We originally set up this blog to record stories from our big world trip. That trip seems like such a long time ago now, but since I’m travelling again I thought I would resurrect the blog.
I found myself with a bit of spare time after finishing my thesis. Not sure what to do, Chris suggested that I make the most of it and do something different...volunteer overseas. Vietnam had been on my list of places I wanted visit so I decided to plan a trip there. Since I was travelling by myself (Chris was unable to take time off work) I thought a volunteer placement would be a good way to meet people. After going round in circles on the internet I finally settled on volunteering at a learning centre in Sapa, Northern Vietnam. The learning centre (Sapa O’Chau) works with ethnic minority kids from surrounding villages, teaching English and also training them to be guides (as trekking is the main thing to do here).
To save costs I organised the trip myself instead of going through a volunteer agency. The volunteer agencies charge a lot of money and I couldn’t see how much of the fee actually went towards the charities they work with (if at all). So I contacted Sapa O’Chau directly and made my own way to Sapa. I arrived in Sapa tired and cold after an overnight train ride, I made my way to the cafe where no one seemed to know anything about me arriving....not a good start. Not knowing what to do I hung around for a bit until two other volunteers (Erin and Bree from Australia) turned up. They helped me find somewhere to stay and get settled. On the way we met Peter, one of the coordinators at Sapa O’Chau.
After a shower and some breakfast I was feeling a bit better. Peter had organised a trip for the volunteers down to Lao Chai a small village near Sapa. We had a great lunch at Mai’s homestay, great food and the obligatory shot(s) of rice wine. While we were having lunch Peter got a call about some event the next day, an opportunity to climb Mt Fansipan (the highest mountain in Vietnam) without paying any fees. Not want to miss out on anything and with a promising weather forecast we said yes. So the next day we all got up early, boarded a mini bus....sat on the mini bus while it drove around in circles for a while waiting for more people, then headed off to Mt Fansipan. Well it turned out that the “event” was actually a race up and down Mt Fansipan, held every year or two. Well we were in no shape to run up Mt Fansipan, walking up was going to be hard enough. We were soon left behind by all the runners, but we did manage to get over half way up before being made to turn around (you had to be less than an hour behind the leaders and we were going too slow). While it was disappointing not to get to the top, it was a nice day and we did get great views (unlike many people who climb it).
The next day was meant to be my first day of classes. Unfortunately we all came down with a bout of food poisoning (some dodgy chicken), which left me out of action for a couple of days. As we had quite a few volunteers that week (Erin and Bree, Marie from Belgium and Amy from the Netherlands), I ended up working with a student Dua (pronounced Zho) one on one to help her catch up to the rest of the class. Mornings were spent covering the basics (alphabet, numbers) with reading and pronunciation practice in the afternoon. Dua was really keen to learn and she did show some improvement while I was working with her. She was pretty upset and cried when I told I was leaving, I felt a bit bad. While Sapa O’Chau is quite disorganised, the kids at the school are great, they are so keen to learn and I really enjoyed my time with them and the other volunteers.
Sapa is situated quite high in the mountains and has very changeable weather. Usually it was pretty cold and foggy. The cloud layer changes height rapidly, one moment it would be reasonably clear....the next minute the visibility would be down to 30 metres. When the sun did come out we got beautiful views of Sapa and the surrounding mountains. We tried to make the most of the nice days by doing short walks around Sapa, down to Cat Cat village and up Red dragon hill.
Staying in one place for a couple of weeks means that you get to know a few people by sight and start to notice some of the little routines in the town. Every night on our walk back to the guesthouse after dinner we noticed several middle age ladies marching around the town square...their exercise for the day. There was also a group of ladies (and the odd guy) practicing salsa dancing almost every night on the porch of the community centre. Even the old ladies selling handicrafts on the street started to recognise us and I didn’t seem to get hassled quite as much. Telling them you were a teacher was a good way to get rid of them....they would often apologise for hassling us, but this would only work sometimes.
One of the highlights of the trip was going on a trek to Ta phin, a Red Dao village. We decided to move the trip forward by a day to make the most of the weather, and were very glad we did. Our first day of walking was very sunny and hot, the second day was in thick fog. Given the changeable weather around Sapa we were very happy to get one good day. We (Bree, Erin, myself and our guides Mai and La) set off from Sapa and headed towards Ta phin passing through several small villages and rice paddies. Sapa is higher than the surrounding villages so the walk was easy, mostly a gentle downhill. On the way we got followed at times by Red Dao ladies trying to sell us stuff, they were very friendly but we weren’t very good prospects as I only bought one small bag and the girls bought nothing. There were two main reasons why we chose to do the trek to Ta phin: there are lot less tourists than other routes (most tourists head towards Lao Chai and Ta van) and we also really wanted to try the Red Dao herbal baths at the homestay. The herbal baths involve boiling up water with herbs and leaves. This water is then poured into barrels which you sit in to have the bath. The barrels are not particularly big, so even with my short legs it was a fairly tight fit. Still it was great way to end the day. We also had a great dinner (cooked over open fires) and of course the obligatory shots of rice wine. The next day was a fairly quick walk out to our pick up point, because of the fog we could see anything and there didn’t seem to be much point to sticking around.
