Rain, Rain, Go AWAY — Perpetual Vacationship

No one really likes rain. I mean, I guess Rachel and I both like rain, but moreso when we’re indoors looking outside the window at it, wrapped in a blanket with a hot mug of tea (or coffee for me!). And I guess we like it for the scenery it sometimes provides, like the mist floating through the mountains in the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, or a thunderhead racing through prairie skies.

Yeah, well, what we got in Sapa and afterwards was a bit more than mist, and much closer to that thunderhead. And we were living it, not looking at it.

Our ultimate destination on the first segment of our motorcycle trip was Sapa, and it has a bit of an interesting history. You see, Vietnam has several ethnic minority groups that live in the Northern part of the country; in fact, much of the Northern provinces are still have a majority population of the Hmong, Yao, Giay, and Tay peoples, along with other, smaller tribes. It’s only recently that ethnic Vietnamese peoples have begun to settle in these previously untouched areas, congregating and setting up townships and settlements that consolidate the smaller and more traditional montagnard (French: mountain people) villages. Sapa is one of these towns, and let us tell you, it is a shithole.

Okay, okay, we’ll admit, we’re exaggerating a bit. Sapa was converted from it’s tiny Hmong origins by the French, and you can see evidence of this in the way it’s set up, with traditional Alpen mountain town roots; there’s a large central square with a pretty catholic church, a nice, man-made lake just outside the center of town, and steep, winding cobblestone streets in the town center that remind one more of Switzerland than Vietnam. However, once the French left Indochina and returned this part back to the Vietnamese, the realization that Sapa had great potential for tourism occurred to someone, so the place grew up, with the streets outside of town center displaying typical ugly Communist Vietnamese architecture, and the center of town redecorated with an assortment of crappy hotels, endless throngs of tourists, and innumerable tchotchke (Yiddish: junky souvenirs – that’s two words today, don’t tell anyone we don’t teach you anything) shops selling their assortment of fake North Face gear and other baubles and trinkets.

All that said, however, the setting of Sapa is beautiful, overlooking a beautiful valley terraced with rice paddies and other plantations, and a mist covered mountain towering overtop where the montagnards live. It’s for this reason that trekking to the different tribal villages is so popular here, and one of the things that we would definitely have to do.

But first, to business. We didn’t stay in Sapa town as we had heard that it was a bit of a zoo, but in the aforementioned valley below town in a village called Ta Van. We have no complaints at all about this, save one: in order to get up to Sapa, you have to ride up the worst 8 kms of semi-paved roadway in Vietnam. Average speed, just so you understand how rough this thing is, was about 10 or 15 kilometers per hour.

Our first day, save for the ride up and down the Worst Road in Vietnam™, was fairly uneventful, as we had planned. Even though we didn’t do a lot during our time in Hanoi, everything still felt rushed, and after the previous four days on the bike we needed a mental health day. So, on this day, though it delayed our eventual departure from Sapa and back down to our homestay, the rain wasn’t a big factor. Rachel even got a Vietnamese cupping treatment (it’s a holistic technique to improve energy flow, not anything really weird), a massage, and a herbal bath. She probably could have used it the day after, however.

The second day in Sapa, we went trekking – we guess this is Vietnamese for hiking? Whatever. In any case, when we started our trek, it was raining, but not heavily. We didn’t really know how this was going to work out for us, but this was our trekking day, and we’re both tough cookies, so up the mountain we went.

Then, joy of joys, it stopped! The skies parted, the rain cleared, and the beautiful views of the Sapa valley unfolded beneath us like out of a story book. Our guide, Chinh, was a Hmong woman, and she helped to explain to us about her people, their lifestyles, and the areas we were trekking through (as well as making us some pretty rad grass art). The whole time on the top of the mountain, we were treated to five star views and fantastic weather.

Chinh kept making us these little grass art things.

Seems like a good place to have a sit and do some embroidery, no?

Then, we went for lunch.

Just as quickly as the rain had stopped, it started again after lunch, and Chinh, bless her, decided to take us through the “safe route” down the mountain.

I don’t know how the Hmong people define the word safe, but her definition, being five foot nothing and having a very low center of gravity, was far from our definition. We “walked” down through what seemed to be an active stream bed, complete with strategic tumbles and slides on red Vietnamese dirt that now had the consistency of gooseshit, mostly intentionally landing in rice paddies and mud pits. By the time we got to the bottom, an hour later, we were muddy, drenched, sore, and beyond irritated.

Just another incredible vista with an incredible lady.

Our montagnard friends going for a casual walk through the neighborhood.

Chinh, of course, was fine.

Rather than having to suffer the Worst Road in Vietnam™, two more times, Rachel opted to walk the kilometer back to our homestay, while I took the motorcycle taxi back up to Sapa to grab DJ Khaled, our not-a-Honda-Win, and bring him back down.

We ended the day with a hot shower and a well deserved family meal at the Lucky Daisy Buffalo Lodge and Homestay – many thanks to Indi, the proprietor here, for being such a caring and A+ individual to two grumpy hikers. If you’re ever in the area, stay here, end of story.

Our final morning in Sapa was fairly uneventful, with us doing a little shopping and looking around, ducking in and out of stores to avoid showers, and saying our goodbyes to the crew at Lucky Daisy Buffalo, before heading out on the road to the (very) tiny town of Muong Khuong.

The ride itself was uneventful, especially with the lower speeds necessary due to the rain in the morning. We did spend a lot of time riding just meters away from the Chinese border, through the Vietnamese city of Lao Cai, and spent our evening getting far more drunk than we necessarily intended off of Bia Hoi in the one-horse town of Muong Khuong.

Bia Hoi: Good for the wallet, bad for the brain.

The next day was hell on wheels. From the second we got on the bikes in the morning, it was pouring. It continued to pour throughout the day. As much as the drive was beautiful, by the time we got to our destination for the night – saddlesore, soaked to the bone, and beyond bitchy, we were pretty much fed up with the idea of spending the next few days riding up to Ha Giang through the forecasted thunderstorms. Seriously – the entire North half of the country was forecasting nothing but thundershowers for the next fourteen days – not exactly quality riding weather. Seems the rainy season had officially arrived in Northern Vietnam, and with a vengeance.

DJ Khaled, Michael J. Fox, and views of China.

This guy's gotta stop playing with them hoes.

So, we spent the night in Bac Ha, planning our next maneuvers, and discussing what we should do with the next week or so – Ha Giang was supposed to be Vietnam’s crown jewel; the most stunning, untouched vistas, the most memorable mountain passes, a montagnard population majority, with more photo opportunities than you could shake a stick at.

And it also seemed to be the rainiest place on the planet, at the moment.

So, we finally came to a decision, and loaded us and the bikes up on to a bus, which will be the t(r)opic of the next post. It was a real beach having to give up on Ha Giang, but we think that a change of scenery would make our dispositions a little more sunny. You sea, there’s only so much rain that one can take before one requires a break.

We were off to the beach (in case you hadn’t got that amazing innuendo)!