Arrival in Bac Ha - not a one horse town!
Our balcony ferrty animal and cage full of squirrels - sorry to disappoint some of you - there is no photo of Nick's porno bathroom
Advice about Traveling to Bac Ha or Sapa – 31st of October and 1st November 2008
A word of advice to any of you planning on traveling to Bac Ha or Sapa from Hanoi – Do NOT book the train through ET Pumpkin, (despite their endorsement in the Lonely Planet) and do NOT discuss where you are going with anyone at the train station when you arrive. We got ripped off twice in our journey to Bac Ha!
We did not want to go to the north western districts as part of a tour but we decided to book train berths through the aforementioned ET Pumpkin. They, along with a number of other travel companies, have carriages that they attach to the Vietnamese trains. These carriages are of a higher standard than the regular carriages and are therefore more expensive but we decided that it was worth the extra cost to get a reasonable night’s sleep. When we booked it was all a bit strange but, reassured by friendly staff and glossy brochures, we booked and paid for soft sleepers in their “luxury” carriage. We arrived at the station at the allotted time, waited for the gates to open then joined the mad scramble to find our carriage. First we were told there were no tickets for us but eventually some were found – the problem was they were on a different train and were just regular hard-sleepers. As the train was about to leave it was too late to do anything about it even if we had been able to find anyone who gave a toss so we settled into a four berth room with a nice young couple who had been similarly deceived. Within a few minutes it turned out that we were in the wrong room and should have been sharing with people who had a noisy baby. Quick thinking and even faster talking, Nick managed to retain the place that we had by convincing a couple of young woman that we could not swap back because I had a very bad leg and could not possibly climb up on to a top bunk.
The trip, apart from the toilet which was unspeakable by the early hours of the morning, was better than expected for me but pretty horrendous for Nick who was again suffering from a bout of the illness that had struck both of us earlier. I have to point out here that Nick was not responsible for the state of the toilet – she exhibited a steely will and tremendous mind over body power!
Our second problem arose when we arrived at Lao Cai (a town on the Chinese border) at 5:30 in the morning. Unthinkingly we disclosed to a persistent young man on the platform that we were going to Bac Ha. He quoted a ridiculous price but would not leave us alone. We went out into the car park which was full of buses and minivans but he intervened and would not allow us to negotiate with any of the others. They were all driven away by him and we had to pay 150.000 VND for the privilege of riding a slow, ramshackle bus that stopped continuously to pick up people and goods. The going rate is about 30.000. In retrospect we should have just gone and had a coffee and waited for him to leave but live and learn!
For quite a bit of the trip I was not certain that we were going to the right place. There were no road signs that mentioned Bac Ha and nobody who spoke any English to ask. I battled, only partially successfully, to overcome my fear that we were being taken to somewhere to be robbed or abandoned but Nick was much more relaxed. It was one of the occasions when I was grateful to be traveling with a companion. Eventually we passed a sign that said 27km to Bac Ha and I was able to relax and enjoy the rest of the journey.
Despite these tribulations and my worries it was a great trip into the mountains. It was fascinating watching all of the goods that were loaded into the bus and onto the roof and our slow progress gave us lots of time to enjoy the changing views. As we made our way higher into the mountains we passed through lush tropical jungles, prolific vegetable gardens and terraced paddy fields. Many of the houses we passed were built from mud and woven bamboo or rough wooden slabs but most had aerials for satellite TV. In places the road was so muddy and potholed it seemed impossible that our bus would make it through but somehow it did. As the road climbed higher we went into thick cloud which obscured the view but eventually were so high that we were above most of the cloud. Many of the blogs that I had read before coming warned that this trip was nerve wracking but I think that our rough New Zealand back-county roads had prepared us well for this terrain. It was with growing excitement that I looked out across the mountain range and down the steeply sided valleys. This part of Viet Nam was very different from anywhere else I have been.
On arrival we quickly spotted a sign for a hotel that we had read about on the internet and trundled our bags down the hill to check it out. It was cheap and cheerfully decorated with great balcony views of the passing street scenes and had the added bonus of a curious stuffed ferrety animal and a cage of live squirrels. The bathrooms were pretty grubby and Nick’s came complete with soft-porn ceramic tiles but we were grateful to have somewhere to stop and to shower so we checked in, cleansed ourselves of the thick layer of grime we had accumulated in the journey, and went out to explore Bac Ha.
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