Sapa Day 4: Sunday

On Sunday morning I woke up at the ungodly hour known as 5:30 am. I dragged myself out of bed in order to pack the remainder of my stuff and grab a 6:00 breakfast. As usual, I ate at the hotel and had the hot Lipton tea with milk, bread, an omelette, and a banana. My group met in the hotel lobby at 6:30 and we all boarded the bus to get to Bac Ha, which is home to a giant market on Sunday mornings. We left at 7:00 and on the bus I listened to Pat Metheny, wrote in my journal for class, and took in the scenery. By 10:00 we were at the market and were set free until noon. I went shopping with Jill and Brittany for most of the time. It was a great market because it had a lot of choices and because people spoke more Vietnamese, but the stuff there was more expensive. I think this was because it was more of a touristy market. I walked around, bought some gifts, took pictures of all of the Flower H’Mong and Red Dao people, and ate half of one of those large grapefruits I love. Around 11:00, we stumbled upon a different part of the market—it was where all of the Dao and H’Mong go to buy the materials they need to make the things we buy! It made for much better pictures and was a lot more interesting than seeing a bunch of white people bicker about prices. At noon we had lunch with some of our group. I had, predictably, fried rice and a Coke.

By 12:30 pm Jill and I made one final sweep of the main street of the market before getting on the bus at 1:00. I again wrote in my journal, listened to Pat Metheny, and slept for an hour. By 2:30 I was awake and resumed listening to my music and talking to the people around me. At 4:00 we arrived at the border between Viet Nam and China. It was a river under a bridge and on the other side was a huge archway that had Chinese characters on it. I took one look at it, didn’t find it all that exciting, and walked towards the temple. I squatted inside for about five minutes before gave up trying to figure what the heck was going on.

Leah, Jill, Natalie, and I ventured down the street in order to find a decent bathroom. We found an empty shopping mall and used their bathroom before going to this nearby café to get Cokes. We were all back on the bus by 4:30 pm and it drove us down the road to a restaurant where we dropped off our bags. We were told that we were in Lao Cai and had three hours before we had to board our night train. Tica and I walked to the other side of the roundabout and she found the two women who had helped her when she came to Sapa by herself a couple of weeks ago. Tica had to take a van from Sapa to Lao Cai and some men wanted to take her somewhere else. She jumped out of the van and was very distraught until she found these two middle-aged women selling coffee. They helped her and fed her and even found an English-speaking Vietnamese student to ask her what happened. Tica and I sat with these women and we spoke a bit in Vietnamese while we drank our iced coffees with milk. After about half an hour, Jill joined us and then they served us some of the hot and bitter tea. We said our goodbyes and left at about 5:00, when we walked back to the restaurant that was guarding all of our bags. I sat and wrote some stuff down and then ordered dinner. I had Coke with some my xao rau trung (crunchy yellow noodles with greens and egg). I then paid, peed, got my bags, and was pulled aside by our guide, Long. He looked pretty upset and I got worried before he asked me if I would mind sleeping in a compartment with the professor, his wife, and DiDi on the night train. He had to sell an extra ticket for a bed in our car to one of his friends who was coming back to Hanoi with us and so he had to switch somebody around. I didn’t care because it’s just where I was going to sleep. We all walked about 50 feet over to the front of the train station at 7:00 pm and waited in a long line of people for about 15 minutes before they started to board our train. We finally got onto the platform, found car 15, and got settled into the very small sleeper rooms. Then I took my tiny MP3 player speaker and went to find Brittany, Cathy, Monica, Jackie, and DiDi so that we could have our planned sing-along. We sang everything from Rent to Lion King and it was so much fun. Around 9:30 pm I started to get really tired and so DiDi and I retreated to our quiet compartment to sleep. Right before we entered our room, though, a teenaged Vietnamese boy opened Jill’s room door and tried to steal something. We chased him off but I was on guard from then on. Every time my professor got up to go outside the room and check on my crazy fellow students (partying a bit too hardy, as usual) I woke up and made sure it wasn’t somebody stealing our stuff. Other than that, my night’s sleep was excellent.

I was woken up on Monday morning by one of the women working on the train pounding on our door and telling us it was time to get up. I glanced at my watch and it was indeed 4:00 am. I rolled off of the top bunk, grabbed my bags, stood in the hallway in a daze for about five minutes, and then we finally arrived at our station in Hanoi. I got off the train, found a taxi with Leah, Jill, and Jackie, and got back to the dorm at about 4:30 am.