Flying halfway around the world is tiring and takes a really long time. An arguably more arduous endeavor however, is traveling from Ha Long bay to Sa Pa without the gift of flight. Vietnam doesn't have a freeway system. Even Seattle's display of civil engineering idiocy where we narrow down to two lanes through the heart of downtown would be a vast improvement over Vietnam's meandering lane-less alleyways that are used to traverse the country. So getting from Ha Long bay to Sa Pa was way harder than Google maps would have you believe.
That actual trip involved a four hour bus ride back to Hanoi. That's a four drive in order to cover 100 km. Then we had to take an overnight train ride to Lao Cai. A ride that allegedly can be done in less than 9 hours but instead took us about 12. From there, it takes an additional 45 minutes to an hour to traverse the final 30 km mountain climb to Sa Pa. A climb during which we were precariously weaving around trucks and motorbikes the entire way.
But now we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's back up to the train ride.
Mike, Lynn, Jenny, and I had a private four personal sleeper car. We had no idea what to expect from that. But all things considered, it probably met our ill-defined expectations. Adequate but cramped and slightly uncomfortable to say the least. The room was about the side of our Prius. With four beds and an entirely unnecessary table that took up half the floor space.
The train doubled as a passenger train and whatever you call the other kind of train. It stopped frequently to grab new cars and unload others, resulting in what felt like an earthquake simulator. Needless to say, this made sleeping difficult if not impossible. Jenny and I were still pretty jet lagged and sleep deprived at this point so I actually did get some sleep despite the turbulence. But I got a lot of not sleep too and was mildly afraid of being thrown out of my bunk whenever the train decided to pretend to be a bucking bronco.
Additionally, we didn't know that the train would end up being three hours late. And you forget how hard it is to figure out where in the world you are without an iPhone to tell you. So we were stuck staring out the window trying to figure out where we were and how far we had to go; attempting to decipher Vietnamese signs and comparing words that were either names of towns or billboard advertisements to a map of scheduled stops for the train. It was hopeless. Eventually we found a train employee (or possibly a stowaway) who spoke a little English and was able to inform us that we were still about two hours from Sa Pa. It was 7:30am. We were supposed to arrive at 6:30am. Blargfanuggin.
We burned the next few hours mostly lamenting about how we still had a few hours to burn. And then wondering whether we should worry about missing our flight if our train was as late on the return trip. Really exciting stuff.
But in the end we made it.
We got off the train and realized we were completely relying on there being someone waiting at the train station, holding up a sign with our name on it. We'd arranged the trip through a travel agent and didn't know what hotel we'd be staying at, who we were supposed to be meeting, or really anything at all. Just that someone was supposed to be meeting us at the train station to save us.
And that's how we met Sung.
Sung was amazing. Like, "totally took the trip to a new level of awesomeness" amazing. We found her in the throng of people as we left the train station and were relieved that she knew who we were, didn't appear to be scamming us, spoke very fluent English and had that effortless charisma where she just makes you happy to be around her even when you just finishing a mindbogglingly long overnight train ride in which you don't really remember sleeping even though you're pretty sure you must have at some point.
We still had about a 45 minute drive to Sa Pa -- even though it was only 30 km. The drive was kind of fun though. It was somewhat frightening because we were practically driving up the side of a mountain while zig-zagging around other cars, trucks, vans, and motorbikes. But we also got some spectacular views along the way.
Our hotel turned out to be totally awesome. It way exceeded expectations, which were a little bit deflated after of our boat accommodations. Not only were our rooms sans rats and cockroaches but they were legitimately nice. They were huge with our own (mostly private) balcony and a view of Sa Pa and the surrounding mountains.
We had a great basecamp from which to begin our adventures in and around Sa Pa. Which is all coming up in part 4.
No comments:
Post a Comment