Hòa Sử Pán

Having found Train Street in Hanoi such fun, it was great the next day to be actually travelling on a train that went down the same tracks. The cafes and road crossings whizzed by and our attempted photos of the tourists doing what we had done 24 hours before, were just a blur. Never mind, we were onboard the Chapa Express!

This was the first train journey of our trip and we had booked a sleeper cabin for the 8 hour journey from Hanoi to Sapa, NE Vietnam. Having booked the cabin quite late, the only availability was a 4 berth cabin, so we knew we would be sharing with 2 random travellers (as did they!). With a late evening departure, we were pleased to board the train and find our cabin although finding that we were sharing with a couple of 40 year old blokes wasn’t ideal.

It was no surprise, therefore, when, 15 minutes later, the conductor offered us an upgrade to our own 2 berth cabin, that Carole shot along the corridor before the price had been mentioned.. The upgrade ‘price’ was a cash payment but we didn’t care, we were now travelling in splendid isolation. The upgrade also allowed us to pay a similar price for the return leg later in the week meaning that we could really look forward to the same kind of privacy.

With snacks and drinks provided, it was delightful to settle down for the night with deep fluffy pillows and crisp white duvets and with a surprisingly decent night’s sleep we were in Lau Cai bang on time at 0630. As dawn was breaking and the area around the station coming to life, we jumped aboard a local bus for the final hour’s travel into the mountains to Sapa, The City of Mist.

An evocative name and one that was spot on for the 3 days that we were there. Swirling mist and low cloud enveloped the town as we arrived and it only lifted sporadically. In high summer, Sapa has a golden glow as the rice harvest ripens but in early March it had a definite Alpine feel with cosy bars and restaurants everywhere in the town centre and an impressive funicular tram and gondola climbing to the summit of Fansipan, the highest peak in Indo-China. Taking the gondola would have been fairly pointless, sadly, as the webcam images at the ticket office showed even thicker cloud at the summit.

Undeterred, we headed out to my birthday accommodation down the valley - another of Carole’s ‘Eco Lodge’ bookings - where the mist and cloud provided only periodic glimpses of the mountains surrounding us. It was also chilly and damp but when the clouds did lift, the views were quite something, with shadowy mountain ridges providing the backdrop.

Thankfully, this inauspicious start was soon forgotten as we spent the next couple of days exploring the hills, valleys, villages, rice paddies and bamboo forests of this fascinating valley. It is home to 5 ethnic minorities the Hmong, Red Dao, Tay, Giay, and Xa Pho who all live in close proximity to each other in tiny communities of 150 to 300 people but whose customs and culture are quite different. They all have different language and dialects too, with their second language, Vietnamese, being the only way that they have to communicate.

We had 2 locals guides whilst we were there, the first for a trek and the second for a 4 hour moped tour. Both of them were Red Dao ladies, about 4 foot nothing tall and who spoke English at a million miles an hour. They both said that their English had been picked up from tourists over many years and we benefitted from their insights into life in the valleys and their knowledge of the tiny paths and routes that we took.

Each day started with low cloud and mist billowing around our hillside and then briefly clearing to allow us to see vast slopes of perfectly terraced rice fields following the contours of the mountains above and below us. Our moped tour took us to valleys and mountains much further afield and more remote with even greater areas of terraces and fields waiting to be planted in the coming weeks as the spring weather brings warmth and clearer skies.

Given our location, the trek was unsurprisingly, a series of steep descents and steep climbs with our guide striding ahead at some speed in her sandals and half a bottle of water in her hand. Our walking boots, hiking poles, day sacks and water bottles felt faintly ridiculous in comparison but the poles and water were much needed! A late lunch of spicy chicken fried rice, at a small hut below a waterfall, fuelled us for the homeward leg.

The lack of sunshine wasn’t much of an issue for our activities but drying clothes in our room was a problem. However, Carole discovered that laying out our damp kit sandwiched on the bed between the thoughtfully provided electric blanket and the duvet, was a pretty effective drying solution.

There were no cards or gifts for my 63rd birthday in the Sapa mountains but the photos, videos, memories (and the purple wristband), were a damned fine alternative.

The cherry on the non existent birthday cake was an even more swanky sleeper cabin for the return journey to Hanoi and hopefully, some much bluer skies.Read more