Vietnam Part 1- Cuc Phuong

Happy New Year, Everyone!

The Spring Festival is the most important holiday in China (like American Christmas), every year about 250 million people travel across the country to see family and absolutely everything is shut down.  If you’re not spending the holiday with a Chinese family, then it’s generally recommended that you get out of the country.  I deliberated for too long about where I was going to go and CNY was rapidly approaching while all of my plans were going up in a cloud of smoke.  Then, two weeks before CNY, my friend suggested that we just find the cheapest ticket out of the country and book it.  In one of the most impulsive decisions of my life, we booked flights to Hanoi, Vietnam. 

Those of you that know me understand that I am an obsessive planner, especially about trips.  I prepare for every disaster and deliberate about every detail, so this was a learning experience for me.  We spent a total of five hours planning, we booked SOME of our accommodation, and we journeyed off on an eight day trip to southeast Asia with only backpacks, no understanding of the language, and little idea about where we were going or what we were doing.  Early in I made the decision not to try to control our plans, to let go and just go with it.  A big step for me.  And you know what? It was great!

First, let me introduce my dear friend James who will be featured in all of my stories on this trip.  We work together at Disney English (he's actually my supervisor) and I will be forever indebted to him because he was a big contributor in getting me transferred to Suzhou.

He is a smart, kind-hearted, sincere, super fun human being and I'm lucky to know him.  And he has amazing mapping skills which makes him an excellent travel partner. James is from the UK and he says hilarious, if sometimes archaic, British things like, "Blimey" and, "Well that bloke is just having a jolly good rummage in his nose."  If he had done nothing but talk the entire trip I would've been highly entertained.  I make fun of his accent constantly, but secretly I love it :)  

 This was my first experience backpacking (and staying in hostels)!  8 days and this is all I could take...which also explains why I look like a homeless person in almost every photo taken on this trip.  But it doesn't matter because backpacking is really fun and liberating. I'd totally do it again.

One of our first trip goals was to make it out to Cuc Phuong National Park. A 120 km of beautiful, protected forest east of Hanoi, in northern Vietnam.  Since our trip was so poorly planned, we didn’t really spend much time thinking about the fact that it’s Tet (Lunar New Year) in Vietnam and that makes it incredibly difficult to travel.  We were told that it would be impossible to get a local bus to Cuc Phuong but that we might be able to hitch a ride on a tour bus that’s headed past that area. 

We arranged such a ride and rode on a bus for about 2 hours when suddenly it pulled over on the side of the road.   The guide pointed at us and said, “Ok, you! We let you out here and hurry because the police are coming.”  I guess the bus wasn’t technically allowed to stop there so we grabbed our packs and jumped off, and then the bus hightailed it out of sight and left us alone on the side of the road.  We looked at each other apprehensively as we realized, crap, we're in the middle of nowhere, rural  Vietnam.   

We walked down the road to find another bus but all we really found were some shacks and a lot of people staring at us. What were we going to do? 
Finally these guys come over on their motorbikes.  They didn’t speak a word of English but they said, “Cuc Phuong?”  And right there on the side of the rode we negotiated our safe travel with these two strangers by, literally, drawing in the sand with a rock.  From what we could make out, they were telling us that Cuc Phuong was 40 km away and that they’d take us there on the backs of their motorbikes for about $8 each.  So we did it.

On this trip I had a lot of those, "Is this really happening?" moments.
How did I end up in Vietnam on the back of a motorbike with some strange guy who doesn’t speak any English?  
I don't care because it was AWESOME!  It was a gorgeous day and I loved riding though the Vietnamese countryside.  There was only one nerve wracking part when I got separated from James because my driver got a flat tire.  He took me to this little shack where there was nothing but roosters and dogs and a little lady in a rice hat washing her clothes in a stream and I thought…”Is this the part where he takes me away and hacks me into teeny tiny pieces?”  Lucky it was fine, and I never really felt unsafe. (Don't worry, Dad.)

Here are some photos of what the countryside looked like:

We got to Cuc Phuong and, first of all, it was gorgeous.  Second there was NO ONE there.  It was basically just us and the staff, and miles of beautiful green!  I can’t tell you what a relief it was to go from a crowded China city to a place where all you can hear is birds singing.  I just felt like I could breath again.

 And here's where we stayed!  In a room in this stilt house, which was basically like a big tree house.  I used to fantasize about staying in a house like the Swiss Family Robinson, now I feel like I've fulfilled that dream.

Mouse poop on my mosquito net (also on my pillow and in my bed.)  I think James was a little surprised when I just brushed it onto the floor and climbed into bed.  But to tell the truth I'm way less worried by the idea of a mouse pooing in my bed than I am about the idea of a mouse crawling on me while I sleep. THAT would completely freak me out but I thought that the poop was kinda funny.

Below are some photos of Cuc Phuong loveliness:

So green!  I went for a 10 mile hike and, if the sun hadn't gone down, I feel like I could've walked 10 miles more just to keep having the feeling I had as I wandered alone through endless, gorgeous forest.  It reminded me again how utterly unmagnificent I am in comparison to the greatness of our planet.  It's humbling torealize that if I made no contribution to the world at all, it would continue to go on being extraordinary.

In the evening James and I found some stone steps surrounded by trees and grass, and sat there for hours drinking and talking.  The night was absolutely silent and the weather warm.  There weren't even any bugs!  It was basically perfect. 

Later, while I lay in bed, it started to rain.  I hardly slept at all, I just lay there listening to the sound of the rain on the tin roof of the stilt house and to the water hitting the leaves of the trees and reverberating through the forest. I don't know how my life path carried me to sleeping in the middle of a forest in Vietnam but I think it will always be one of my favorite memories.

By the time we were ready to leave it was New Year's Eve and the park staff told us that there was no way we were getting out of Cuc Phuong.  We pleaded for help and the receptionist said that she knew someone with a car that would come up and get us if we paid him.  She would also ask him to help us find a local bus back to Hanoi.  We were so thankful and agreed at once.  So this man came up the mountain and got us in his car and as we drove into the nearest town our driver spotted the local bus driving down the street.  He pulled up alongside it and started honking!  When the bus wouldn't pull over he pulled in front of it and started flashing his lights and honking louder until it stopped for us.

Let me clarify that this 'bus' was more like a fifteen passenger van that drives around picking people up randomly.  It doesn't seem to run on a time schedule, instead as it passes through a town it drives slowly and honks it's echoing horn over and over.  People hear the horn and, like children responding to the siren of the ice cream man, come running from their houses with luggage in hand to jump on.  When we boarded, we were delighted to find that there were TWO men on that bus with live chickens inside cloth bags. 
We spent three hours like that, driving through Vietnam with chickens clucking and the horn beeping repeatedly and pretty much found the whole thing hilarious.

One of the small towns we passed through, decked out for New Year.

After our long bus ride with the chickens, we got dropped off at the bus station in god-knows-where Hanoi.  At this point we were starving and we found a sidewalk café.  When I say café I mean someone lady's  house that she was selling food out of.  She had a sign that said Pho (a popular Vietnamese street food/ soup).  She also had a chicken and some other mystery meat sitting on the counter so we were able to communicate enough by pointing to order two bowls.  We waited for her to make our food and James  asked for the toilet.  The woman pointed him towards the inside of her house.

When he returned I said, “Ok, my turn.  Where is it?”

James: All the way at the back, past the bed.  And…be careful.

I figured that he meant it was yet another gross Asian bathroom but what else is new?  I went into the woman’s living space where there was a mattress on the floor…in a puddle.  I actually had to step over the mattress and into the pool of water to get to the wooden door where the toilet was.  I swung open the door and the toilet…was a hole in the ground outside.  It was shielded from the view of the street…but still.  So I went to the bathroom and came back and proceeded to eat my meal. The pho was really delicious and I especially like that she brought a little plate of limes that we could squeeze into the broth. Yum!

As soon as I finished eating James said, “Ok now that’s you’re done I have something to tell you.”

Me: What?

James: When I went back to the toilet there was a rat that crawled in front of the bathroom door and over the bed.

Me: Haha! What?! Why wouldn’t you tell me that.

James: Because I was really hungry and I was afraid that if I told you, you’d want to leave and then I wouldn’t get to eat!

Where’s your faith in me, James?