a trip to the mountains

The day we arrived in Hanoi last week, we went to a travel agency to arrange for our Chinese visas. The agent told us that we had to wait six working days for our visas and our passports would have to be sent to Saigon. The cost is $130 each for the visas plus other expenses. We think we are being ripped off but think tis easier to have her do it then to go the Chinese embassy on Monday and wait in line there. So we give her our passports and , since we have the time, we decided to take a trip to Ba Ve, a mountainous national park about 40 miles west of Hanoi.

In the morning, we took a taxi to a bus station,where we waited for about an hour for the bus to leave. The bus ride left us off a couple of hours later at the crossroad in the foothills leading up to the park. As we neared the end of the ride, the conductor demanded 100,000 dong for the ride but we knew the fare was supposed to be 15,000 each. We haggled and ended up paying 50,000 dong for the trip. It is not unusual to have to haggle to get the price down to more reasonable levels.

At the crossroad, we tried to strike up a good deal renting a motorbike but then decided to save the money and impulsively started to walk up the quiet road in the midday very hot and humid weather. We stopped and had delicious fruit shakes at a little family snack place and continued to walk with our packs which included some packages of candy, a Vietnamese friend in Hanoi had given us to bring to her relative who works at the park. We walked up through some amazing rain forest. We saw colorful birds and once we saw a 5 foot skinny brown snake wiggling up the nearby embankment. It was so humid we were sweating buckets and had to eat all the tangerines and mangos we had bought down below.

We kept wondering when the promised guest house would appear. We had walked about two hours and gone about 4 miles when a young man in military uniform stopped and offered us a ride on his motorbike. We piled on with our packs. It was very difficult and uncomfortable for us to hold on. We soon passed a complex of buildings but the man didn't stop. We didn't tell him to let us off because I had told him "khach sanh", which means hotel and he seemed to nod and know what we wanted. Instead he continued up the narrow, paved steep road through the jungle another half hour until we reached the end of the road. It was very difficult for me to hold on to my bags and keep my feet from hitting the pavement at the same time. He let us off and charged us 40,000 dong which we gave him. But there was no guest house at the Uncle Ho temple at the top. So at 4 pm, all wet from sweat and exhausted, we started back back down the mountain. It took us about a hour and a half to get to the guest house we had passed on the way up. It was quite grubby but we had no choice to stay there and eat at the grubby restaurant. We slept soundly and fitfully.

The next day it was raining, drizzling and so foggy we couldn't see 20 feet at times. We just rested and read and enjoyed the relaxation after the strenuous previous day. The following day we walked down to the main road and found a bus going to Hanoi. We enjoyed very much the beautiful ride through back roads and small villages and arrived in Hanoi in the pouring rain. Along the way, we had passed a town that specializes in dog meat, as we saw many carcasses for sale on tables along the street.