Jungle chaos - Sapa - Vietnam

Actually it should have been easy to climb Fansipan. Despite being the highest mountain in Southeast Asia, the conditions and the height of 3,143 meters are a piece of cake compared to the Himalayas. The plan was to start hiking early in the morning and take the gondola down again before sunset and that's exactly how we packed our utensils, clothes and food rations.

Malte, Eva and I marched through small Vietnamese villages that took us further and further to the foot of the mountain, with hordes of small children running after us, waving nervously and giggling as their parents began to do the laundry and take care of the unfortunate chicken to pick out dinner. The trail turned out to be the steepest hiking route any of us had attempted to date and it was fantastic. The first half ran over rocky slopes where you had to climb skillfully while the thick fog obscured your view of more than 20 meters. Malte and I have completely identical speed, imagination and endurance when it comes to hiking and climbing, which makes Malte the best adventure companion there is for me. Eva, on the other hand, is a little slower, not quite as sure-footed and doesn't have the same level of fun with such activities as Malte and I. And yet she does it every time she has the chance, regretting it from time to time, but in hindsight she never regrets it.

Before we arrived at a clearing that stood like a mountain peak in the clouds through the fog, we walked along a bamboo forest that couldn't have looked more mystical and beautiful. Malte, who imagined Vietnam exactly like that, went into complete ecstasy and immediately pulled me into it. So we ran through the bamboo struts with bamboo sticks that we used as swords, laughing and shouting, chasing each other. I wanted to demonstrate to Malte and Eva that I could jump through a huge bamboo bush quickly and hard enough. So I took a running start, ran as fast as I could towards the growth, jumped off the ground and felt how the huge kinetic energy pushed me forward, sure to surpass the slight resistance of the bamboo. Within a moment I realized why people in Asia use bamboo to build any structure that has to carry a lot of load. I bounced off the bamboo wall without any cushioning and rolled onto the floor, laughing. Malte, who believed that I wasn't fast enough, quickly lay next to me. When we arrived at the rest area, Malte and I fought with our bamboo sticks until one burst, hitting Malte in the head and taking the fun out of it. At least five minutes until the pain subsided and we found better sticks :D

After about three hours, a local man passed us in the middle of nowhere with a huge rifle and made us want to hike faster. The second half ran over mountain passes in the fog and then through damn dense jungle. On the way out, the only two souls we met overtook us, a young couple, who then came towards us again an hour before sunset, with far less joy on their faces than before and much dirtier clothes. They told us that they had suddenly lost the way and would rather turn back, even though the way there alone took 10 hours and it would be dark in an hour. We thought their idea was far too risky, especially considering the steep descent, and we were sure they had simply overlooked the path.

As we stood in a gorge in the bushes and the trail became more and more blurred with the sprouting plants, we found ourselves in a dead end in the twilight, 400 meters as the crow flies from the summit, in front of huge rock faces that were absolutely impassable. We tried to follow a riverbed up a river bed for another hour because we thought we would find the way here, but in the darkness and the realization that it was becoming more and more impassable, we set off back to the point where the path ended. Eva became nervous and a tear or two ran down her cheek. We consulted and unanimously came to the conclusion that we should go to a small hut that we had seen shortly before, set up camp there and then hike back the next day. Through the river we had a clean water source, humans can go without food for several weeks, so missing dinner, breakfast and lunch wasn't a concern and after we put on all our clothes we were still freezing at the 2 degrees at night, but we made it never reached a critical point of hypothermia. The hut turned out to be someone's makeshift smokehouse in which, luckily for us, there were even two tarpaulins lying around, which we laid on the bamboo plateau where the meat was usually smoked and fell asleep.

Malte decided to give me my Christmas present the next morning instead of in the evening and took out some French cheese and homemade cookies from his mother from his backpack. So we had a damn good and delicious breakfast, which gave us the energy to trudge back again. I'm really proud and have respect for Eva and how she handled the situation. Precisely because she can't relax or keep a cool head in such situations as easily as Malte and I, she showed a lot of courage.

It was December 24th. Our motivation not to spend another night in the jungle was driven by the idea of spending Christmas Eve together in a warm place and with home-cooked food. We arrived back in civilization late in the afternoon, but unfortunately had to cancel our Airbnb because we never got an address and looked for accommodation with a kitchen. Then it was time to rent a motorbike, go shopping and drive Eva and Malte to the hostel. When we finally arrived in the evening, Malte conjured up a fantastic starter and main course and I cooked us a dessert, which we all devoured as quickly as we could after the day. It was a very different Christmas than usual, but it was still nice to have them both around and to have a gift-giving after dinner where I received letters filled with love from my family and each of us a Lego set from Malte's mother!!!! Lego!!!!

On Christmas Day we started our motorcycle tour, with Malte actually zooming around on a scrappy scooter and Eva and I trying to keep up with Malte on a 150cc semi-automatic wobbly box. The streets of Vietnam are still a phenomenon to me today; nowhere else have I seen such immaculate streets as in this country. Hugely wide, no potholes and perfect condition even in the most remote regions. Because Vietnam seems deserted in many corners and there is no one on the streets, it was fantastic to drive through the landscape with Malte and Eva and a lot of road trip music. There isn't really too much to tell, the days consisted of admiring the mountain landscape of northern Vietnam, suppressing the pain from the slowly developing pressure sores on our tailbones from sitting all the time and trying to find vegetarian food. When we were only a few dozen kilometers from the Chinese border, our goal was to drive in briefly and then take the next road back into Vietnam and since we were in the middle of nowhere and driving on a small mountain road, we did optimistic. But as we got closer to the border area, a soldier suddenly followed us on an equally decrepit scooter and honked so energetically that the Chinese probably heard it too. When we stopped, he tried to make it clear to us with gestures and facial expressions that we had to turn around and got a teacher from the school we stopped in front of to interpret. A little disappointed, we turned around and drove back when Malte disappeared from our field of vision behind us. So we stopped, waited and then turned around after a short time when he suddenly shot past us and, as we noticed after a short laugh, didn't recognize us at all. Then we suddenly realized that Malte was driving extra fast to catch up with us because he thinks we are still ahead of him. He didn't know that it was a hopeless endeavor when we tried to catch up with him in our slower vehicle. So each of us raced through the mountains to catch up with the other, or at least we thought so. Only Malte had internet on his cell phone and that took away the opportunity to tell him that he was following a phantom. Fortunately, after half an hour, Malte stopped at a place from which he could observe the next kilometer of road to determine where we were. When we caught up with him you could see the confusion on his face and out of breath from laughing we explained the hunt to him. In the evening we went to a super chic and beautiful ecolodge in the middle of nowhere, where rehearsals for a play were going on and in the evening we gathered around the play like an audience and watched the dancing in amazement.