Up To Sapa

Before embarking on our bike journey south we planned to visit the northern mountain town of Sapa and also to take a later tour to see Ha Long Bay.  We arranged to leave our bikes and panniers locked up at the hotel in Hanoi while we travelled the north, having booked the overnight sleeper bus up to Sapa.

Awaiting pickup for the sleeper bus

 This turned out to be an interesting experience with a mixture of locals and western backpackers piling
into a coach which had reclining beds on two levels instead of seats.  These beds were obviously designed with the smaller asian frame in mind and quite a few lengthy western limbs were to be seen poking out at awkward angles (accompanied by backpacker feet smell!).

Once all the berths were taken up a few extra passengers were even squeezed into the thin aisles.  I buckled my seatbelt and lay back trying not to think about what might happen if we crashed.  This wasn't helped by a big traffic delay later on higher up in the mountain roads.  There was only room for one large vehicle to negotiate the tight road switchbacks as we climbed.  The reason for the bottleneck became clear as we edged slowly past an overturned lorry which had lost the side of the dirt road.

It was a 12 hour journey broken by an early morning stop at a basic roadside rest station which served noodle soup and had toilets for the bleary-eyed travellers stumbling off the numerous buses.

We reached the town of Lao Cai in an overcast dawn light which gave way to a bright and sunny morning as we climbed into the town of Sapa, where members of the local Hmong ethnic tribe gathered to see which tourists required local guides.

The elevation of about 1600m had already popped my ears and inflated a bag of crisps as we were taken on a three person scooter ride up a hill to our hotel.

The view from our balcony looked down the valley towards town and also gave us a misty glimpse of the Hoang Lien mountain range.  They included Fansipan, the tallest peak in Vietnam at 3143m and known as the 'Roof of Indochina', which we planned to summit in the following days.