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........