Sapa
Is way lovely. Nam. ‘Nam!!! Gad I love it here. Am so glad to be back. Knew I would be.
Hanoi is definitely one of the neatest cities I’ve ever been to. It really is like if Vancouver and New York got together and had a little asian baby. It’s green, it’s bustling, it’s old. It’s lively and modern and cultured and it’s also a thousand years old. For real, a THOUSAND. Makes our weeny bicentenicals look prettttty dumb, heh? Like, Hanoi pats Vancouver on the cheek and said, “you’re two hundred? Awwww, how cuuuuute! Do you have a Boyyyyyfriend yet?”
We got to Vietnam about a week ago. Spent a night in Dien Ben Phu, up north, then headed south to Hanoi on a grotesque 13 hour bus ride/milk run. Like, the bus was dropping off people and stuff – bags of rice and oranges with no people attatched – every few kilometers. And by watching the mile markers it was evident that we were averaging 40 kilometers an hour. FORTY. So that thirteen hour bus ride? Yeah, could have been done in like… six. UGH. And the day before, we’d had ten hours or so from Laos to Dien Ben Phu… where instead of going retardedly slow the driver went retardedly fast, screaming around hairpin turns on cliffside dirt tracks. The trunk underneath Freddy and I – we were seated in the back – was clearly open to the air, as the red, talcum-powder-fine dust billowed up from behind our chairs as the wheels kicked up fifteen foot clouds of the stuff. The entire bus was filled with dust, swirls of it, for hours, silting up our mouths and sinuses. When we stopped at the border – thank god for Vientam and Paved Roads – I blew my nose, and out came MUD. A…. LOT…. of mud. For the better part of twelve hours, in actual fact. It was, well, rather revolting. My cough was deep and resounding that night, as well. Ech. You really get the thing where locals here are always wearing cotton face-masks. Like…. oooooohhhh. Duh.
But then Hanoi. Lively, vibrant Hanoi. I ate pasta and sandwiches and – oh travel gods, forgive us, KFC. K-F-Fuckin-C, and maaaaan was it goooood. I don’t care, I don’t, I loved it, it was amazing, and the grease dripped off my fingers and the cola burned my throat and the ketchup was vinegary and I don’t even care. It was utterly satsifiying. Figure, most of ‘Nam here we’ll be eating cheap, it’s a month of delicious Pho ahead of us, Hanoi was a really good place to glut myself on comfort food before buckling down to a Noodle Life. Which is still rad.
We drank loads of twenty five-cent Bia Hoi – at twenty five cents a pint – MY GOD – what is a girl supposed to do??? We met a rad brit (full of extremely facinating stories, I hope he writes the book, if he does I’ll definitely buy one…) and if we got alltogether gloriously drunk then, well, that explains the next day’s Fried Chicken Binge. I also bought rad knockoff converse (black and white plaid, brand name “Chi Yuan”) for about twelve dollars that are currently making me very happy.
And now, Sapa… after a glorious night bus, on a sleeper, gad they’re so rad… three rows of beds. Just… beds. Well, if you’re taller than me, they’re too short I suppose. But barely! I slept very well, except it rained and there was a leak right above my face, so to avoid waking up to the regular icy drips on my cheeks, I just slept under my blanket the whole way, and it was fine. My bag ended up soaked somehow, and Sapa is a mountainous rain cloud right now, so I probably am not going to dry out wholly for days. But it’s ok… I like this sort of climate. Fresh air. Pine trees. Rain. It feels natural, and freeing, and wholesome.
There’s a lot of touristy-feeling stuff here – but the market is AWESOME and full of rad noodle and rice joints, and I expect we’ll eat nearly every meal there. There was this fake-looking market… it’s on the map, as “market”…. but it just didn’t feel right, was just too empty, too much like it was trying to accomodate old white people. So I said, nope, let’s keep looking. This… is NOT the “market”. This might be claiming to be a market, it’s about as much a market as the Landsdowne Mall. So we kept looking, and found the real market, all twisty and dark and bustling and covered over with tarps and makeshift roofing. There are silver bowls full of live fish and tables with forests of dead chickens feet sticking straight up, and row after row of noodle stands. Now THIS – is the market.
My fingers are cold. It feels neat. I got a hat in Hanoi, it’s knitted and warm. I bet if we could see off the mountaintop we’d be impressed with the view… as it is, I just feel closed-in and safe, and sort of at-home.
Mountains. Rain. Pine trees.
And, earlier than expected, though extremely pleasent all the same… a plane ticket… home.
