Hanoi, Vietnam
June twenty something 2023
So, uh…
We’re going back to the visiting relatives thing for a little bit. Most of the morning was spent visiting our family— our parents had coffee while I hung out with Casey and we pretty much just stared at our phones and watched YouTube the whole time. I’m not even sure how we’re related to these relatives exactly – I just know that they’re on my dad’s side of the family because my dad is from up north.
The next two days were pretty quiet, so I’ll get through them this chapter. The majority of the morning was spent chilling out and we briefly visited an orphanage- there is a huge poverty problem in many parts of Asia, and Vietnam is no exception. There are still a lot of people, even in developed places like Hanoi, that don’t get the full benefits of the overall improvement of life in Vietnam, and there’s still a long way to go in terms of progress for the country.
Afterwards, we decided to visit Hoan Kiem Lake, which we’d ridden around on a previous day in Hanoi but never got to explore fully until right now. There was an island in the center of the lake which we took a bridge to get on, costing a few tickets but was totally worth it. We had to do it without Mia and Koia, which made it a little quiet but still really enjoyable.
The rest of the day was just spent relaxing, but the next day would have a bit more activity. We’d be going to Sapa, the climax and probably the best part of the entire trip- Sapa is a town situated on the Lao Cai province, in the very far north of Vietnam. There were a couple ways we had discussed getting there- one of them was on an overnight sleeper train which was a pretty cool idea that never really took off- there was also the idea of just driving up throughout the day, which was the option we went with. The road system only allowed us to get there by a single route, which took us first to the main Capital Province of Lao Cai before we could reach Sapa. Once we got there, there were a lot of activities we could do- there were so many I legit wrote an essay about the things you could do in Sapa for school of all things (True story).
And the best part of Lao Cai? It was right on the border with China. Like, the real, communist, Mao Zedong China. We weren’t going to be going inside of China or seeing Beijing or any of that, yet it was really exciting. We were all wondering and imagining in our minds the differences between what an isolated Chinese town would look like from the isolated Vietnamese towns we had seen a lot of recently. We woke up and had one last breakfast in our hotel that morning before going onto another van with a new driver- this driver would stay with us for the rest of VN2023. He actually lived in Sapa, which was quite good for us since he pretty much knew everything about travel there.
We began to leave the Hanoi area with the driver and we all started playing around as we did. We played a lot of Truth or Dare together for fun and also yapped a lot about which the best classical composers were (to my memory, which might be slightly wrong and vague now cuz I’m writing this a year after it happened.). As we drove, the terrain became increasingly mountainous and it got a lot cooler up, which is something I wasn’t used to after so many days in a tropical country.
We eventually stopped for lunch out in the countryside- far from civilization and in a place that didn’t really get much of the outside influences that I was used to. This was probably as disconnected as I’ve ever been from civilization, if I’m being honest. And it wasn’t really that disconnected, by this point things are really connected and the old traditional ways of people just living with their old technologies don’t exist as much anymore, even in third world countries like Vietnam. There’s powerlines, internet, and complete access to everything else that’s going on in the world- it’s just not your iPhone 15 being with every single person.
Lunch was served at someone’s house ( like all lunches usually are)- oh, here’s a Casey face reveal! There were a lot of ants and the view was different but other than that the lunch was really quiet and forgettable.
We continued on through the afternoon, where things got a bit quieter but there was still a lot of activity between the kids. Somehow we got the idea to start playing lesbian music during the drive towards Lao Cai (Please don’t ask, it was Casey, I swear) and then eventually we were just looking out at the scenery- the mountains outside were big and coated with a thick layer of vegetation- it was a crazy sight to behold. It’s hard to believe the scale of these mountains at times, and as we got closer to the city of Lao Cai, more and more buildings start popping up.
And at long last, we were finally pulling up to Lao Cai – the legendary border town with China, and a part of the trip that I’d been anticipating for months. We were going to head right to the border with China- right on the edge, which was separated only by the Red River. We drove through the town, right up towards its edge, even the parents were in great anticipation.
We drove down towards this street right on the edge of the river, and behind the layers of houses… we could see a Chinese neighborhood. On the other side. In China. Everyone got out to look at it- it didn’t even look that different from the Vietnamese side, yet it was exciting nonetheless.
“Wanna go outside and say hi to Xi Jinping?” Asked Mia’s father as soon as we stopped the car near a border crossing meant for trains.
All of us would have answered “Yes”, but we were already excitedly jumping out of the car and racing towards the train tracks’ border crossing – the four of us walked as far as we could down the train tracks until they reached the edge of the banks of the Red River- a roadblock stood in our way, and of course we weren’t stupid enough to try and cross it. We got as close as we could to the roadblock before noticing a guard nearby, and we all hid from the sidelines and just took some pictures before walking along the road near the Red River. It wasn’t long before we found a border crossing for pedestrians – it was a bridge across the river, and it was crowded with at least two dozen Vietnamese walking across it. We realized a lot of them weren’t even there for travel, they were just there to get groceries or do regular daily tasks- it might not be difficult to cross to the other side after all!
But where was the entrance to the bridge? We couldn’t see it from where we were standing, but we saw a building in which people crossed from at the very edge of the bridge- the four of us frantically ran to the entrance as quickly as our legs could carry us as if there was no tomorrow. (Except Koia, she got tired or something and didn’t come along)
When we got to building at the entrance, we discovered an extremely disappointing inconvenience. At the front was a single check in station for passports and security- handled by no more than five security guards. So… yeah. That was the only thing keeping us from going to communist China. Two security guards who I could probably just bolt past if I was fast enough.
Still, all hope wasn’t lost. Besides crossing over the border illegally, there was still another way we could get to the other side of the river – we had our passports with us (of course we did, we’d already been to, what, four countries during this whole trip? Five if you count Taiwan, but I don’t really count it (gets cancelled).
“That’s as close to China as we’re going to be able to get,” My dad said to our utmost disappointment. I wasn’t very stoked about this- China was less than twenty meters away at most – we were so close to Mao Zedong land, but apparently we couldn’t go any further. My dad did say Mia and Koia could get to the other side since they were running off Viet passports, but to our disappointment Mia and Koia couldn’t go either because they already lived in Vietnam and this was a domestic trip for them.
That really sucked.
We got back into the car and left Lao Cai after this very disappointing moment and traveled the final hour to Sapa, this time heading south (before we reached Lao Cai, we were going North) and the scenery was truly the best part of the whole car trip. The mountains were blanketed in vegetation for as far as the eye could go- and entering Sapa was also a surprise.
I had been expecting a fairly impoverished town after all of the time we had spent in the country side where they used holes in the ground for toilets. I was astonished to see a huge city, with huge buildings, vibrant lights, and services of every type, just like in a city such as Saigon or Hanoi. We went right through the center of the city, which had a sizable pond and tennis courts. We went to the southwestern edge of town on the side of a cliff, with a massive valley and a huge green mountain called Fansipan which we would visit the next day. Our hotel was right on the side of the cliff, which gave really wild views that were absolutely stunning if clouds didn’t get in the way. (Sadly, that happened a lot)
We checked into our hotel again and got once again – an insanely luxurious and sizable room. This time- our room consisted of these things (and more, a lot more):
- A bed
- Another bed
- One more bed
- Two couches
- A bunch of food for welcoming guests
- Two bathrooms, each with showers and toilets
- Lamps
- Huge size
And it wasn’t just the room that was cool in the hotel. Our hotel, called the KK Sapa hotel, consisted of twenty stories, and while most stories were just rooms, several of the stories near the top and bottom and in between were made with various utilities and entertainment rooms. They had a swimming pool, a pool table, the kids zone (which of course Casey was interested in), a gym, a gift shop, several restaurants, and probably a bunch of other things that I forgot about. Floor 18, according to Koia, was made of a secret Corpse Room which her spiritual left eye told her about or something – I dunno, I dunno, I don’t watch anime, I dunno, you can research it if you want, dunno, but ANYWAY…
Once we got settled into our room, Casey and I went down to the pool to swim. We just sort of went down, splashed each other, and did very little for most of the time- I frankly don’t remember what we did while we were down there, but after a while we went back up to clean up and get dinner –
For tonight, we were getting dinner at another local restaurant – as we went up, we reached the top off the cliff our hotel was situated on and then moved into this huge stadium thing which was a huge center of the town’s social gatherings. The stadium was surrounded by a bunch of shops, including this thing called Cong Cafe, which…. Uh… (cong means communism in Viet)
Aside from Communist Cafe, there were several other shops as well as a huge church… oh, yeah, also this. We’ll come back to him in a minute. We had dinner pretty slowly, just yapping about… you know what? It’s weird. We don’t speak of that.
We spent the remainder of the night enjoying our time and just having fun- tomorrow was gonna be real interesting.
We were headed to…