Sa Pa and Treking

Sa Pa lies about 1500 metres up nestled in the surrounding mountains. Consequently it's bleedin freezing. We check into our hotel which whilst have a fantastic balcony view is not highly recommended by any tour operators specialising in holidays for brass monkeys. Fuck me it's cold. However, Camilla of course is wrapped up in a nice thick duvet to try to normalise her temperature.

After being cooped up in a car for the best part of five days it's good to be able to do our own thing, go for drinkie poos and have some nosh. Sa Pa itself is the gateway for various excursions to the surrounding villages and tribe people and is usually teeming with tourist from around the globe....mostly of the older SAGA variety, so I fit in very well. Being so high the clouds are all around us and sometimes below us. The views cavort in a dance of the seven veils, cheekily giving us fleeting titillating glimpses of mother natures real beauty and then leaves us salivating at the thought of what she may look like completely naked. Unfortunately our ardour is left unquenched as the heavens open and it starts to drizzle with rain.

The next morning our guide from the car tour arrives to take us on a 2 day trek. It's stopped raining and that big yellow thing in the sky is warming our cockles. Half an hours drive and we arrive at the trekking starting point. The guide warns us that there will be loads of tribes women at the beginning and not to buy anything from them. Disembarking the van we are surrounded by about twenty Red Dzao ladies all dressed up in their finest regalia. The pressure starts as they jostle for position and start their hard sell...they are so friendly that it's hard to be firm with them. Adrian tries to escape by running away but that just sends them into squeals of laughter as they hot foot it after him. For twenty minutes we walk along a nice paved road, this is going to be a piece of piss I think, then we turn off and start heading down a 45 degree angled pathway clinging to the side of a mountain. With the constant rain from yesterday the pathway is just a little bit muddy and is more like tying to walk down a water flume after slapping duck fat on your feet. The Red Dzao ladies are still with us keeping up their never ending patter and sniggering discretely at the fat fool in front of them doing a very bad impression of Torville and Dean's Bolero on Mud. Blimey this is embarrassing I wish they would piss off.

Eventually after a good hour they finally lose interest and head back up the way that we have come. The trek is a little treacherous due to the mud and the precarious pathway that requires some nimble footed navigation...I've never had a good sense of balance, I've been known to trip over car exhaust fumes, I think I have an inner ear problem, and my legs are not that sturdy - I have a sneaking suspicion that when I was in the queue for giving out legs I was given the wrong ones and somewhere in the world there is a chicken with great big muscular hairy legs that should be mine. ….and therefore it's not long before I fall arse over tit and slide down the pathway into the trees nearly to be eaten by wild pigs, and never be seen again.

The walk, apart from the perilous pathways, take us away from the beaten track and through some beautiful countryside, terraced shelves surround us – barren at the moment as the rice crops have not long been harvested – but striking nonetheless. Up winding tracks our guide and porter lead us – the porter is wearing plastic sandals and where my boots are covered in shit and mud, he doesn't have as much as a speck on his almost bare feet; he must think we are a right pair of pussies. The sun is beating down now which on the upward slippery slopes makes the going pretty tough and I'm sweating like a fat man sitting in a sauna with a fur coat on.

After a break for lunch where we stop in a small village, it becomes a somewhat easier, mostly paved roads with little excursions up the hills to take short cuts. It's a glorious day and feels a million miles away from towns and cities that we have spent most of our time in so far. Up through narrow trails, forest pressing in on both sides, past school children mucking about on their way home asking us if we had a pen to give them , men and women going about their business and schoolgirls looking very elegant with parasols to shade them from the sun; these hidden mud routes are the highways for the people who live here. Further up, past homes made from wood and bamboo, we turn a corner and have arrived at our stopover for the night.

We are staying with a Red Dzao family and are greeted as we approach with warm welcomes then handshakes and smiles from everyone from the wizened old grandmother to the newly married 25 year old daughter in law who is married to the family's 15 year old son. We are encompassed by the all enveloping forest but a short walk up a mud track and we visit the nearby village. Dirty faced beaming kids of about 3 -6 years old scream with laughter when they see us and come charging over to bellow “HELLO” and fall into fits of hysteria, some having the courage to touch us and then run away. These kids obviously have nothing as their arses are practically hanging out of their raggedy trousers, but it's a long time since I've seen such a bunch of mischievous little tykes, so happy playing in the dust and shit but without a care in the world.

Back to our family and they have prepared us a sumptuous meal – we have chips for a starter – and then the rice wine makes an appearance. We are invited into sit with the family as they eat and are encouraged to tuck in ourselves even though we have just finished our dinner. Eating seems an important social event in Vietnam. Six or eight dishes are served and instead of wolfing it down like we tend to do, time is taken with a mouthful here and a mouthful there so that meal-times take a good couple of hours. As foreigners you can tell that you are being appraised of your chopstick skills but we both receive compliments on our proficiency. The rice wine keeps following and we are toasting everything and everyone around the table, its not long before we are pissed again and our guide persuades us to have a tribal herb bath, Mum prepares the water over a bamboo fire in a cooking pot that could fit a small car. After an hour the water is ready and transferred into a big barrel; it is bone warmingly hot and suffused with herbs and gawd knows what else - it feels divine, if a little cramped being squashed into a barrel, and for the first time in weeks I feel totally clean and rejuvenated - although some of that may be due to the rice wine.

We wake up feeling a little worse for wear, and with that nagging feeling that we might have overstepped the mark last night as no one seems to be smiling at us. Paranoia. We rack our brains trying to think what we might have done but eventually come to the conclusion that it’s probably due to everyone being as hung over as we are, as after breakfast the smiles start to appear.

The trek is nice and easy, meandering through the countryside mostly along paved roads with a few off piste excursions. We walk through a few villages, that are home to different tribes but there’s not that many people around - they are either in the fields or maybe had a rice wine evening themselves. The weather is good the scenery very striking and the trek not overly strenuous. It’s been a good two days with the highlight being staying with the family last night.

Back at Sa Pa, to collect our bags before heading off to Lau Cai to catch an overnight train to Hanoi and then a bus, minibus, boat and bus to Cat Ba Island just by Ha Long Bay for a bit of beach, sun and relaxation.

The North East (Day Five)

Day five we wake up and the weather is shit. Today we are supposed to be taking a very rough road even further up into the mountains. Unfortunately it's been raining all night and we have been told that if the road is too bad and dangerous we can't go that way. Adrian takes a call from the tour office and he's told that the road is impassable therefore we have to go another way. This is really disappointing as we are supposed to be going to see some isolated tribes that not many tourists manage to see.

We set off in the car, visibility is down to zero and the drizzle continues unabated. Adrian is really pissed off, today should have been the highlight; he cops a mood, turns his back on me and proceeds to sulk for a good couple of hours. Little sod. With little else to do or things to see it's not long before the monotonous rhythmic chug of the car engine has my eyelids becoming droopy like a couple of rose petals trying to support an elephant....before I know it I'm sparko.

The drive is boring and feels like a waste of time, but we are heading towards Sa Pa where we are booked into have a two day hiking excursion so at least we are heading somewhere that we want/have to be. The roads that we go along I suspect have a sheer precipice to one side, but I'm only guessing as I can't see bugger all. Nonetheless our fellow road users don't seem to care that the weather conditions are bad and drive as insanely as if it was a beautiful crisp day. Three accidents we encounter on the way, one where a lorry has its back wheels over the edge of a 50 metre drop and is being held stable by another lorry parked by its side and lashed with rope to prevent it toppling over (we learn later that it went over the edge anyway), another where a van has pulled out, on a corner, to overtake a stationary lorry and gone straight into a Jeep, and thirdly and most gruesome a motorbike that is literally under the back wheels of a ten ton juggernaut – not sure where the driver was but I saw no blood or guts.....and this is supposed to be the good road, so I'm kinda grateful we couldn't go the rough way.

The weather starts to clear up a little in the afternoon. Everywhere we have been in Vietnam there is building work going on of one sort or another, dams, bridges, roads, houses...and it seems where ever a road is being re-done or widened a little hamlet pops up to house and service the workers. It's like going back a couple hundred years, wooden huts with a bit of tarpaulin here or there is sufficient enough, and everything is coated in a thick layer of dust and shit giving a ghostly grey appearance to everything including the grass, tree and leaves.

As we make our approach to Sa Pa we start to see the terracing for which this part of the world is so famous. Hill after hill is painstakingly carved to provide slithers of escalated flat land able to sustain the farming needs of the local residents. It looks artistic in design as if moulded and shaped to add aesthetic pleasure to the already gorgeous natural setting. It must have taken hundreds of years and whilst providing an easy plot for the farmers it still must be burdensome work trudging up to the top shelves day after day.

A little further on and gushing rock strewn river pulsates down the mountainside. Ad asks for the car to stop so he can take some pictures and my heart sinks a little as I just know that rivers and rock mean the photos are going to take at least forty five minutes. Ad sets off with camera and tripod and runs down to the riverbank like a five year old after the ice cream van. I wait up by the road watching him hop from rock to rock out into the river to attain that perfect shot. “He does take some risks” I think as he precariously jumps back around to another position, I half expect him to fall in and go floating off down the cascading flows. OH FUCK ME, he's dropped Camilla! He's taking off his jumper, oh shit I think the bitch has gone for a swim........

The North East (Day Four)

We awake this morning to Cao Bang enveloped in thick cloudy mist with visibility on the poor side, to say the least. This is a bit disappointing as today we have at least 7 hours in the car with a drive through steep mountainous passes where the land is supposed to be untouched and the vistas spectacular.

Setting off it becomes quickly apparent that the weather is not going to change. We can kind of make out huge silhouettes of the towering mountains but it is only a ghostly image that portrays nothing of the expected magnificence. The drive starts to become boring..we can't see anything. The roads are becoming steeper and we climb ever higher but it is all like peering through frosted glass with cataracts in both eyes. Smelly weather!!!

A couple of hours later we drive through a bustling little town that is in the middle of market day. On our approach we see loads of tribe women that have been on the road from their remote villages since before daybreak. We are told that they often walk for 6 or 7 hours just to get there, do their business and then walk home for another 7 hours. Fuck that!! But this is our first real glimpse of the different tribes, dressed in traditional costume. This is no set up tourist photo opportunity, this is real people living real lives that we have luckily been given the chance to see.

We ask the guide if we can stop and have a look round the market. Again we are the only western faces here which brings much staring and giggling from the town and tribal folk. I'm wearing a pair of shorts which for some reason amuses everyone as I walk past. The market is once a week and attracts everyone from the vicinity. Throngs of woman in full regalia roam the market in groups going about their business; people of various tribal backgrounds... Black H'mong, Nung, Tay and Dzao people...are all there to either sell their veg or buy anything from buckets, rice or spices to the latest fashions cheaply imported from across the border in China. The market is bustling with activity, we see fruits that we've never seen before and our guide has no idea what we call them in English to vegetables that look so fresh and crisp that they put to shame the sad offering we get at Tesco's.

Ad usually feels a little uncomfortable asking people if he can take their photograph, but here the people are so friendly and probably because we ourselves are the minorities, everyone he points the camera at are more than willing to be captured on film...sometimes with almost uncontrollable laughter. This is real Vietnam. We spend an hour looking round the stalls, taking pictures and buying up some local delicacies ( rice with pork bits in banana leaf and and some other sticky rice) and it's no exaggeration to say that this has been one of the highlights of the trip so far and definitely makes up for the bad weather.

Back on the road we continue our drive; it's a long day when you can't see anything …..my arse is starting to hurt and my internal organs feel like they have been put in a tumble dryer from the sometimes extremely bumpy roads. A stop to see a family up in the mountains making bricks is quite interesting, but if it hadn't been for the market encounter this morning it would have been an extremely disappointing day.

After settling into our hotel, the guide and driver take us out to a local restaurant. When we get there, there is music blaring out and on the first floor we can see a bunch of young girls dancing and screaming with laughter. PARTAY!!!! Our guide asks us if we want to go somewhere else but we dismiss that idea, this place looks fun. Upstairs there is a karaoke party in full swing, and it's only 7 o'clock. Everyone is chucking themselves around the dance floor or up singing accompanied by a fella on the keyboards...it's hilarious to watch. The party is something to do with the school year starting. We order our food and the waiter comes and joins us at our table with a bottle of corn wine , which is the more potent sister or rice wine. The food is excellent and we are joined by other waiters, all wanting to toast our health and as I mentioned before, every dish that arrives at the table. The atmosphere is great, the food is delicious, we are a little piddled and before we know it we are agreeing to go out with our guides and the waiters to the local nightspot....karaoke!!! More booze, the boys get down to the business of choosing their tracks to sing to and Ad and I are insisted on picking a few songs to warble to. The boys are really good...mostly love songs it sounds like but I'm really impressed. Then it's my turn to belt out a version of No Woman No Cry and Red Red Wine...if I say so myself I was pitch perfect and my moves would be the envy of Legs and Co. and receive maximum marks on strictly come dancing. Adrian's turn, you know I've never really heard him sing, but up he gets and producing a rendition of Madonna's Papa Don't Preach that brought tears to my eyes.....

A few hours later we fall in bed, mash up ….again.

The North East (Day Three)

Day three, and we wake up a little groggy after our rice wine and vodka evening. The weather again is a bit overcast and grey. We head off for a long drive towards the Chinese border. The countryside landscape has now changed into dramatic pinnacles of limestone that rise majestically from the fields of farmed land. We pass through isolated villages and our guide tells us to which tribes these belong...there are over 50 tribal heritages in Vietnam but apart from the style of houses they live in it is not immediately apparent to us how to differentiate. One thing for sure is that life for a rural family is not easy and poverty is knocking on the door of most dwellings. Most peoples days are spent working the land and at our time of visit this means harvesting the rice crop; it looks like back breakingly hard work and makes me grateful for the supermarket at the end of the street at home. If I lived here I'm sure I would starve as it all looks far to strenuous for my lazy arse to endure.

Our guide tells us he has a treat for us today and after a while tells us we are going to visit a cave. If I'm honest my heart sank a little thinking that it sounded really boring. However the cave is unexpectedly good...taking a good half hour to walk through, the pathway took us through huge capacious cathedrals of monstrously proportioned stalagmites and stalactites like eerie grotesque living statues that creepily alter their appearance, nanometre by nanometre. I wouldn't want to be alone here on my own in the dark.

More driving and after an hour we arrive at today's main event. The weather has started to clear and blues skies await us as we leave the car and walk to Ban Gioc waterfall. This is really impressive, 53 metres high and spanning 300 metres, the falls are surrounded by lush jungle vegetation, with hundreds of differently coloured dragonflies and butterflies flitting around the grassy verges. It's so beautiful that it almost looks too good, as if instead of a fantastic example of mother natures creativity it's how a set designer from Hollywood would construct a scene from the Garden of Eden.

The waterfall spans the Vietnam/Chinese border, our side is pretty much deserted but the Chinese side has a good dollop of tourists embarking onto bamboo rafts that punt the camera clad sightseers up to the spewing crashing cascades. We are in dry season at the moment so even though the falls look in full flow to me we are told that in the wet season they become even more ferocious.

We spend so long at Ban Gioc that when we finally leave and get to the only restaurant for miles it is totally packed out. However the Vietnamese are forever resourceful and when it comes to eating it seems that venue is of no consequence. Next to the restaurant they are in the middle of building a two storey extension, so a table is set up for us in the middle of the ground floor and we have lunch in a building site with young lads carry bricks and buckets around us.... the food was great so who really cares and an added bonus was I didn't feel guilty about flicking me cigarette ash on the floor.

The waterfalls were brilliant, Ad got some good pictures even though he had to cling on for dear life clambering down a near sheer drop to attain the best shot (I didn't go, not with my wobbly legs) and the weather was picture postcard perfect. After another long drive back to Cao Bang, an early dinner, just a little rice wine, it's early to bed ...a good day all around.

The North East (Day Two)

Up early in the morning to a breakfast of coffee and banana fritters. The weather is not so good this morning, a bit grey and overcast, but it's pleasantly warm and made up for by the beautiful location that we awaken in. It's so peaceful I could eat it.

We take an hour or so boat ride around Ba Be Lake drinking in the isolated halcyon surroundings followed by a little hike into one of the jungle clad hills. Unfortunately there is not much wildlife around these parts these days but we encounter a stick insect, lots of flutter bys and an enormous black and yellow spider with 3 legs missing – I've not seen a stick insect before, they are rather cute!

Back in the car for a long drive to our next stopover, Cao Bang. The scenery is a little 'samey' – forest and jungle – but its an agreeable enough journey and has to be done to get us in a near enough position to the Chinese border for the highlight of tomorrow's trip, the Ban Gioc waterfall.

After a good dinner in a local restaurant with our guide and driver, washed down by the obligatory rice wine, Ad and I take a wander around the town. Cao Bang itself is off the beaten track and there are no other foreigners in sight. We find a local bar in a lovely tree-lined street, and through sheer boredom of constantly drinking beer, after one bottle decide to treat ourselves to a vodka or two.

Unfortunately the lady doesn't speak any English and so far our Vietnamese only runs to hello – Xin chào – and thank you – Cám ơn, so trying to order a vodka and 7 up is proving a little difficult. We eventually make ourselves understood but she brings the whole bottle of voddie to our table...we're not quite sure whether we are expected to buy the whole bottle or not...she has no idea what we are saying and never do we her...after some confusion during which the seal on the bottle is broken it's explained to us by a fellow drinker that we have to buy the bottle now it's been opened ...expecting that we are about to be ripped off we tentatively enquire how much that it going to be ….80,000 dong we are told!!!! ….£2.60. Thank you. Pissed again.

The North East (Day One)

It's a glorious morning and our guide and driver arrive promptly to escort us on our five day private tour of the North East of the country. The boys are both a little dishy which puts a smile on both our faces and a pervy skip in our step. Half an hour driving through the mad mêlée of down-town Hanoi avoiding motorbikes going the wrong way up a dual carriageway and needing eyes in your bottom to anticipate what the driver in front and behind is about to do, we finally burst out into the countryside. It's good to leave the madness behind.

For day one we have a visit to a museum of ethnology and then on to Ba Be Lake, situated in Bac Kan province, which is the largest natural lake in Vietnam. Unfortunately the museum is closed on Mondays but we have a little walk around the building where there are a few tribal huts to see and some tribal carvings etc within the grounds. As we walk around there are some young musicians practising, they have a couple of drums and some sort of stringed instrument that I'm not quite sure what it is; I must stress they were youngsters and we all need to practise but oh my word it sounded like they had 10 cats tied up and where treading on their tails. It's a shame the museum is closed as it's supposed to very good, hey ho they have one back in Hanoi that we shall visit when we return.

Driving on, the countryside becomes more lush and we start to see the undulating jungle clad rolling hills that Vietnam is so famous for. Down a country road and there are a few shacks doted along selling snacks etc. We stop at one that is selling sticky rice made in a unique style. The rice is wrapped in a banana leave and stuffed into a young freshly bamboo cane, chucked on a roaring fire until the bamboo is charcoal black. The rice takes minutes to cook, you then peel the bamboo like a banana and inside the rice, which has been mixed with peanuts is perfectly cooked ...it is absolutely delicious and served with a dip of salted crushed peanuts.... hmmm hmmm yummy.

Back on the road, the weather is gorgeous with the sun beating down, we realise that we are really off the tourist trail as whenever we stop for photos we are either stared at like some exotic curiosity or waved and shouted “hello” to by kids with bigger grins on their faces than the Cheshire Cat. This is feeling good.

After lunch at a cavernous restaurant more reminiscent of a bingo hall than a fine dining establishment we take a further few hours drive to our stopover of Ba Be Lake. The landscape is becoming more dramatic with luscious green jungle surrounding us on all sides on the sensually curvaceous oscillating hills. We arrive on the shores of Ba Be and stop at our resting place for the night. We are staying in a family home of a family that belong to the Tay tribe. The Tay generally live in valleys near to river or water sources within stilt houses that are timber made. Ad and I take a walk down to the lake as sunset creeps upon us. As we traverse up a winding lane, jungle pressing in on us, I spot a squidged insect on the road...oh fuck me ...it must be six inches long, bright green with big googley eyeballs...I come over all queer and am immediately transported back to the Ecuadorian Amazon and the horrors that night-time produces there. Fucking hell it's getting dark!! As dusk falls millions of midges appear from nowhere....yes I know, your thinking “MIDGES oh for gawd sake grow some cojones”, but I kid you not the little bleeders were up me nose down me throat and I strongly suspect infiltrating every other orifice. Luckily, apart from a moth the size of Fiat Punto, that was the only creature we encountered that evening.

Back at the house we are served a gorgeous over the top, on quantity, dinner by our hosts and are introduced for the first time to rice wine. It tastes a little like a slightly weakened vodka, is drunk in small shots downed in one go, and everything from your health to the bowl of rice arriving is toasted. After dinner we are invited to sit with the family and more rice wine, which by the way is home made, is produced. Once your glass is empty it is immediately refilled and as guests we are required to have a personal toast with each member of the family. It's a great end to the day and we retire to bed a little sozzled.

The Craziness of Hanoi

Hanoi in rush hour is insane; 7.30 at the train station and the city is in full swing, dodgy taxi drivers compete to take us to our hotel with exorbitantly inflated flat rate fares, no one wants to put the meter on.... they're a breed all of their own... the same throughout the world. ... we ain't having none of it though.

Our hotel is situated in the old quarter which is full of character, a never ending sea of tooting hooting motorcycles and street life that sells everything from the usual old tourist tat, shop after shop of shoes, plimsolls and training shoes to food sellers squatting in the gutters to entice you with a plethora of dishes to be eaten on the pavement. I like it. There's something about it...not sure what it is but I have a good feeling.

After a quick orientation tour of our surrounding areas and booking a five day tour of the North East - quite expensive but should be worth it as it takes in some fantastic scenery, waterfalls and ethnic minority villages – and a further two day hiking trip, we is ravenously hungry. It's funny, it always seems that when your belly is rumbling, one can never see a decent place to eat, so we just plum for one of the local places. A young lad comes to serve us, after which he nicks our lighter skulks into the corner and takes a great big draw from a massive bamboo bong....I'm not quite sure what he was puffing but his eyeballs roll around the back of his head.... he returns when we ask for the bill sweating like a fat man running for a bus, with a face whiter than an Irishman's arse... I suspect it was more than tobacco in that bong!!

Being a rampant socialist, no visit to Vietnam would be complete for me without taking in some of the revolution sights. The Museum of the Revolution documents the struggle of the Vietnamese people to free themselves from one after another of foreign invaders. Surprisingly the exhibits are all pretty factual and unlike the museums you have in Cuba seem devoid of any real communist propaganda....it's probably not necessary, the facts all speak for themselves. The next morning we head off to pay our respects at the mausoleum of Uncle Ho Chi Minh. There are thousands of people queueing up to slowly file past Uncle Ho's body that has been preserved and laying in a vacuum sealed glass sarcophagus since 1975. The queue moves at a steady pace and its not long before we are inside the huge edifice that houses the body of the architect of communist Vietnam. Unlike Mao Zedong, who lays in a similar state in Beijing who somehow doesn't look quite real ...a bit plasticy..Uncle Ho looks very peaceful and very natural. The experience is quite emotional especially as you witness the enormous deference and respect that the mostly Vietnamese visitors show as we all file past.

Hanoi is definitely not a city to relax in, the constant traffic which is amusing to begin with can grate on you after a couple of days, however this is a city that is bursting with life, good food and a certain joie de vivre that overrides any of the downsides....I've really enjoyed it but am looking forward to getting out into the countryside tomorrow.