By Laurie Loshaek
Three thousand one hundred forty-three meters (10,312 feet):
a walk-up, right? That’s what my husband George Kasynski, our good friend Chip
Drumwright, and I thought when we planned to trek to Fan Si Pan, the highest
point of Vietnam, at the end of our travel and work in that country. The
reality was quite different.
Being “of an age” to remember the Vietnam War that greatly
impacted so many lives (even though none of us served there) and thinking about
traveling to Vietnam raised mixed emotions. The journey would be far different,
for example, than a climbing trip to Europe or South America. When we discovered
an opportunity to work with a dental relief organization to which Chip is
committed, George and I decided to go. Instead of just climbing and sightseeing
in a place where our country had wreaked such devastation and where so many of
our soldiers died, we could give something back.
Last November, after landing in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly
Saigon and referred to both ways by the Vietnamese), we hooked up with our
fellow volunteers to the relief project—the Himalayan Dental Relief
Project (HDRP). This is a Colorado-based non-profit organization that recruits
volunteers to provide free dental care to impoverished children. In addition to
Vietnam, it operates clinics in Nepal, northern India, and is just now starting
one in Guatemala. Our fellow volunteers were a hygienist, three non-medical
people like us, and four dentists. One dentist had left Vietnam as a ten-year
old refugee in 1975 and was returning for the first time with his wife, also a
dentist and an American-born Vietnamese. They both spoke fluent Vietnamese.
Ho Chi Minh City, with its six million
inhabitants—seemingly all on the go at once—introduced us to the national
lifestyle of the motorbike. Entire families ride on one small bike, a
phenomenon we encountered everywhere we traveled. Impossibly congested, traffic
flows in patterns known only to the initiated who cross streets by a method we
called “the frogger:” wait for a small opening in the traffic, walk out into
the street slowly and steadily, and do not stop or turn back. Surviving the
frogger became one of our biggest challenges. By the end of our trip, we were
daring each other to make night frogger crossings at the larger intersections.
With no pride, I attached myself to veteran crossers, followed closely, and
prayed for the best.
We had a quick day of sightseeing, beginning with the
horrific and sad War Remnants Museum where we saw an exhibit on survivors of
Agent Orange and other horrors that occurred during what the Vietnamese call
the American War: it was a thought-provoking and unsettling introduction to the
country. We toured the Reunification Palace (the former Presidential Palace)
with its underground warren of bombproof war rooms from which South Vietnam
conducted its side of the war. From the Palace, we looked down the esplanade to
the United States embassy roof where, in April 1975, as we all watched glued to
the television as helicopters evacuated the last Americans just hours prior to
the surrender of the South Vietnamese Government to the North Vietnamese. Additionally,
we visited historical sights from the French colonial period, then we flew to
Danang in Central Vietnam and went by van to Hoi An, a town by the sea with
nineteenth century wooden buildings. We stayed here for six nights while we
worked in the clinic.
In Vietnam, HDRP partners with the East Meets West
Foundation (EMWF), a major non-profit organization that provides an array of
medical services. It is based in Danang. The EMWF set up our outreach dental
clinic in a school located in a village near Danang. With our co-worker
Vietnamese EMWF dentists and nurses, we worked for five days in the clinic (a
large room in the school), assisting chair-side and helping to organize the
seven hundred six- to twelve-year-old school children who received care while
we were there. The dedication and hard work of the EMWF staff cannot be overstated.
We were exhausted at the end of every day, yet the entire staff would stay much
longer, washing and sterilizing in washtubs all of the instruments for the next
day. Every day on our way to “work,” we passed the remains of the American
military complex as well as China Beach and the still-standing Quonset huts
where American helicopters were hidden from view. According to our guide, in
1968-69 the Danang airfield saw the heaviest traffic of any airport in the
world.
Sightseeing
After our time in the clinic, we left our by now very good
Vietnamese friends, and the three of us and most of the other volunteers left
for a pre-arranged tour of different parts of Vietnam. Everywhere, from the
plains of central Vietnam to the terraces of the north, farmers work rice
fields with hoes or water buffalo. We saw very little machinery. Vendors carry
stacks of goods piled high on motorbikes. Women shoulder bamboo poles with
baskets on each end and move swiftly and gracefully through the streets,
selling everything from bananas to souvenirs. We ate traditional Vietnamese
dishes with rice and fresh seafood and local varieties of noodles and tropical
fruits.
From Danang we traveled by bus north along the coast over Hai
Van (Ocean Clouds) Pass to the lovely city of Hue, which lies along both sides
of the Perfume River. After one thousand years of Chinese rule that ended in a.d.
939, several centuries of warfare followed between powerful Vietnamese
families. In about 1800, Hue became the capital and the center of power for the
Vietnamese emperors and mandarin aristocracy until the French colonized the
country in the late 19th century. Similar to the Forbidden City in Peking, the
Imperial City is replete with palaces and temples. During the 1968 Tet
Offensive, Hue saw major fighting that killed thousands of civilians. The
conflict leveled hundreds of acres of buildings within the Imperial City that
today are agricultural fields. One day Chip, George, and I rented one-speed
bicycles in their final decline and, braving motorbikes and rice-field lanes,
visited a turn of the 20th century house where Ho Chi Minh lived as a child. In
a monastery, we saw the car that the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc drove to
Saigon in 1963, where he was the first to immolate himself in protest against
the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem.
After the close-to-100-degree temperatures in the south, we
flew to cool and overcast Hanoi. We lined up for the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum
where the North Vietnamese president is preserved—against his express
wishes. We also visited the “Hanoi Hilton.” Originally a notoriously harsh
French prison for Vietnamese dissidents, captured American pilots, including
present-day Arizona Senator John McCain, were held there during the war. We
walked narrow, nearly-impassable streets in the Old Quarter. Here, the sidewalk
serves as living quarters; families have shops, eat, park motorbikes and
bicycles, play chess and gamble at cards, while street vendors hawk all variety
of wares. On their three-wheeled bicycles, “cyclo” drivers constantly approach
tourists such as us. Passengers sit up front and the driver in the back steers
head on into traffic. After our last dinner in Hanoi we decided to take cyclos;
the driver we hailed called his friend on his cell phone to bring a second
cyclo: a perfect example of the old and new Vietnam.
We spent an evening at the National Water Puppet Theater.
Water puppetry is an ancient art form indigenous to the countryside of northern
Vietnam. Puppets ride on the surface of the water attached to long poles
operated by puppeteers from beneath the water; the puppets act out traditional
stories. Rice farmers probably created this art when the rice fields became
flooded. The water puppets perfectly embody this country of ocean, rivers, and
lakes.
Highpointing
In preparation for our climb, we drank a lot of Bia Hanoi
(Hanoi Beer) sitting next to the mystical Hoan Kiem Lake, one of the many lakes
in Hanoi, while eating salted roasted peanuts fresh from the Old Quarter
market. We also made a two-day excursion from Hanoi to Halong Bay, famous for
its three thousand rock-outcrop islands that rise out of the Gulf of Tonkin in
the South China Sea, a worthy goal for all list-climbers. The film Indochine
has beautiful scenes evocative of this beautiful land/waterscape.
We had arranged for our trek to Fan Si Pan, the Western
spelling for Phang Xi Pang, with Footprint Travel, which we found on the Internet.
The cost was $215 per person. This included the train trip, our guide and
porters, gear, food, and lodging in Sapa. Meeting with Footprint in Hanoi prior
to the trek, we hired an extra porter for $60 because Chip and I were both
recovering from recent shoulder surgeries.
On December 3, Chip, George, and I boarded the night train
from Hanoi northwest to Lao Cai on the Vietnam-China border. After a very
comfortable eight-hour train trip in our own cabin with individual bunks,
drivers met us at the train station and took us to the town of Sapa (or Sa Pa)
a former French hill-station twenty-three miles from Lao Cai.
Sapa, a worthy destination in itself, sits at 4,900 feet in
the Hoang Lien Mountains. Fan Si Pan is the highpoint of the range that runs
northwest to southeast for about nineteen miles between the Red and Black River
basins. The surrounding mountains and valleys are the home for several groups
of H’mong, Dzao, and other hill people, who wear traditional indigo-dyed
clothing and headdresses. Sapa has recently boomed as tourists come to trek to
the villages and shop for hand dyed and embroidered clothing and fabrics. As we
found out, most tourists do not come to climb Fan Si Pan.
The road from Lao Cai to Sapa is narrow and winding. The
clouds that often obscure all views around Sapa did so our first morning. It
was cold and wet. Following the twists and turns of Sapa’s narrow streets, our
driver deposited us at the hotel where the local trekking agency had its
headquarters. We obtained rooms for the couple of hours we would be there so
that we could shower and eat breakfast. Then we met our guide, Nguyen Thanh
Binh and his four handpicked porters. Binh comes from Hanoi where he went to
University and then to the two-year government-required school for tour guides.
There were several different ways to climb the peak. We
discussed the projected route with Binh, who proposed a steep, short route up
and an easier, longer route down. He planned a circle route on the eastern side
of the mountain where we would start at Tram Ton Pass, walk southeast to camp,
climb the east-facing ridge to the summit, descend the northeast ridge back to
camp, and walk out in an easterly direction. We agreed, ignoring the advice of
several experienced people we met in Vietnam to take the easiest route both up
and down, because, how hard could it be? After all, we were coming from
Colorado and this was a mere 10,000 feet.
From Sapa, we took the van west for about thirty minutes to
Tram Ton Pass, at 1,900 meters (6,232 feet) the highest pass in Vietnam. On the
north side of Fan Si Pan, at the alpine start of 11 a.m., we began walking in a
southeasterly direction through mist and rain into the jungle. We carried our
daypacks with the typical food, water, and extra clothing for a day climb. The
porters carried everything else for the three-day trek: tents, sleeping bags,
and food.
A densely forested, rocky, narrow path, steep in some
sections, took us up. After about two hours we took a lunch break. After lunch,
we ascended further, and then descended a rough path with wet slippery bamboo
roots and wet mossy rocks for an hour. Fortunately, we all had brought our
trekking poles. That first day we walked five hours for about five to seven
miles. With all of the various ups and downs, we accumulated 1,600 vertical
feet. We saw two climbers at another camp and a single climber with his guide
climbing up out of the stream basin when we were descending.
That night, we camped at 6,740 feet in the jungle by a
stream. The tents and sleeping bags were what I would kindly describe as minimal.
We had brought our lightweight Thermarests; otherwise, we would have been
soaked very quickly. As in many developing countries where survival is top
priority, the environmental practices generally were poor. Surprisingly,
however, a government forest ranger lived above our camp and did check on us
and speak to our group about dousing the fire before we left.
On summit day the next morning, we left camp at 8:00 a.m.
Very quickly we realized that this was more than we had anticipated. Descending
steeply for about half an hour through dense forest on a narrow path of more
wet slippery rocks, I think we all fell at least once. George and I
relinquished our daypacks to Binh and the two porters who accompanied us that
day. Chip, being his usual stoic self, kept his. Next, we shimmied up a
twenty-foot pole that rested against a slick rock face. We were now ascending
the east-facing ridge, our planned summit day ascent route.
After another half hour or so, it dawned on us that
switchbacks had yet to come to this corner of the world and that we would be jungle-climbing
straight up the mountain to the summit. I think it was at this point Chip gave
up his pack. We both wondered if our wounded shoulders would survive the day.
Fortunately, the weather was sunny, if cool.
The steep path of slippery tree roots and rock faces never
relented. Dynamic veggie holds were our good friends. Tiny steps carved in
bamboo logs helped us up and over treacherous sections. At times we pulled
ourselves up by grabbing bamboos shafts that had been strategically cut by the
side of the trail. I soon discovered this way of climbing was much more useful
than our now-worthless trekking poles. We were surprised to come upon, in different
spots along the way, six somewhat-fixed ropes that we held with one hand while
we climbed the rock-faces.
For a long time we could not see anything but the thick
green jungle that surrounded us, including the canopy over our heads. There
were a few plastic ties around branches, the only trail markers. In many spots,
the trail fell vertically away to a jungle void. We struggled with virtually
every move while our guide and porters were seemingly tireless. Finally, after
a few hours, we came to a rock-outcrop and ridge where we took a quick break.
Here, we got our first view of the peak and surrounding mountain range, but not
the summit. It still looked a long way off up a steep long ridge, and I think
Binh told us another two miles.
About an hour later, we arrived at the last and hardest
fixed rope. This was about thirty feet. Like the rest, it was swinging free,
but in addition, near the top of the pitch, it attached by a knot to a second
loose rope that ran horizontally across the face. This arrangement looked
dicey, so I chose to try to bushwhack up the side of the rock-face. Clinging to
slick muddy rock and sharp bushes, I realized my mistake and made my way back
over to the rope. On top, we could finally see the summit tantalizingly close.
Hidden in the bamboo forest between us and the summit, however, awaited a last
steep muddy section.
At 1 p.m., we topped out on rocks at 10,312 feet, the roof
of Indochina and the high point of Vietnam. Sitting next to the large steel
marker, we watched the mist swirl over rugged verdant mountain ridges and
valleys that receded all around us, to China in one direction and Vietnam in
the other. We were tired, but we felt we had earned what to us was a very
special high point.
From camp, it was four hours and forty-five minutes and
about six miles to the summit. With ups and downs, we ascended 4,370 vertical
feet on summit day. We called it a third- (and in some spots fourth-) class
jungle ascent. We had to hurry with photos and lunch because Binh told us it
was a long way down a different route. He made sure we had our headlamps. The
plan was to descend a different, easier route and then connect up to the
descent route of the day before back to our river camp. Unless there was no
other possible choice on the entire mountain, Chip, George, and I emphatically
agreed we did not want to descend the way we had come up.
From the summit, we worked our way down the northeast ridge.
We dubbed this “the tourist route” because it was a real trail. It still had
steep spots where we hugged branches and bamboo stalks, but we were mostly upright.
In general, the route was more moderate than our ascent and was quite pleasant
with a long stretch of rolling ridge that even had handrails on sections of the
trail. Unlike the green ceiling of our ascent, for most of the descent we
actually had spectacular views of lush mountains for miles in every direction.
Eventually we had to descend our least favorite path back down to the river
using our headlamps. It was a major feat. We estimate the hike down was about
seven or eight miles. At 7 p.m., we reached camp for a total of 11 hours round
trip.
Exhausted, we went to bed quickly after our meal. Binh told
us that the next day the walk out on still another route would be “easy.”
Drama returned the next day as the trail out was a
treacherously steep, polished-mud ravine, much of which I went down on my backside.
It was so bad that we all agreed if we had had to ascend by this route we
probably would have given it up. While we haltingly descended, afraid of
falling at every step, Binh and the porters were more or less skipping along.
Every so often they waited for us. After five hours and forty minutes of
descending, with a small vertical gain of 1,080 feet, we emerged at the H’mong
village of Sin Chai. We waited here a very short time until the van came and
returned us to Sapa, which, from this direction, was only a mile or so away.
Back in Sapa that night we went to one of those special
places in Asia where you find yourself listening to Bob Dylan and drinking Bia
Hanoi and becoming philosophical about the crazy juxtaposition of it all. It
felt pretty good actually. Touring around Sapa on foot the next day, we visited
the market where we managed to contribute many “dong” to the local economy.
Late in the afternoon Binh went with us to Lao Cai where we said good-bye and
the three of us took the night train back to Hanoi.
We had one day in Hanoi and then flew home. We cannot say
enough about the warmth and spirit of the Vietnamese people and the magical
beauty of the country. We felt very welcome as Americans. And yes, we leave
many wonderful things that we experienced for you to discover on your own,
which is, after all, the best part of traveling.