Hanoi to Lao Cai, northern Vietnam

We took the overnight train from Hanoi. Train companies sell places on a carriage that they kit out themselves. Ours had polished wooden floors and looked luxurious. Then, where they’ve filled the compartments, they attach the carriage to the loco. On the way up to the hills we took a four berth on the basis that it would be fun to meet locals. When we settled and put the lights off, the other two berths remained unoccupied. The train set off absolutely on time and twenty minutes later a couple, muffled against the cold and rain, joined us. She whimpered (Julie thought simpered) and coughed periodically. They remained in their outerwear and both lay on the lower bed, which could not have been comfortable. She coughed and sneezed more or less throughout the night and the ten-hour journey. Julie, in the bed above me, seemed ominously quiet and she told me later that she wanted to drag the woman out and beat her to a pulp! She said that if anything happened to me (an asthmatic) given the coronavirus, she could not face the wrath of our daughters Maria and Izzi! Anyway we kept our masks on until we drew in to Lao Cai (3km from the Chinese border) early the next morning.

A car drove us the hour’s climb up to Sapa, which was wet and freezing and entirely misted over. I had really wanted to look at this French version of the colonial hill station but it was so cold and damp that we were chilled to the bone so we found a lovely coffee house and nestled in for a couple of hours next to the fireplace with coffees and scrambled eggs while we waited for the scheduled time to meet our guide.

Doung, our young guide, met us right on time in the drizzle in the church square and we set off immediately. The rocky paths were steep up and steep down, narrow, rocky and muddy. You needed 100% concentration- so in practice the first days trek of five hours I only saw a large number of rocks embedded in track mud. Whenever the mist cleared we looked down into valleys far below, small terraced rice paddies stacked upon each other and rising up the hillsides. At this time of the year in the far north the paddies were unplanted, just water (and buffalo poo) reflecting the leaden skies. Every now and then we would enter villages, on the first day these were those of the Black Hmong tribe and on the second of the Red Dao or Zao. Villages were clean, villagers looked wellfed and everyone had gardens in which to grow their greens. Villagers wore their tribal costume, kids too on the way to school, silvery jewelry around their necks for Tet (lunar New Year) and even teenagers on their scooters wore some item of tribal costume alongside their jeans.

Ethnic diversity is celebrated everywhere now (somewhat different from what we found in Myanmar in 2016). The hill tribes seem to have a lot of status and many of our Vietnamese home stay hosts and hotel staff would often refer to the tribes. Small-scale hydroelectric projects provide electricity to many local villages, linked to fast flowing streams in their own tribal areas. There were primary schools (all painted standard state institution yellow) in most villages and concrete roads in all areas.

Women very prominent in the tribes, making and selling crafts, running home stay places, guiding trekkers.  Actually, women have key roles everywhere, in cities and in the rural areas. Its so refreshing to see this compared to our experience of Rajasthan two years ago where women were publicly invisible except for road projects in hot isolated areas where they were impoverished labourers. Also, certainly on the surface, the young people seems just like our own, holding hands etc.

We stayed in village houses for two nights. They were unheated and supper (lovely the first night and inedible on the second) was quickly over and done with. Once in our beds, it was unbelievably warm under those garish Chinese quilts.

The rain eased off on the second day and so our trekking was easier and faster and we covered more terrain. On day three we got back to Sapa by van in time to get the taxi down to the railhead at Lao Cai. We accepted the upgrade to a two birth and traveled in great luxury back to Hanoi, in splendid isolation from local people, masks off.