Hauled myself out of bed, packed my gear & roused the lady at the reception desk to settle the account and very importantly, reclaim my passport. Every Vietnamese hotel hold guests passports for the duration of their stay....can't say I like it, but them's the rules!
The scheduled minibus service for today's sector, rolled into the Sapa bus station half an
hour late--the language barriers are very dense here, so no reason for the delay was offered. After several stops in Sapa environs, to pick up passengers, we headed up and up to the top of Indo China---literally. Apparently the highest mountain peak in is within 20 kms of Sapa. Fantastic panoramas of the mountains, the beautiful cloud formations and the dramatic topography of the region at every tun. Unfortunately, the Vietnamese inter city transport system does not cater for the photographic whims & requirements of its passengers, so the unbelievable scenes witnessed will go largely un-recorded by this intrepid traveler.
The bus ticket office man in Sapa had assured me, and other westerners that the Sapa to Dien Bien Phu (DPB) journey was 12 hours and so
with the thought of this on VERY twisty roads, I had arranged to split the trip into two sectors, stopping over-night in Muong Lay and continuing onto DPB tomorrow. Progress on the trip was much quicker than we expected, so I opted to continue directly to DBP without the stop-over at Muong Lay. In total, the journey was 7 1/2 hours with a 30 min, lunch break. This Vietnamese characteristic of suggesting inflated travel times has occurred to my before and other travelers have reported similar.
The route today to DBP, is twisty and convoluted, rising and falling as it traverses the mountain ranges. The quality of the road surface was rough to begin with and seemed to deteriorate as the kilometres passed by. Cut into the sides of steep mountain sides it is in many places the victim of land/rock slides that close the route down to a single narrow lane. Rumour has it that not infrequently the route is totally blocked for periods until land slides are cleared. Cannot imagine what must happen if this happens---suspect it might mean a turn around and a quick search for a practical local airport travel alternative. Main road routing alternatives in the region do not exactly abound. Fortunately, the amount of traffic on the road was relatively light and seemed to get more sparse the further we progressed.
A major part of the population in this north west part of Vietnam are the ethnic hill tribes people. I have learned that there are about 10 different regional tribes and they can separately identified by the colour, pattern and style variation of the womens' traditional dresses. Visibly very poor, hill tribe families live in mean shacks, frequently dotted along the road side from where they offer minor trinkets, fruit and soft drinks to the passing traffic.
The scheduled minibus service for today's sector, rolled into the Sapa bus station half an
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| Sapa bus station ticket office.... |
The bus ticket office man in Sapa had assured me, and other westerners that the Sapa to Dien Bien Phu (DPB) journey was 12 hours and so
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| A view over the rail & down.... |
The route today to DBP, is twisty and convoluted, rising and falling as it traverses the mountain ranges. The quality of the road surface was rough to begin with and seemed to deteriorate as the kilometres passed by. Cut into the sides of steep mountain sides it is in many places the victim of land/rock slides that close the route down to a single narrow lane. Rumour has it that not infrequently the route is totally blocked for periods until land slides are cleared. Cannot imagine what must happen if this happens---suspect it might mean a turn around and a quick search for a practical local airport travel alternative. Main road routing alternatives in the region do not exactly abound. Fortunately, the amount of traffic on the road was relatively light and seemed to get more sparse the further we progressed.
A major part of the population in this north west part of Vietnam are the ethnic hill tribes people. I have learned that there are about 10 different regional tribes and they can separately identified by the colour, pattern and style variation of the womens' traditional dresses. Visibly very poor, hill tribe families live in mean shacks, frequently dotted along the road side from where they offer minor trinkets, fruit and soft drinks to the passing traffic.
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