Some travel experiences are so spectacular, wondrous, and surreal, so rich, and so far outside the frame of any personal or cultural reference, that you're left wondering whether you are where you think you are. Yes, it's on the map. Yes, I planned to be here. Yes, I knew I'd be doing this or that. But then you find you aren't prepared--can't have been prepared. You've stepped through Alice's looking glass, and what you experience is every bit as impossible as a grinning Cheshire cat in a tree, a mad hatter, and mind-altering cake. Today was once such day. Sapa is one such place.
But before that, there was...da' Vine! Divine! Dan, Hien and I were foiled in our attempt to visit the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Well, not really foiled so much as seduced by gastronomic nirvana in the form of the sole restaurant in all of Vietnam to pass the ISO Food Safety Management Standards. Which meant that we could eat without anxiety--as if the ambiance, service, and promising menu weren't enough to induce such a state. I speak, of course, of
Vine, billed by Frommer's as the top not-to-be-missed foodie experience in Vietnam. It lived up to it's reputation, but deserves a post of its own. It caused me to abandon my teetotaling ways for a Sicilian red. But what choice did I have? I was eating bruschette and risotto prepared with white truffles and shaved parmesan, dipping bread in fruity olive oil and sweet balsamic vinegar! After a solid week of unrelenting stomach cramps, almost two of delicious but constant Indochinese cuisine, I was home, home, HOME at an "International" restaurant that could have been in New York and I near wept for joy and at missing all things familiar, comforting and feeling of Gotham. After shamelessly topping of lunch with tiramisu (*THE* Verona recipe!) and bread *AND* butter pudding, we waddled out of our food womb, back out into the chaos that is Hanoi.
Dan, Hien and I said good-bye, and off I taxied to the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology to learn about the hill-tribes I was to encounter in the Tonkinese Alps, as they are known. Alone now, I quickly slipped back into solo-traveler mode, found my efficiency and independence mojos, and navigated the city without fear. It's counter-intuitive, I know. After all, gone was my always level-headed nephew, engineer of the Halong Bay ships' quarter's bug-mitigation plan, not to mention something it's hard to be without in Vietnam--an interpreter (Hein). But there you have it. I was again a solo sojourner, and it felt good.
After retrieving my bag from the hotel, I taxied to the pandemonium that is the Saigon rail station where, naturally, I was deposited several blocks from where I actually had to be. Mass confusion ensued from the "yes, I know you have a ticket, but you need the additional *white* ticket" to the over-crowded "waiting room", a dank affair with soap-less bathrooms. I daresay I've never worked harder at not touching any fixture, knob or handle, or been as conscientious about not letting my pants legs touch the floor of any public restroom.
There was no way to know my train was on track 8, obscured by tracks 1 through 7, all of which were hidden by...train number 1, which seemed the most obvious choice. The barrage of shouted Vietnamese clued me in that I was unfathomably stupid to have even considered boarding the only visible train. A tour guide accompanying another group took pity on me and the group adopted me long enough to get me to proper track, train, and car. I was on my own trying to find my proper compartment and berth. I don't know how people without removable CI processors and Ambien managed to sleep but, mercifully, having both, I drifted off, however fitfully, having somehow collapsed myself, accordion style, into a woefully deficient length of berth space. We knocked and bumped and clunked down the tracks before, like a roller-coaster car engaging at the bottom of the big climb, felt to be ensnared by some giant cog to begin our steep climb into the mountains. In and out of sleep for the next seven hours, a gentle nudge from a fellow compartmentee alerted me to our arrival in Lao Cai, and brought be bolt-upright and scrambling to gather luggage and shoes. I stumbled, blinking and half-conscious, down the steps of the train, was quickly swept up in the morass of equally sleepy travelers, and ejected into a cacophonous receiving crowd, relieved to see "Mrs. Janice Taylor" (fitting, in view of my Saigon wedding) on a pink placard in a sea of white ones. Here was Tuan, my guide, protector and translator for the next three day.
After a one-hour car climbing still further into the mountains, we arrived in Sapa but, as we approached the "Gold Sea" hotel, my excitement turned to cautious apprehension. But stomach ailments unabated (a successful course of antibiotics having only later proven that I indeed had a bacterial infection), I saw only the promise of a clean (I hoped) bathroom. That promise was unrealized, but at least the bathroom was stationary and private.
The Gold Sea is a dreary place, a dirty place, a stained-rug and smelly place. It's a moldy and crumbling place, a place I wasn't sure had boiled the coffee water. It's just one night, I told myself. True, but that's one night too long, I replied. I was slipping into traveler's despair, sick, road-and-rail weary, and suddenly needing--like I need to breathe--an InterContinental, a Sheraton, a Four Seasons. And had there been one, I'd have ponied up. I decided to go for what, in Sapa, at least, is going for broke. "Take me to the Victoria Sapa." It's the
only luxury hotel in Northwest Vietnam and I couldn't get there fast enough.
As a room was not yet ready, Tuan and I sat in the lovely lobby sipping hot tea, discussed our first day's trekking route, and then hit the path to the road to the path to the trail. The rain was stead but light. Within the hour, the rain was steady and not-so-light. Within two hours, steady and not so light became all-out pouring. It never occurred to me to bring rain pants in addition to a jacket. I was soaked from thigh to boot-top. My camera was acting weird, and Tuan didn't seem to understand my request that he hold the umbrella over the camera when I took pix. I was cold. I was tired. I hated Sapa and traveling and Tuan and our lousy picnic lunch, eaten sitting on a rain poncho on the cement at a school out-of-session, where fearsome Vietnamese soldiers were being drilled on the use of field phones seemingly left over from the "American War." They seemed remotely curious, but utterly humorless. I ate my rolls and Laughing Cow cheese triangles and green-cream-filled Yodel-like-item in abject misery, shivering. I passed on the packet-o-meat and cut vegetables because, already sick, was determined anew to adhere scrupulously to "boil it, peel it, or forget it."
On the upside--yes, there was one, although I was hard-pressed to much appreciate it -- I met my first Black Hmuong and Red Dzao villagers, the dialects of which Tuan speaks. I learned that the "black" of the Black Hmuong isn't really black at all--it' blue, made from "indigo", a basil-looking plant that is fermented in huge barrels until it turns...deep, dark blue. This is the "black" dye with which this tribe colors it's hemp to weave and embroider textiles for its clothing, blankets and just about everything else. If their distinctive black costume didn't readily identify them, their black-stained hands would have. And to be fair, my poncho-picnic did yield me two Red Dzao friends, initially intent on selling me something. But after we shared both warming smiles and one of my green-cream Yodel-like items, they were instead sold on me, the odd foreigner.
So, I'm cold and wet now, I told myself, but I'll soon be swaddled in a plush Victoria Sapa terry-cloth bathrobe after a hot bath, ordering tea service in my room, my every need attended to. Um...no. Instead, the day ended as uncomfortably as it started, bracketed on either end by hotel disappointment. I was to move yet again, but was condemned nevertheless for one night to the Victoria Sapa. Against my will, my lawyer persona emerged like an alien from my never-lose-your-cool-or-sense-of-humor travel persona and, summoning the manager to my room, I enumerated the many defects of my room (large bug next to my pillow, construction crew just outside my window, construction materials obscuring my view, wet bathrobe (I gagged at the thought that it might have been from the room's prior occupant)). I was promptly rewarded with another room with a lovely view (the sun came out!) more befitting the Victoria Sapa's reputation.
As much as I wanted just to crawl under the covers to cry and/or sleep, I instead ventured out in search of the "Sapa Rooms Hotel", a $30-a-night boutique establishment that had eluded me since early June, and where I had very much wanted to stay. As it turned out, the Aussie expat proprietor's emails never reached me. After wandering around Sapa for an hour, I found what had become my holy grail of Sapa. Peter Wilkes (Saint Peter!), his stylish guesthouse, and organic comfort-food menu were an oasis in parched travel desert. I quickly arranged to move there the following day--today, as I write. Peter arranged to have me squired by motorcycle taxi up to the Victoria to retrieve my laptop, and I sat down to a hot-pot-and-blogging dinner before returning to the Victoria for a good nights' sleep in a bug-free bed.
Here are some pix of day 1 in Sapa, trekking in the rain, the mountains shrouded alternately in fog, mist, or full-on clouds, a view of Sapa town's lake from a balcony at the Victoria (after the clear), my (second, post-making-of-a-fuss) room at the Victoria, and typical stretches and mud through which I slogged, and the red-clay path (slick as oil, I might add!), and representative rice-paddy terraces, along the tops of which we walked. You can see the green indigo leaves as they begin the process of fermenting into blue-black dye, blue-black stained fingers and/or fingernails, Black Hmoung embroidering, typical black-velvet-like skirts and hats, a gorgeous embroidered blanket of the type both used and sold by Black Hmoung women. You can also see both manual and mechanized methods of spinning hemp into thread for later weaving on a community loom. Note in one picture a clump of green leaves on the eave of a thatched roof on a Hmoung home. As my guide (and, later, a little Hmoung girl who knew a bit of English) explained, this is a message from the family to other villagers admonishing them not to come to the home during periods when the family has asked for a miracle of some sort (or, perhaps, if a family member is ill) and the spirits must not be disturbed, the home not sullied or interfered with by other than the family. Actually, I approached Nirvana at the close of the day when, in despair, I emailed and sought out Pete Wilkes at Sapa Rooms, who told me to come down for dinner. Because his menu devoted one full side of a two-sided card to their Famous Hot-Pot, I naturally ordered that, hoping to chase away the bone-penetrating chill and damp (which I'd now convinced myself, given recent history, was going to be a Big Cold. The hot pot was a broth of herbs and spices, pineapple, lemongrass, ginger, boiled at the table on a...hot pot. Into that was added handfuls of greens, vegetables, tofu and chicken. About as good as a simple meal gets, as warm and welcoming as I've had. Things were beginning to turn around.
(By the way, it was during the poncho picnic in the rain that I realized I had nothing to prove or gain from a hill-tribe hut experience, didn't need--at an arthritic 48--to brave primitive living conditions sleeping in dried sweat and dirt and damp. Hell, I've already earned those credentials. Just give me a warm, dry, soft bed and let me ease on into middle age. Methinks this is adventure aplenty.)
