We departed Hanoi on sleeper train SP3, the 22:00 north to the city of Lào Cai nestling in a valley on the Chinese border (we were just over that border about 13 years ago). There are many tourists on this train and there is a special office at Hanoi station where you go to convert your travel agency voucher into a ticket. We didn't have to do any of that as we had booked direct with Vietnam Railways from the UK and had already printed out our ticket. The hotel staff in Hanoi didn't know you could even do this and nor did any of the other passengers by the look of it. After 340km and around nine hours of rattling and banging, the train finally pulls into Lào Cai at 06:20, at which time you have to negotiate the usual station hustlers and find a mini-bus running the final hour up the side of a mountain to the resort town of Sa Pa. Actually, compared with the hassle in India or South America, this was nothing. The touts seem to be a bit of a push-over. Having said that, most people on our bus seemed to have been conned into paying double the going rate - and they paid in advance. Honestly, they don't make gringos like they used to!

The journey was uneventful but rather unpleasant in the sense that we got no sleep due to the incredibly noisy train and the fact that the mattresses were hewn from granite. We were in carriage 13, but seemed to get away with it! Since we were just about recovered from the jet-lag it was a pain to have missed a whole night's sleep.

Sa Pa

The town of Sa Pa or Sapa (henceforth known as "Frank") was built by the French as a hill station but has grown enormously in popularity since independence. It occupies a commanding position in a col at about 5000ft surrounded by craggy limestone mountains and dominated by the famous Fansipan. At 3143m this is the highest peak in Indochina. We assume it looks rather spectacular, but can not verify this since it seems permanently shrouded in mist. Actually, the entire area is reputed to be like this much of the time, but we seem to have been lucky enough to at least glimpse some of the mountains.

Sapa town itself is packed with restaurants, street stalls and North Face shops. It is tempting to assume that all the mountain gear on show is fake, but considering the stuff is made here anyway, this is probably not the case. If this is true, a Goretex North Face jacket can be had here for US$35! Hmmmm. Even the stuff that's not manufactured in Vietnam comes from China which is just over the hill.

There are many different tribal groups living in the area including the Hmong and Red Dao. They come into Sapa to sell goods to tourists - some have picked up a decent smattering of commerce oriented English. The Hmong are actually easier to understand than the Vietnamese and this is something to do with their language pronunciation being less like Chinese and more like English. Actually, they originated in Laos so there may be a French influence. There is a Hmong museum in Sapa that describes their life and, inevitably enough, has a shop where you can buy their produce. Most of it is weaving and embroidery, but they do a nice line in novelty rice wine. Most people are familiar with the Mexican tequila containing the maguey worm. Perhaps not so familiar is the rice wine containing a couple of dead corvids. It is doubtful that we will get the chance to try the stuff, but apparently it stinks - who knew?

The reason for coming up here to the coldest place in Vietnam was to try and get out into the countryside to see some of the last remaining tribal villages. We spent a couple of days walking around with Hmong guides who told us about the local traditions and customs (between taking cellphone calls from friends and relatives). The first day we went out the weather was pretty good with a decent amount of sunshine. We awoke on the second day to thick fog and rain so we walked about in cloud forest which, other than being a bit damp, was quite atmospheric and kind of what we had expected. Unfortunately for us a lot of the walking was on roads since, these days, many of the villages close to Sapa have good access. The roads are built by the local government paid for by a tax levied on tourists who visit the villages. When we did go off road we followed buffalo trails through rice paddies and dripping jungle. It looked just like the films!

At one point we passed the local marijuana plantation. Naturally, the fibres of the hemp plant are used by the tribes' women to make rope and string things. According to the guide, the plant is also used for "ceremonial purposes", but then they all say that! This got us to discussing alcohol with our guide. Apparently he likes beer but not the rice wine as it makes him forget things and fall over. He said that he didn't want to forget things since he wanted to learn much more English and start his own tourist business. A refreshing attitude for a 20 year old!

After getting on quite well with our guide for a while we ventured to ask him about the American war. Obviously, at 20, he was too young to remember, but he said his grandfather fought and had told him something about it. He did not feel that there was any animosity towards Americans now and actually ventured that they are more worried about the Chinese! He said that, in the North, they principally moved away into the hills to wait for the war to be over. He did say that the Americans had really good guns and that the Vietnamese didn't, which made it difficult to fight. However, because it was their country, they knew how to hide in the jungle and not be found (how true was that?). Having told us all this, he expressed complete amazement when we said "but Vietnam won in the end". He really didn't seem to realise his. It seems that, immediately after the war, the country decided to forgive and forget. Quite how they managed this monumental feat of magnanimity is difficult to fathom, but it is surely testament to their general good nature.

It would appear that the local tourist industry is struggling to show people much in the way of traditional village life since there is so little of it left in the area nowadays. Most locals want to improve their lot and to ensure their children get a good education, which is entirely understandable. There are many local enterprises aimed at raising money from tourists to funnel into the villages. What is not clear is what will happen when there is no longer anything traditional to attract the tourists. It is likely that the funding will then dry up. With the exception of the three day climb of Fansipan, the trekking is not really of good enough quality to attract people. There are few paths to speak of and most of the land is given over to rice paddy. When walking the paths that do exist care must be taken not to encroach on land where you are not welcome. The guides are full of stories of being chased out of villages by machete wielding locals. That said, despite the difficulties navigating the terrain, it is certainly spectacular around here and the fields, houses and villages conform to the expectations that we had of rural life in the north.

Bắc Hà

The hotel owner in Sapa kindly arranged for a minibus to pick us up outside the door, to drive us back down to Lào Cai to the bus station, to buy us tickets to Bắc Hà and to ensure we found the bus, since all that is beyond our rudimentary Vietnamese. Of course, what they actually did is took us to Lào Cai, stopped a minibus to Bắc Hà in the street, put us on that and pocketed the difference. Whilst this didn't really matter, it did mean that we made the rounds of Lào Cai picking up as many locals and school children as it was possible to cram in before finally departing to Bắc Hà. Same old, same old, but certainly colourful. Steve has long regaled Megan about a bus trip in the early '90s through Guatemala when his rucksack and contents ended up saturated in fishy water from a leaking cool-box of fish in the luggage compartment. Imagine, then, Megan's face when our minibus stopped to pick up a large box of live fish which was promptly packed into the back next to her rucksack.

It seems that Bắc Hà could be trying to cash in on the success of Sapa and it may well succeed. It certainly has a much nicer climate. At only 3000ft and surrounded by mountains, it sits in a basin of warmth sheltered from the northerlies out of China. Megan said she had detected some animosity in Sapa when we mentioned going to Bắc Hà, which might be fear or jealousy. It appears that there is a lot of work and investment occurring - at the moment they seem to be restoring an island! Currently, however, there is little here other than a couple of hotels and a handful of restaurants. Certainly no western comforts. We visited a Buddhist temple and some weird baroque palace called Vua Mèo, which was constructed around 1920 by the French to house the leader of the Flower Hmong. Why they did this is not clear.

The main draw of Bắc Hà is the Sunday market and the majority of gringos come on a day trip from Sapa, which makes it a seven hour round trip with only a couple of hours in the market. We arrived on the Friday! As a result we had time to take a look around the town and to do a bit of a trek to see if the villages around here are any more accessible.

We had complained in Sapa that the treks we took weren't long enough and that we had expected to see more of the local villages. The saying is "be careful what you wish for". We booked an 18km trek out of Bắc Hà which ended up being more like 18 miles in the end. We were route-marched through the mountains by an 18 year old Flower Hmong girl who also carried lunch for the three of us. We had agonised over what kind of footwear to bring on this trip. Megan went for boots and Steve a stout pair of shoes. It seems wellington boots are de rigueur amongst the Hmong. We saw plenty of villages nestling amongst the paddy fields and clinging to the hillsides, most without electricity and perhaps even water. Apparently, the villagers will have cell phones, but they have to go to the next village to charge them. As we passed by, small children ran out and waved just like it says in the travel books. The adults we came across were a bit more circumspect. It seemed like a lot of work was going on moving livestock around and picking crops and apparently this is all in preparation for the Sunday market in Bắc Hà. It is amazing to see people still living like this.

After an interminable number of climbs up and down mountains, we finally emerged on to a road and our guide announced "finished"... as she stood beside the sign announcing "Bắc Hà 8km".

So to the market which is the main reason we came here. Every Sunday the town fills up with people from the surrounding villages who come here to trade their produce. People arrive with a couple of pigs on the back of a moped and go home with a chicken, two dogs, a newly sharped machete and a haircut. Despite the fact that tourists are bussed in from Sapa, this really is a locals' market and we were simply ignored even when taking photos. It would be impossible to list the items on sale here, but amongst the animals we saw: water buffalo, dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, horses and birds. It is beyond us to identify a lot of the vegetable crops but everything you would expect in a market is here along with a lot of weird looking stuff. Like the streets in Hanoi, the produce is grouped together so, even if you didn't know what something was, you might be relatively certain you could eat it since it was near other edible stuff. Suffice to say the fluffy puppies were next to the pigs and chickens... as were the kittens!

One bunch of elderly ladies were surrounded by polypins of clear liquid which, judging by the smell, was some kind of potent alcohol; probably rice wine. There were stalls that seemed to sell tobacco by the lung-full. Clothing was abundant, ranging from kid's plastic wellingtons to ceremonial tribal wear. It did seem as though people were actually buying the stuff. There were a few half-hearted attempts by some of the bag and shawl vendors to hawk something to us but generally everyone went about their business.

Given that people had probably trekked quite a long way to come to the market, it is unsurprising that a lot of gossiping and laughing was going on as people caught up with their "neighbours". Groups of women stood around chatting whilst the men seemed to congregate in the temporary eateries or at the impromptu cock fighting arena.

In conclusion, of the two places we visited up in the northern mountains, Bắc Hà is by far preferable to Sapa. It has a more laid back and local vibe going on. It is not oriented to the tourist and people just go about their business. It feels like a real town. There is a pressure to buy stuff in Sapa (although it is gentle by the standards of many countries) that is absent in Bắc Hà.

We spent hours wandering around the market. We even met our guide at one point. She seemed to be selling bags today but stopped to say hello. After the hustle and bustle, we retired to our hotel room where we could observe the market from our balcony and take stock before packing to move on. We enjoyed Bắc Hà and would recommend it to anyone who happens to be in the area.

Having finished with the North, we headed back to Hanoi in preparation for our next leg which is out to the coast. The seven hour trip started with a lift down to the bus station on the hotel owner's motorbike (backpacks and all). After this we boarded a very luxurious sleeper bus that had fully reclining seats and free bottles of water - not to mention karaoke. This was looking promising! However, despite the luxurious nature of the bus and the pre-allocation of beds, we still stopped at every lamppost to pick up waifs and strays, pigs and fish until there was no more room for them to lie in the aisles. The en route "comfort break" involved driving right past a service station and then stopping at the side of the road for people to relieve themselves on the verge. Not very convenient for Megan, but the local women didn't seem to mind. The government has constructed a brand new highway running directly from Hanoi to Lao Cai and on to China. In a spectacular display of shortsightedness, long stretches are only one lane each way and not even dual carriageway. Unlike virtually every other bus journey we have ever taken, we found ourselves urging the driver to go faster as we trundled along at about 50km/h. Eventually we pulled in to a bus station in outer Hanoi which was nowhere near the one we had expected to be at - and it was pitch dark by this time. Much shouting exchanged with bus drivers ended up with them contributing to our taxi fare to get us into town. It was so far that the taxi driver didn't know the way and we had to give him directions!

Next time, we head to the island of Cat Ba for some coastal R&R. The weather forecast is not so good so we shall see how that pans out. Please stick around for the next installment.