Adventures By Design

In which the travelers think of epitaphs

We all woke up on the train this morning feeling not very rested. Although our compartment had ‘air conditioning,’ it didn’t work very well and we were too hot all night. We woke to two women in the hallway offering us coffee or tea; this sounded like a great idea so we ordered three coffees and one tea, several of which arrived only half-full. We weren’t too worried about the half-full-ness until the women came back asking for 10,000 dong each for the drinks (about 60 cents); we had thought they were free, and now felt a little ripped-off.

Detraining was no problem, and we easily found our ride from Lao Cai, where the train stops, to Sapa, where the hotels and trekking are. The hour-long drive was beautiful with views over terraced rice-paddies clinging to cloud-wreathed mountainsides. When we arrived at our hotel we were shown to the restaurant for breakfast, and to wait until our rooms were ready. We were getting a little giddy from over-tiredness and making some pretty bad jokes over breakfast until we finally got our rooms. The hotel seemed to be having some trouble with overbooking and some other tourists we met got pretty crummy rooms. However, luck seemed to have smiled on us again because we got a huge room with excellent views.

Once we got into the room, and onto the bed, Ric promptly passed out and slept for the next three or four hours. Gin found herself unable to sleep, and so she worked on catching up on writing the blog. This close to the end of our trip we don’t want to fall behind and end up writing the last entries once we’re already back in Canada!

In the afternoon, after we had eaten lunch, we gathered in the hotel lobby with Nathan and Amy, and a couple from Scotland: Claudia and Gordon. It was time for us to head out on a short trek around a nearby village. Our guide, Chai, introduced herself and explained that she was part of the Black H’mong ethnic group who live around Sapa. There are several other ethnic groups in the area as well, but the Black H’mong tend to interact with tourists more than the rest.

On our trek we saw lots of livestock including cute pigs and goats, birds that seem to be a cross between ducks and chickens (anyone know if this is possible?), and many water buffaloes. At one point we stopped to look at a water buffalo while Chai explained that children have to spend the day with their family’s buffaloes and make sure that they don’t eat the rice growing in the fields. While Chai was explaining this, a small boy was trying to direct his buffalo around a path; unfortunately the buffalo lost its footing and came sliding down the hill straight towards Gin. She dodged, and the buffalo dodged the same way, still sliding down the hill. For a moment it looked like Gin’s tombstone was going to say “Squished by water buffalo,” but with some quick footwork she managed to escape the buffalo, and death.

Breathing a sigh of relief, we headed further down hill to a lovely waterfall. This waterfall is the former location of a power generating facility that was build by the French. Now it is used to power machines on a much smaller scale to pound rice into flour. Ric is really intrigued by water- and wind-powered anything and he’d love to teach a unit centered around that someday. He took a bunch of photos and some videos for posterity before we headed back up the hill into town.

Back at the hotel we hit the showers and got ready to go out for dinner. We also saw a bunch of the people we’d been at Halong Bay with. Ric sat and chatted with Teresa and Sinead for a while and heard about the homestay they had done the night before in a local family’s home.

For dinner we went to a fantastic place called Baguette et Chocolat. It is run by an organization that helps give street kids occupational training. The restaurant (and the small hotel that is attached to it) provides an opportunity for students to practice their hospitality skills in a real-world situation. The food is amazing too!

Stuffed full of delicious food we headed back to the hotel to go to bed early. Gin still hadn’t slept since the train, and we had another, longer trek to go on tomorrow. Outside our room we met our neighbors: a family of four, plus one uncle, from Newfoundland who have taken six months off from work and school to travel around the world. The kids are still pretty young, six and eight years old, but seem to be adjusting to travel really well and having a great time. It’s nice for us to see families traveling together because it’s something we hope to do in the future as well. Finally though we had to bid them goodnight and head off to sleep. We have to wonder though, how does it affect our cool-factor if we are going to bed before a six-year-old?