A long, short trip

Vietnam - Black H'Mong tribe

We really don’t know why we choose Vietnam for this years’s trip. Our destinations somehow pop up in the middle of the winter. We had only decided to go East once again. That’s all. Let’s go, then! .  Air France Flight  Torino – Parigi  and then the long jump to Hanoi:  eleven hours in the thin air towards the Far East.

Our approximate itinerary is to go frmo North to South, to Ho Chi Min and the Mekong Delta. The first steps in Hanoi are a shock: hot (37°C) , humid (90%) , a thin rain and millions of cars, trucks, motorbikes, scooters and bikes: Vietnam has 80 millions inhabitants, but to us it looks like they’re all here at the same time. Chaos apart, Hanoi is really beautiful to walk through: the old quarter, the lakes, the buddhist temples, the markets, the puppets shows… the only challenge is to survive crossing the streets! Two days later we head off to Sapa by night train, on the north west mountains near the China border. From the station of Lao Cai go get to Sapa on a minibus crossing mountains, forests, rice fields, clouds… We are now in a valley stretched between China and Laos.

Sapa is a little but very touristy town: walking its streets we are surrounded by a moltitude of  H’Mong women and girls dressed in traditional costumes who try to sell us everything.  We cross an ethnic market full of handycrafts and a traditional one which sells never seen before fruits and vegetables. On the streets we meet cars, scooters and buffalos

The next morning we head for a trek which will bring us to a H’Mong village; it’s a 4-5 hours walk between rice fields, forest paths, mud, rain, sun , rain and sun again. but it’s breathtakingly  beautiful.  We finally ariive to “our” wooden and mud village where the women light a fire in the middle of their hut to prepare us a meal while we play with a lots of kids who pop up from every corner around us.

On the way back to Sapa we take a lift from a couple of kid’s scooters but the one with Valeria has a little accident which turns out to be serious for our trip: she gets a severe burn at her right leg. The next day we realize that we will probably end our journey earlier than we had planned.

We decide to try to go on anyway to Dien Bien Phu with a minibus: nine hours through a wild and off the beaten track part of Vietnam. The discomforts are mitigated by the raw bauty of the surrounding landscapes. Dien Bien Phu is a town which sees very little tourism, a bit rough for the same reason, but that’s what we are looking for in our trips, so in the end we have a nice memory of it.

Back to Hanoi (a flight, given the conditions of Valeria’s leg), we decide to go to the most famous place in Vietnam: Halong Bay. Three days in a boat between hundreds os island-mountains emerging from the sea, one of the most stunning bays in the world, despite the unbelievable number of people and, as a result, a very polluted water.

After the boat trip we go back to Cath Bay Island where a bus will bring us to the town. Everything gets complicated because Valeria cannot walk anymore so i turn into a human lift, carrying everything , backpacks, photo equipment and Valeria as well. We are starting to look like and old couple crawling around very slowly. To help us in this difficult tasks the good heavens provides us with a heavy shower that leaves us miserable (i leave the swearing to your imagination).

We are once again in Hanoi and from there we fly to Huè (pron. Hway) , in the central Vietnam to visit the marvellous imperial city (so they say…). This is an entirely new face of vietnam, the people are friendlier than in Hanoi, the climate is not so hot and humid. Unfortunately the burn on Valeria’s leg looks bad and after to days of hanging around in the hotel we decide that it would be very dangerous for her to go on. So we took another flight to Ho Chi Min and from there we somehow manage to get our flight back to Italy.  The last hours in Ho Chi Min (Saigon) are a bit sad, we think of what we have seen, and what we will not see (including Angkor Vat in Cambodia). We will get back one day…

Map and itinerary

Pictures – Vietnam