Midnight Train to Sapa

Trip Start Jun 05, 2008

Trip End Sep 28, 2008

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Flag of Vietnam Sapa, Vietnam
Thursday, October 16, 2008

After a few well worn days spent in the aggressive, dusty hanoi, I'm eager to get to Sapa. Of course that entails a few hours waiting at the Hanoi train station where an old woman who I move over to let sit next to me decides to lay down and rub her dirty toes all over my skirt. There's little sense of personal space like in Thailand, as another man chooses to lay down and rest his head on my backpack. Other motorcycle taxis feel that its okay to poke and prod to get my attention (maybe because part of the time I'm tuned into my iPOD in order to avoid this hassling...but I think the ipod, ironically, only attracts more people looking to avail me of their services)

Boarding the train consists of handing over your ticket walking through the station gate and then wandering about the actual tracks in search of your car. I find myself sharing a berth with a dozen Malaysian giggling girls and 1 not so giggly husband. I join in their picture taking merry making and them seem to delight in my Chinese-ness as well as the idea of spending the night in a train.

It was not amtrak, but it was a bed and there was air conditioning, and being little like the other Asian people on the train, the space was sufficient. I can't say the same for the Belgian Turk with whom I made friends and his equally elephant sized Netherlands friend. But I'm sure their sufficient consumption of Bia Hoi eliminated any sense of space or smallness for the duration of the ride.

Arrival in Lao Cai was chaotic, confusing, and I had my doubts that I actually was getting picked up. But along with a few hundred other tourists escaping the city, I was shoved into a van and we wound our way that early foggy morning through a beautiful mountain road from which we saw bamboo groves, mudslides, local villagers, and recently harvested rice paddies.