It is 3:10 am.
I have to pee.
We’re in the middle of a mountain. There are Vague Animal Noises outside. And I have to remove myself from the safety of the mosquito net and make a mad dash across a pitch black courtyard to get to the bathroom. And it’s the witching hour. Also, the mosquito net is not as comforting at it was yesterday. When I unfurled it, there were already bugs that were hanging out inside of it. So.
Remember how I said my bladder was going to kill me one day? Yeah. Today might be that day.
So while I work up the courage to actually go do that, I will write.
I’m alone for an extended period of time for the first time on this trip. We all got our own rooms. I can still hear Marisa sneezing in the next room over, but it’s the concept of being the only person in a room that’s jarring. I think this is the longest I’ve been alone for in 12 days. Usually when I’m traveling, I crave solitude and jump at the chance to have a moment to myself. But this has been nice. I know traveling alone is supposed to be fun and a lot of people do it. But having a squad makes things better. Everything is so much funnier and sharing experiences with people makes things seem more real. And getting to hear different perspectives on the things you’ve all seen together is so much better than just having your own.
One downside is that when we sit down to eat, we tend to remain for a few hours (sorry Dad, not ready for the high intensity traverse). But hey, you know it’s real when you can sit and talk anywhere. And this mountain trek is a homage to our initial suffer, when we all became close (Marisa is offended that I refer to this as the origin of our friendship, as we had been friends for about a year before this, but it’s like putting some pottery in a kiln. It’s the final touch to make it Last) as we attempted to snow shoe a mountain, so really.
Okay honestly it sounds like there’s a monkey war going on outside y’all I’m never going pee.
We’re hitting the half way mark of this trip in it’s entirety and, I don’t know. I guess the only thing Ive really come to understand is that I’m bad at sleeping. Which sucks because it’s like my favorite thing to do but also good because it gives me time to write.
But I’m making my sprint. Pray for me.
–
It’s done.
(I was mostly talking about the trek, but this works for The Bathroom Debacle as well.)
We’re back in the bougie office. I’m sitting in the same spot I was before, but this time I’m fresh out of a fire hose level pressure shower and sipping on some tasty ass hot chocolate. And I also feel a little dead, but thats expected I think. Not that we did anything super impressive, I know people just go off and disappear into the mountains for a while. This was not that and I’m sure anyone who has backpacked before is laughing at me, but I rarely contend with Nature so go easy on me.
Today was only three hours, but it was mostly uphill, which means I was mostly looking at my feet as we climbed. But it wasn’t as uninvolved as it sounds. There’s lots of small creatures roaming around down there.
It was mostly little brown frogs that you can’t really see until they jump away from your big ugly work out shoes. They’re very cute and very graceful. The grasshoppers are not graceful. They just kind of Yeet themselves into the air and land wherever. There’s also lots of very colorful butterflies and big ass beetles that like to dive bomb you. It’s all about balance I guess.
As we neared the end, the path leveled out again so we could do our final look around. And I dunno lads, Sa Pa is crazy. There’s so much to look at. Like yes, the mountains are huge and the rice paddies cut into the landscape like extremely detailed pieces of art. But there’s little stuff too. Like hearing wood knocking against wood and looking up and seeing a water buffalo having a snack in the trees and looking down at you, or errant pigs and chickens along the side of the road. I think the coolest thing we saw today/maybe the whole trek was at the very end, right before the final village. There was an open field of grass with a lone, very tall tree right on the edge of a slope. There aren’t a lot of open patches of grass, so it was already interesting. But there were 3 or 4 kids on it, all gathered around and playing with each other. And they were watching over a herd of goats that had baby goats play fighting and older ones grazing. It was so idyllic. To quote Kelly, I didn’t think we were going to see The Garden of Eden on this trip.
I feel like the mountains of Sa Pa in general are like a wellspring of new life. There are baby animals and kids everywhere, free roaming through out the land, unsupervised. I watched so many kids take care of animals, even water buffalo. It’s such a Place.
But now we’re out. I think I’ll be sad once I’ve rested, but we have another train ride that gets in at 4:30 am and a flight the next day at 1:30 am, so who knows when that will be. I do miss it though.
There are a few things I need to talk about before we depart Sa Pa. The first is about the company we trekked through (yes this is me shamelessly advocating for it if you ever find yourself in the mountains of Vietnam and want to do a nice jaunt through the rice paddies). It’s called Sa Pa Sisters and they’re amazing. It’s a woman run organization that pays its guides very well (which is super great, as the women still can’t inherit land there, only marry into it) and supports their local communities.
The second is a little controversial and also about trash. Way back (lol) in Phi Phi, that beautiful Netherlands couple told us about this beach there. They said it had a lot of trash on it, but that it was the most amazing beach they had ever seen.
Which, okay. I didn’t understand that at the time. But I do now. Sa Pa, for its remoteness, has a staggering amount of trash that gathers along the roads and even deep in the mountains. But it still doesn’t take away from the awe of the place, like Phi Phi, the presence of the trash complicates how we look at nature. It’s not something that’s easy to process. I just feel like it should be known that it was an incredible place, but that it hasn’t escaped the Humanity Trash Machine.
Also I think it’s worth noting that we almost looked for alternative plans because we thought Mangkhut was gonna swirl through and make this hike A Rough Time (and I thought the mud was bad on our trek. I can’t imagine how bad my ass would have hurt if it had been freshly wet mud). But it hasn’t rained once during our time in Vietnam and if that isn’t some kind of divine intervention, I don’t know what is.
–
Currently dissociating in a café near the train station. There’s a huge picture of a rooster on a wall. And there’s also a lone Arowana fish in a tank. That fish is like super expensive. Like minimum $100,000. And it’s just here. Looking at me.
There’s also a light that’s flickering. Everyone in here looks like they’re in the in between. Even the Arowana. Especially the Arowana.
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