Sapa in Style

29th & 30th Mar  2013

Sapa in Style was the description in the itinerary for our overnight train trip to Lao Cai (and on by bus to Sapa), with promises of luxury throughout the 3 day Sapa experience. It was with some trepidation that we headed off to the Hanoi Railway Station at 8.30pm (having dined at a local restaurant in town), as we had been given some mixed reviews on the train, and despite our best endeavours to get separate cabins, are sharing a 4 berth cabin.

Arriving at the station at 8.45am, our contact at Indochina Tours left us in the hands of the porters from the Victoria Express Train, and we were guided into the station, seated and asked to wait a few minutes before boarding. We eventually headed out to board the train at 9.30pm.

Hanoi Station

When we headed out to the platform we walked right down to the far end, past a train waiting at the platform , but obviously not ours. Before we knew it we had stepped off the platform at the end, and started dragging our bags across the tracks, thankful there were no trains moving at the time. Our train ended up being about three sets of tracks towards the centre of the complex, and we were shuffled aboard with the rest of the passengers on this elite train, all with far more baggage than looked like could be accommodated.

Our Carriage

We were led off to compartment 15, our home for the night, and our fears were not unfounded. We had no idea how all of us and our luggage was going to fit in the compartment, let alone who was going to be lucky enough to draw the top bunks.

Our room for the night

Mike tries to stow the bags

Fortunately we all saw the funny side of our predicament, managed to hide the bags under bunks and in limited overhead storage above the entrance door, not surprisingly the 2 Mikes drew the upper bunks and we headed off to the "restaurant" car for a settling drink.

A few drinks in the restaurant car and it was off to bed

We managed to all get enough sleep to e reasonably cheerful when woken at 5.30am, to go to the restaurant car for tea or coffee, before arrival in Lao Cai at around 6.30am. Lao Cai is only a few km 

from the Chinese border. From here we are met by our guide from Indochina Tours to take us by private bus to Sapa.

The trip to Sapa is a climb all of the way up to around 1600m, and at this time of the morning visibility is limited due to fog.

Arrival at Victoria Hotel & Spa

We arrived at around 8.30am, too early to check in, so our bags are stowed and we are sent off to have breakfast. The guide reconnects with us at 9.30am to take us o  a tour of the countryside and a Red Dao and Black Hmong minority village. There is going to be a fair amount of walking involved, so Joy decided to stay at the hotel.

Our guide, May, is Red Dao and the village we are going to is her home village. The fog begins to lift and we are confronted with expansive rice terraced slopes along our drive to the village, very pretty countryside, and lots of activity along the way as the locals went about their normal life.

Rice Terraces everywhere, although this years crop has already been harvested

Once we arrived at the village we headed off on foot to walk through the villages and rice paddies. 

The entrance to the village

A group of Red Dao women quickly joined our group following us around, trying to make conversation, in a hope we would buy some of their handicrafts at the end of the tour. This is a significant income earner for their community, which otherwise has little opportunity to earn a bit of extra money.

Some of our followers

The local butcher

The local service station

Whilst the Red Dao are mainly vegetarians, the have a mix of livestock.

Water Buffalo are revered and only kept for plowing the paddies, not for eating

Black Pigs are only eaten on special occasions , like weddings

Chickens and ducks are sold for extra income

Whilst life is basic in the village, the children seem happy.

And some a little shy !

After walking into May's village, she took us into her family home, a simple wooden structure with dirt floors and the centre piece is the kitchens, one area just for keeping warm, one for cooking the family meals, and another for cooking for large functions, much less significant is a small paritioned off area for sleeping.

The main kitchen for cooking family meals

The large Wok used for cooking for large functions.

We then headed back to the bus through, the Black Hmong villsge and the paddy fields.

The irrigation is pretty sophisticated

Not everyone can afford a water buffalo

Mike with our tour guide

We headed back to the Victoria Hotel to finally check in and have lunch. It is now a relatively bright sunny day.

The Hotel looks much more inviting in the Sunshine

Our room is very comfortable

And the view is not bad

We went down to the villsge for a very pleasant lunch, to a restaurant recommended by our guide, and 

although it was a long night it has been a great day. This afternoon we will just relax.

Sapa main street

Restful Day in Hanoi, Last Night Train to Sapa

29 Mar 2013

This morning is once again overcast, but not raining. The temperature is in the low 20"s, a good deal cooler than we were expecting.

We headed off for our morning walk at 7am, this time to explore the Old Quarter more extensively. The streets were alive with merchants selling their fresh produce of the footpaths everywhere, anything from fresh fruit and vegetables to pork, fish and a variety of other seafood was on display.

We finally discovered a few convenience stores on this walk , as up till now, it has been a bit of mystery where the local procure day to day needs of processed items from.

The push bike still plays a major role in moving goods around in the busy streets, although they are rapidly being replaced by motor cycles.

Our walk took us through the major shopping district of the old quarter, and it reminded us very much of the old days when we lived in KL.

There are lots of old colonial buildings, and we stumbled upon the only prominnent church we have seen so far in Hanoi, St Josephs Church. It looks quite out of place in amongst the surrounding, very Asian buildings.

After a good hours walk, we met up for breakfast at 8.30am. By now it had started to rain lightly, so enthusiasm to venture back out to explore other parts of Hanoi was muted. Mike and I decided we would walk ( ~1.5km) to the "Hanoi Hilton", the jail the French built to incarcerate local political activists, and later criminals. It was used in the Vietnam war to hold American pilots captured as prisoners of war. Only a small part of the structure remains, and it has been converted into a museum, which covers the history of those held there over the period it was in active use. Included in the displays is a guillotine, that was used to execute a number of Vietnamese political prisoners in the early days.

                                                                    The Main Entrance

                             Prisoners were held in large cells with their feet in stocks

       

Toilets were pretty basic and located at the end of each large cell (not much privacy)

Guillotine

Lunch today was at a local restaurant Quan An Ngon, finally we found a restaurant that served local street food, including noodle soups for lunch. It is a very popular restaurant filled with locals and a sprinkling of expats. The food was excellent and good value for money.

Once our stomachs were full, we decided to go to Ba Dinh square to see the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, and Presidential Palace. We arrived in time to witness the changing of the guard.

Changing of the guard at the Mausoleum

                                                        Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

A bit of gardening activity at Ba Dinh Square

Presidential Palace

Having seen everything we could at Ba Dinh Square we caught a cab back to the Hotel. We now have to fill in about 5 hours, as we are not being picked up to catch the train to Sapa until 8.30pm. Rather than sit around the hotel , we decided to go for a final walk around to see the Opera House and the Vietnam National museum of History. Unfortunately we were not allowed to see inside the Opera House, but did get into the museum for the princely sum of $1 Aus.

Opera House

Museum of History

It is now close to 8.30pm and need to go to meet our guide to take us to the station to catch the train to Sapa. We have had mixed reports about the "luxury" train trip.

A Free Day in Hanoi

28 Mar 2013

Today we have a free day. We planned to go for any early morning walk before breakfast, so 3 of us (excluding Joy) met in the foyer at 7 am to venture out in overcast weather with light rain. The hotel was most obliging, in equipping us with hotel umbrellas to keep us dry.

The streets are remarkably quieter at this time od day, except for those out getting their morning exercise. We saw a few groups of older people gather around some portable source of music, ballroom dancing in the rain, dressed in their motorbike helmets etc or whatever they arrived in. They seemed to be having a great time.

We walked back down to the lake and planned to walk right around it, which should only take about half an hour.

              Mike by the Lake with the bridge to the Ngoc Son Temple in the background

It was pretty bleak out on the streets, so we did a lap of the lake and headed back to the hotel, for an excellent breakfast.

The plan for the rest of the day evolved after reading the various publications we were given, and a discussion with the tour desk. The conclusion we quickly came to was that there really isn't a lot to see in Hanoi, and many of the museums etc are not open on Fridays or Mondays and some only half a day on Thurs. Many of the highlights are within walking distance of our hotel.

We wanted to see the Army Museum (Mike especially did), so we caught a cab from the hotel. It is only open till 11.30am today , so we hurried off just before 10.30am, to see as much as we could.

The museum if a mix of indoor and outdoor displays, chronicling Vietnams' major conflicts with France and the USA. Information in English is limited, but you can follow enough of what is there to make it interesting. There are extensive outdoor displays of Vietnamese and foreign aircraft, tanks etc that were used in the various conflicts.

The museum was awash with groups of school children touring the museum in large groups.

By closing time we had seen all there was to see and retired to a small open air cafe next to the museum grounds for a cup of coffee / cool drink. Joy discovered this spot well in advance of the rest of us, having seen enough of the museum.

 

After refreshments we caught a cab to Hang Gai Street in the Old Quarter to find a place for lunch. We had our heart set on Pho (noodle soup), but it appears it is only served for breakfast and no-one would serve it for lunch, so we stumbled upon an upmarket looking restaurant opposite the lake with an outdoor cafe and a restaurant inside . They seemed very keen to seat us in the indoor area which was set up like a fine dining restaurant. It transpired we were the only people in the restaurant. We had a great meal, once we eliminated all of the items on the menu that were not available, and had their undivided attention for the whole time we were there. Language was a bit of a problem, but somehow it all worked out, and despite the fine surroundings the price was reasonable

Our lunch venue

We walked back to the hotel around the rest of the lake and along the way saw evidence that Vietnam is also building there own NBN and appears to be much further advanced in installing their infrastructure than we are and have also worked out how to do it at an affordable cost. No doubt there will be a study tour from Aus soon to check it out.

The hotel runs an historic tour of the hotel, including a tour of the bomb shelter which was built under the hotel during the Vietnam war (known here as the American War). We put ourselves down to attend the 5pm tour and found it very interesting.

It seems that our hotel, Raffles in Singapore and The Oriental in Bangkok are all over 100 years old and are all 5 star + , the only 3 hotels in Asia to meet these criteria. The Metropole was also host to a number of foreign embassies in the latter period of the war and beyond, whilst rebuilding took place. The room we are staying in was the Italian Embassy between 1975 and 1982. The guide had lived through the war as a child and still had vivid memories of bomb shelters being a way of life. The shelter at the hotel was sufficient to house 40 guests and was covered with 7 feet of concrete. Hotel staff had to rush home to their own shelters. At the height of the carpet bombing of Hanoi, guests were sometimes required to evacuate their rooms and go to the shelter up to 3 times in an evening.

There isn't a lot of headroom in the shelters.

Dinner tonight was a very good Vietnamese meal at the hotel restaurant, Spice Garden