Cold, wild Sapa

It's 5:30am in the morning, we are sitting at the reception of our hotel waiting for the bus that will take us to Sapa. It's 6am, it's 6:30am, still no bus. A staff member of the bus company rushes in shortly before seven, apologizes for the delay and puts us in a minivan. Didn't we book a so-called sleeper bus? After two minutes, the small bus suddenly stops. "Everyone get off!", says a message in hard-to-understand English over our seats. In front of us is now a tour bus. The short ride in the minivan was only the shuttle and so begins our journey to Sapa.

Sleeper buses are a great thing and the most common type of bus for traveling in Vietnam. Imagine lying on a padded sun lounger, only that there is another one above you (like a bunk bed) and behind and next to you as well. That means taking off your shoes when boarding and going to bed.

What awaits us in Sapa? According to the guidebook and other reports, the rice terraces of Vietnam are located there in an idyllic mountain landscape. Everything is green, in the evening the setting sun bathes the terraces in a golden light and the views offer a peaceful expanse.

7 hours later, we get off the bus a few hundred kilometers north of Hanoi in the mountains. It's always a bit cooler in the north, but this cold? At 2C, gray sky, and rain, we stand there and freeze. That was not in the guidebook.

But salvation seems close, because we are driven by taxi to a hotel for lunch. There we find tea and a hot meal, but with room temperatures that are no different from the outside temperature, we can see our own breath inside the house. Heating? Non existent!

But never mind, we will hike a few hours to our homestay, with a local family, and that will bring back the warmth, we think. But that's not going to happen because due to the bad weather, we are advised against hiking. As we learn on this occasion, we are the only ones from our travel group who have come to Sapa. The rest canceled the tour because of the bad weather conditions the night before.

So we are brought to our homestay by taxi. During the drive, we don't see much of our surroundings, because the fog is so thick that the visibility is about 10 meters.

When we arrive at the homestay, we are warmly greeted with a cup of tea and immediately asked to sit next to a large iron bowl on the floor - the bonfire. Here we sit for the rest of the afternoon, wrapped in as many layers as we can wear, with five other guests and chat, while outside the door, with barbecue, karaoke, and icy temperatures, the family celebrates the reunion with an old friend.

In the evening, we receive cooking instructions by preparing our own dinner, deep-fried spring rolls. Finish it off with a sip of rice wine (Happy Water) and then we snuggle up in our room, which strongly resembles a hut, under a layer of three blankets. Today we're warm again for the first time.

After breakfast the next morning, we have to go back towards the center, where the bus back to Hanoi is departing. But where is our guide? Since no one shows up, we decide to go with the other guests. Their guide and a crowd of children accompany us. After a few meters, it starts: our mud adventure. Due to the rain and the cold, the paths are no longer firm. With our hiking shoes sinking into the mud up to our ankles, we can hardly find any grip. At this point, the children come into action, taking our adult hands, leading, supporting, and holding us. We slide over sticks and stones, past mighty cattle still used for field work, we have to go down narrow slopes and find support from trees, rocks, and children's hands. Sebastian stumbles twice and is closer to the mud than he would like. Unfortunately, there is hardly any time to appreciate nature and the rice terraces - there is nothing to be seen anyway, just like our shoes, which are so full of mud at the end that we have to have lunch outside the restaurant.

It is still foggy, cold, and rainy when we arrive in the center of Sapa. We still don't have a guide and by chance we spot one of the organizers from the day before in the square. He takes us back to the familiar hotel where we can shower and change clothes. Then we return to Hanoi in the sleeper bus, which is comparatively warm with autumn temperatures.

Sapa is certainly a picturesque place, but not in bad and cold weather. So if you are planning a visit yourselves, you have been warned ;)