just a waste of time. I think I realized this at the time when we had to wade through a rain-swollen river, then walk through a 30-foot mud puddle. Once I stopped trying to navigate only the dry patches I discovered that hiking was much faster - bonus!
We hiked about 3 1/2 hours to the first base camp, then had a big lunch while trying to dry off / warm up as much as possible (we were high enough up that it was on the chilly side). Let me tell you, after a long period of exercise, food tastes so much better! I don't think I've ever enjoyed a cold bacon sandwich as much as I did for that lunch. After lunch we reluctantly put our wet shoes back on and trekked another 3 hours to the second base camp, where we'd spend the night. We quickly changed out of our wet clothes, huddled around the fire to get some warmth back into our bodies, and roasted our socks over the fire to try and dry them before tomorrow. Our guide and porter cooked us up an amazing meal, and then we went to bed early, exhausted from a day of trekking.
Our night on the mountain was the exact opposite of our night on the bus. I have never had a better sleep in my life! I curled up in my Queen-size bed, wrapped myself in blankets, and slept like a baby. Haha, I am of course lying. Our "bed" was just a raised platform inside a hut, with no padding. We each had sleeping bags, but mine wouldn't zip, so we ended up huddling for warmth, waking up every 45 minutes or so to shift positions so a new area of our bodies could deal with the hard floor. It's all part of the adventure. At least, that's what I kept telling myself.
I woke up in a rather grumpy mood, as it had poured last night, and from what I heard in the morning, it was continuing to pour. I was not looking forward to hiking to the summit in a downpour, and was strongly considering giving up and just hiking back down the mountain. But then our guide came in and told us the rain had stopped. It turns out that the rain sound I was hearing was a stream right outside our door, and the stormy weather I had seen was just fog. Now I was psyched for the hike, and proceeded to annoy Mie and Sanne with how chipper I was at this early hour!
Over breakfast, we had a meeting of the travel-planning committee (something Mie, Sanne, and I do every few days to figure out where we'll be going, and what we'll be doing). We decided that, rather than deal with another cold/wet night on the mountain, we'd hike all the way down today, so we could spend the night in the hotel. However, Sanne and I still really wanted to climb to the summit, so that meant that we had a long day ahead of us! We bolted down another large meal (gotta have energy for the hike), and then Sanne and I left our packs at the camp, and took off for the summit with our guide. Man, it is so much nicer to hike without rain and without a backpack on! We made very good time, took 15 minutes at the top for the requisite summit photos, then back down we went! Round trip took 4 hours, 15 minutes.
At the camp we met up with Mie, who had done an excellent job guarding the fire in our absence, had lunch, then set back down the mountain. It was much nicer than yesterday, since now we were going downhill, and while there was occasional rain, for the most part it was simply overcast, and for the most park we could even hike without ponchos! Long story short, we hiked and hiked and hiked, and finally made it completely down the mountain in 1 day rather than the normal 2 days, and only one person fainted from exhaustion along the way! We then made it back to the hotel where we reveled in the hot showers, had an amazing dinner, and slept in real beds. I'd say the trek was a lot tougher than we'd expected (basically because of the weather), but I still had a blast. And we got lots of good stories out of it. See below for documentation of the good times.
getting up close and personal with my backpack on the extremely crowded final leg of the bus trip to Sapa
group pic on the rainy mountain, decked out in our $1 ponchos. While I really appreciate that Mie and Sanne bought me a poncho while they were out shopping, I would have preferred a color other than purple. You know, like pink. Or fuchsia.
whoops - that was NOT a big dry rock in the middle of the path after all. My bad.
did this guy really think it was a good idea to bring a guitar along on the hike?
it was at about this point in the trek that I gave up on trying to keep my shoes dry. Note that the hike in general wasn't this crowded - we just came across one large group that was bottlenecked at this river crossing. Besides that we pretty much had the mountain to ourselves (because everyone else was sensible enough NOT to do the hike in this weather!).
ummm, Sanne, did you mean to leave your shoe in that mud puddle?
oh NOOOOOO! I think I just splashed a little water on my shoes! The horrors!
our dinner feast after the first day of hiking. Food after a long day of exercise always tastes sooooo good! Even the cold bacon sandwiches we had for lunch tasted fantastic.
snake!! Apparently it was quite poisonous, but thankfully was willing to hang out well away from the path and let me take pictures. Good snake.
whooooo! Made it!! At the summit of Mt Fansipan. Note the incredible panoramic view of China behind me. Apparently China is made of clouds.
neat looking landscape. Except for the part where we learned that the dead trees were from the US dropping defoliants all over the mountain during the war. ::awkward::
ok, I was definitely not expecting to see this halfway up the mountain
some of Sapa's famed scenery, as viewed from our hotel. We might have been able to see something like this during our actual trek if we hadn't basically been in a cloud the entire time.
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