Hop through Sapa

At 4:50am, we arrived at the Lao Cai station and were shuttled 45 minutes to our hotel in the mountain town of Sapa. The town is surrounded by hill tribe villages whose residents make a living either by farming or by wearing tourists down with incessant conversation and selling them tribal swag. Waking up before dawn was a bitch, but watching the sun rise over mountains of terraced rice paddies was completely worth it.

 

In the afternoon, we hiked to "Golden Stream of Love" waterfall. Uncertain as to why the stream was golden, feet were once again sanitized afterward.

Ladies from the neighboring H'mong hill tribe villages walk to Sapa Town every day to sell their wares on the streets. Whenever a tourist exits a building, they send out a tweet informing each other of the location and you are instantly swarmed by headressed women asking, "Helloooo, what your name is?" before demanding, "you buy from me."

Our second day in Sapa was spent trekking through rice paddies to the tribal villages, with an entourage of chatty H'mong women on our heels. They followed us from town back to their village, and after winning us over with heart-shaped wands that they crafted from ferns, forced us to purchase crappy woven pouches. They're scrappy!

 

Our "group tour"

 

We wrapped up the day with a glass of H'mong-made apple wine (which has a questionable recipe and distillation process) and hopped back on the night train after a dinner of "donor kebab sandwiches." The donor is still unidentified, and we're hoping it wasn't "thit cho," as it's unlucky to eat dog during the first half of the month.

 

 

Scrappy bikers

I've been known to tote some ridiculous items through San Francisco on the back of my bicycle. (a 3-in1 printer/scanner, a 28" Apple display, 4 bags of groceries.) But I have nothing on these people. Check out what Hanoians are toting on their bikes:

Flowers!

Garbage!

The produce department!

The bakery.

Family of four.

Family of five!

Takeout boxes.

Lumber.

Something in styrofoam. And texting while driving!

My favorite: pinwheels.

Many of the bikers here have a special biker jacket that comes with paws and a matching face mask. Naturally, I got one too. Maybe this will up my bike toting abilities in SF.

 

The streets of Hanoi- photos

 

 

Bia Hoi crawl in Hanoi

Squatting with the locals was a decision none of us regret. We're thinking of bringing back some tiny plastic lawn furniture.

Squatty crawl

The sidewalks of Hanoi are speckled with miniature plastic furniture serving as seating for eateries and pubs. These places are packed with locals who come to make fun of tourists while drinking home-brewed "bia," a low alcohol, quickly fermented beer. Looking past questionable hygiene practices, we squatted with a few surly Vietnamese men at our first Bia Hoi and gulped the light brew. With an afternoon to kill and no other sightseeing planned for the day, an idea was hatched. We'd tackle the streets of the Old Quarter on a self tour of sorts, a "squatty crawl."

Perching on a squatty stool takes a certain gymnastic ability, not to mention a very small ass. We need to work on both of those.

 

After hours of squatty crawling, our knees were crying for a more obtuse angle scenario, so we hit up a fancy traditional Vietnamese restaurant for a multi course splurge before spending the night in a sleeper car en route to Sapa.

(One must always sanitize one's feet for the sake of other passengers on an overnight train.)

 

Risking our lives in Hanoi

At every intersection!

Hanoi. Oh boy.

Our first day in Vietnam proved most eventful. We arrived in Hanoi in the late afternoon, and after a warm welcome (complete with fresh mango juice) at our hotel in the center of the Old Quarter, we ventered out to explore our surroundings. The phrase "hustle and bustle" does little to describe Hanoi. With the tight (signless, lightless, and lawless) streets that are shared by pedestrians, bikers, motor bikes, cars, busses, and old ladies balancing giant hobo sticks who all think they have the right-of-way, our phrase of choice is, "OHMYGOSH WE'RE GOING TO DIE."

 

The streets here in the Old Quarter are all named after the wares they sell, (I.e. Silk Road, Silver Road, Clear Packing Tape Road, Halloween Candy Road, etc) which is ideal for comparison shopping.

 

We ate dinner at a popular restaurant (with a three word name made up mostly of consonants) where we were surprised to be surrounded by so many children. Thinking we had stumbled into the Vietnamese version of TGIFridays on kids-eat-free night, we were informed by a 10 year-old chap named Simon that it was national Children's Day.

 

See those teeny thimbles of liquid? That, my friends, is Vietnamese sticky rice liquor. When I ordered one glass, our waiter burst into a fit of giggles ("tee tee tee tee!") and when the second round was required 45 seconds later he about lost it. Suddenly nervous that I was consuming some sort of 100% rocket fuel, we asked why he laughed. Turns out, it makes him drunk, and when he's drunk he laughs like this: "tee tee tee tee!" Lucky for us, half an ounce of rice wine has little affect on our American tolerances.

After dinner we hit up a nearby karaoke establishment in an effort to wait out a rainstorm. I'm pretty sure we were the only American customers they've ever had, and I'm positive they were live streaming our renditions of Madonna performances to all of their Facebook friends.

We slept off the rice wine thimbles and sought out the city's best Ban Mi for lunch today. We ate our delicious $1 sandwiches by the lake, wondering every so often what possible meat substances were being consumed. ("Softish meat? Squishy meat! Clear meat?")

 

(Brenna's post-ban mi crumbs)

We did some sightseeing at the Temple of Literature, a college founded in 1070, dedicated to Confucius. That's pretty much all we know about this site, as we were too damn hot to doddle, but we can tell you details about the decorative bonsai tree dioramas as well as the exact location of the toilets.

 

 

To cool off, we took a midday break for cocktails to celebrate Verna's birthday and followed libations with dinner of northern Vietnamese tapas.

 

We shopped at Metal Wearables Street on the way home, and were floored when the hotel staff brought Verna a cake and sang Happy Birthday in our room. That's service!

 

Tomorrow we're going to join the locals for some lakeside tai chi and sidewalk bia hoi before catching the overnight train to Sapa. Adventure never sleeps.