Gooooooood Moooooorrrrnnnniiiinnnngggggg Vietnam!
(cliche & over done, but I HAD TO)
(P. S. you’re gonna wanna read this one….or at least read the story during day 2)
(P.P.S if you want to see Vietnam part 2 where we go to Ha Long Bay click HERE)
Day 1: Ho Chi Minh City & Hanoi
5 days in Vietnam wasn’t NEARLY enough, I needed at least 2 weeks. The list of things I need to do when I go back to each country is at record length for Vietnam now.
It’s got the three things I need when traveling: good food, good people, good landscape. BONUS: it’s cheap as all get out!!!!
First things first, Vietnam is HOT boys, let me tell ya. Before our flight a group of us went to shop in the market and grabed lunch. Very quickly that turned into a 1.5 hour lunch instead of lunch and shopping because I’m 99% sure we were ACTUALLY melting.
Secondly, let’s just talk about the crossing the street situation….Vietnam doesn’t have traffic laws or rules, they have ‘recommendations.’ Just because the stop light is red doesn’t mean you have to stop. SO crossing the street goes like this: get the courage to start walking, start walking slowly, motorcycles and cars racing at you, they honk at you, you keep walking, they go around you, you make it to the other side alive. Seriously, ITS WILD!!! They know how to go around you so you just have to walk…there really isn’t a looking both way before you cross mentality…
Somehow (lets credit my good traveling luck & maybe knack for good food) we walked into one of the most popular restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City—Yummy Chicken. Fun fact: Kim Kardashian and Mike Tyson has recently been there, who woulda thought!!!!
Good food, good people, what else do you need? (Guys I got all that food plus water plus coffee for $3.50!!!!!) Note: put Pho and Vietnamese coffee on your food to try list.
We flew from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) which was in the southern part of Vietnam to Hanoi which is in the Northern part of Vietnam. From there we went to catch our sleeper bus that would bring us to Sa Pa.
So let’s talk about these sleeper busses, shall we? They are… different… I mean we had a REALLY nice one considering (looked like a freaking tour bus). However, when you’re winding around, you slide (literally) around … so the whole ‘sleeper’ part of sleeper bus is a lie. Well that plus were 0/1 for people getting sick on the bus so far (sorry Josey)!!!
Day 3: Sa Pa
Fast forward to the next morning (at 6 freaking am) we were dropped off at the base of the mountains in Sa Pa.
After breakfast at about 8am, we headed out to our 2 day hike with our local guide Gigi.
These local women man, they are so stinking funny. Well actually I think they just know what we find funny and then repeat it over and over even if they don’t know what they are saying.
Initally, good, great, the hike was awesome. But then. It started getting steeper and we were all like its no big deal it won’t be that hard. *cue the obvious thing we don’t realize, hitting us like a ton of bricks*
But then Gigi stopped us and asked us if we wanted to go 16km more or 13km more… the 16km had a better view, but was MUCH harder, while the 13km view wasn’t as cool, but it was easier. We decided to the the 16km, because when in Sa Pa right? (BOOM, theres the bricks, but we didn’t know it yet)
Okay well within 15 minutes we were all questioning this decision a tad bit. We were listening to music while hiking and the song Hurt So Good by John Mellencamp came on and Sara said it was the perfect song for the moment…. It was so hard, but we didn’t want to stop. No really, it was so hard… there were just as many moments of what the hell are we doing as moments where we were like this isn’t so bad.
Walking to the tunes of our beloved 80’s rock, we found ourselves smack dab in the middle of the mountains in Sa Pa, Vietnam. Not a lick of Western influence or really any influence in sight. When you looked down, houses looked like ants and rivers looked like pieces of grass tossed into the landscape. THIS PLACE WAS SO COOL!!!!!
Let me just say, I’ve done my fair share of mountains. And don’t get me wrong, I have found incredible beauty and an intense feeling of how small we truly are in those places. But HERE, this was different. This place was practically untocuhed by modern civilization and gave you the chance to see, I mean REALLY see Vietnam.
There were just as many moments of speechlessness as there were moments filled with laughs and stories. I couldn’t help and look out into where we were, with just a simple feeling of gratitude: I was thankful I was on this trip, I was thankful I was in Vietnam with these people, and I was thankful to experience something like this.
I hope that you get moments like this one that puts things into perspective for you, for me this was one of those moments.
I know I’ve said this and I know I’ll say it again, but PICTURES DON’T DO IT JUSTICE!!! They never have and never will. So with that being said, pull out your bucket list right now. No seriously, do it. And write down “hike Sa Pa, Vietnam” on the list…. you’ll thank me later.
I don’t know if you can tell, but we are loving life (and Sa Pa) right now!!!
Eventually we made a stop for lunch at a local restaurant..during which we made some Vietnamese friends who expelled a LOT of energy to sell us these little bracelets. No really look at how convincing they are… practically attacking JuJu…needless to say we all gave in (but hey now we have matching bracelets)!!!!
We hiked for four hours after lunch… hiking which looked like climbing rocks, walking on gravel roads that go straight up or straight down, stepping through mounds of water buffalo poop, sweating though our backpacks left and right, and a lot of tripping and falling (what else did you expect from us, yeesh).
You know that point of a road trip where you know you’re close and all you can think of is getting out of the car? We hit that point during this hike at about five o’clock. Somehow it was hotter than it was a noon, our feet were sweaty and smelly, and we were all ready to see a shower…we were THRIVING (clearly).
FINALLY WE MADE IT (I’m pretty sure we asked if that was Gigi’s home about 15 times we were so ready to get there)!!! We decided to do a homestay, because why would you not want to wake up in the middle of Sa Pa? Gigi and Mao were FANTASTIC HOSTS, oh my gosh they rocked!
They fed us ENDLESS amounts of food… whenever we would finish, Gigi would put more food on our plates, even if we said we were full. To some extent it wasn’t a bad thing because geez those Vietnamese can cook!!!
We spent a lot of time talking with our hosts, some of the other travelers, and playing Uno, but by eight that night, we had all retreated to our beds (feel like I painted that as a pretty picture, but we were all so delusional I’m surprised we made it to our beds even).
Day 3: Sa Pa
We started day two off real strong: with chocolate and banana crepes and Vietnamese coffee. HOLY BUCKETS these things were good!!!!
Also have I mentioned Vietnamese coffee??? No??? WELL GET SOME!!! From a fellow coffee lover (hello, nice to meet you), it is in your best interest to google it and get some, for real.
Most of our hiking today was through villages and through rice terraces (throw in a bamboo forest and some random questionable bridges too). I only need to tell you about a series of events all of which occurred in the span of 30 minutes to make this whole post worth it.
I’ll set it up for you: we’re hiking in a furnace in the middle of Sa Pa and after we had hiked 10 miles up a mountain the day before. NOW we were hiking more downhill and through rice terraces.
NOW let me tell you about these rice terraces, they are flooded during the rainy season which helps cultivate the rice. However, we weren’t technically in the rainy season so it wasn’t expected that many terraces would be filled. BUT it had rained a lot the week before so many were indeed flooded. IMPORTANT NOTE: there is mud, water, and fertilizer in these pools on the terraces and in Sa Pa, fertilizer is water buffalo poop (any of you see where this is going?).
SO as I said, were hiking between these rice terraces, which are incredibly narrow. OF COURSE we had casualties…First, one of Sara’s legs slipped, landing her entire foot in the water buffalo poop soup. Then one of the French girls that was hiking with us fell completely in. AGAIN, Sara’s foot took a swim. Then Caroline’s butt and backpack took a swim too. But wait, not without Sara’s water bottle!!!
As I’m sure you could tell, we were all on the verge of falling in ourselves from laughing so dang hard (HOW COULD YOU NOT ITS HILARIOUS). Gigi herself was practically on the ground laughing after what had occurred in the past not even ten minutes.
Just as we thought we had time to recover from the rice terraces, Gigi lead us to start *climbing* down dry rice terraces.
Going down this area was about twenty minutes in total, but Josey thought it was just taking WAY too long. SO (you know it’s about to get good) she decides rather than walking, she’ll run down the mountain to get it done faster and somehow avoid the parts we have to climb down. What in the world could go wrong, right?
Well, next thing I know Josey is mid-air, arms spread like an eagle, right before SHE LANDS FACE FIRST ON ONE OF THE TERRACES. THE GIRL FELL FACE FIRST DOWN A MOUNTAIN INTO DRY WATER BUFFALO POOP!!!! (Gosh I wish I had a picture of this)
As you can imagine, there was ROARING laughter from this, as she looked up at us from the ground, arms and legs sprawled all over, hair all tossed, and bent sunglasses. I really thought we were all going to lose it (I don’t even know what we would lose) all 15 of us were laughing so hard. She even has a minor scar to remember this iconic fall.
Post water buffalo poop encounters, we washed up in a waterfall that we passed where I made a friend with a local girl, Sho, who came and grabbed my hand. She quickly took to Caroline too and we happily hiked with her.
We got back to what I’ll deem downtown Sa Pa and boarded our character building sleeper bus (it was a 6 hour drive back to Hanoi).
We are 0/2 with people getting sick on these dang busses!!! Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was because we all were getting tossed around in the bus, or maybe it was the putrid smell coming from the bathroom. But either way, Josey and Sara are now seasoned bus travelers!!
Eventually we made it back to our hotel, just in time to collapse in our beds.
I’ll end this by saying hiking Sa Pa was one of the coolest things I’ve done to date. Not to go without saying that it was incredibly challenging… if I didn’t have my people with me, it wouldn’t have ended the same. PLEASE put this on your bucket list!!! There is no better way to engage with the locals (as we did in many villages we went through), try local food, or truly experience the country you’re in. But make sure you’re being a smart tourist… maybe stay in a homestay instead of hotel and help keep Sa Pa so beautiful!!!
Okay click HERE to see Vietnam part 2, Ha Long Bay edition!!!
Katelyn
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