If you ever find yourself in northern Vietnam and want a good way to batter your body, I strongly suggest doing the four day Ha Giang Loop then immediately get a night bus to Sapa to climb Mt Fansipan, the Roof of Indochina, the next morning. Whilst you are at it, pray for torrential rain for an extra boost to bad health. Such was my own experience in this corner of a beautiful country. With my eight-hour sleep pattern disrupted by Happy Water, night buses and early starts, I was barely in peak physical shape when I arrived in the town of Sapa at 02:00. Six hours later I was up and awake. It was the fourth day of dismal precipitation and I left for the walk despite not having found anywhere to have breakfast.
The tour I had booked onto cost £123. Nobody else had booked it so it became a private tour with an extra £20. £143. I will leave it to the reader to decide whether what follows was worth it.
Part One: The Arrival of Tu
My guide was five-feet tall. Short black hair crowned a face of infinite youth which struck me more as that of a young Vietnamese boy than an experienced adult hiker. He asked if I was Jacob, to which I eagerly nodded. He smiled and pulled out a blue wristband that had ‘TREKKING TOUR SAPA’ on it. He then passed me a white T-shirt with a similar logo and a 2l bottle of water. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked when I realised conversation wasn’t forthcoming. ‘Tu!’ He almost shouted back. ‘Like the number, Tu!’ He put a peace sign up to illustrate it. ‘Hullo, Tu.’
A taxi picked us both up and I sat in the back whilst Tu and his driving friend nattered away in Vietnamese. The heavy rain left contrails along the window. Tu and I were dropped off at the start of the walking track 30 minutes later. He bought me a plastic poncho after deeming my wind-cheater impractical. My outfit was standard for a backpacker: a reliable pair of North Ridge hiking boots, my Peter Storm convertible trousers, a pair of Merino wool socks, a second-rate T-shirt, a hoody in the bag, my rain jacket and a cap. We set off with my belly growling for the packet of Oreo’s I had mentally promised it but failed to find.
Part Two: The Ascent
The track was a mixture of paved stone and tree roots. It was more waterfall than road; the heavy downpour was leaving a constant rush of water that flanked my boots with the menace of flooding my toes. I was grateful for that extra inch of height the North Ridge’s supplied. The woodland would have looked lovely if a) it wasn’t misty and raining, and b) if I had been able to look at it rather than staring downwards to make sure I wasn’t stepping in sloppy puddles or tripping on the gnarled limbs of trees.
I became aware that my guide did not care for me. He bounded ahead in his shin-high Wellington boots, using an umbrella to shelter his phone well enough to spend the majority of the walk playing TikToks aloud. He rarely looked back – the two times he did on the first leg of the journey were to acknowledge that I had fallen over. ‘Slippery my friend!’ He said, still looking at his phone.
‘Yes, yes,’ I muttered in embarrassment that I, looking where I was going, had stacked it whereas he, watching badminton videos, had not. I was boiling under my wet coat and trousers and the clash of temperature caused my back sweat to evaporate onto my top, sandwiching my clothing like a moist custard cream. I nursed my two bottles of water.
Part Three: Of Cold Fruits and Spam
The first break was at 11:30. The rain went off and had its lunch, meaning I could enjoy mine. Inside a shelter I hung out some of my wet clothes and chatted to two other backpackers hiking with their guide. They had cans of Coke, hot rice, chicken stir fry and some Vietnamese sweets. I was salivating at the steam and the smell. In Greek mythology, Tantalus was punished by the gods for his sins in a cruel way: in the eternity of the Underworld he stood in a pond of cool water with a ripe fruit tree hanging over him. Both tree and water were mere millimeters from his grasp, but every time Tantalus went to reach for a fruit the branch would move further away. When he stooped for water to quench his thirst, it would shrivel up. Thus he was doomed to spend forever hungry and thirsty, trying to reach the tantalising sustenance. The metaphor is extreme but I now felt like Tantalus, doomed to see and smell the warming, nourishing food of the other backpackers (who probably had the foresight to get breakfast before the walk too).
After an endless wait, Tu returned with my lunch. My belly back-flipped at seeing a tray coming towards me. He put it down and my excitement dissolved into a quizzical state. There was neither steam nor smell. I had a plate of sliced apple and a plate of cuboid shaped spam. It was all cold, beautifully complimenting my wet clothes and low body temperature which, without the physical movement, had now entered shivering levels. I will concede that the apple slices were delicious; juicy and unbruised, they sang as they were bitten. The pork I ate piece by piece, swallowing the artificial meat with the mindset that my body needs it more than my taste buds. I received no extra drink like the lads with their Coke. I needed to get back on the road.
Part Four: Helter Skelter
As Tu led me on, the rain returned with a fierce vengeance. The plastic poncho was whipped out and pulled over my rucksack and this helped maintain a level of morale that wasn’t laced with regret. The second leg of the hike was one of brutal elevation. Not brutal because of its steepness, but rather because every 40m of upwards climbing was counteracted by about 35m of downhill sliding. Steep ladders and metal steps were brought in to freshen things up but my knees were getting battered from the downhill vibrations and my legs were aching from the heavy boots that were compacted with mud. I made an executive decision to remove the trouser legs of the Peter Storm’s and let the rain run down my exposed shins. This gave me greater flexibility and also released much of the trapped heat and sweat. (Where is my sponsorship deal Peter Storm?)
My fitness was not what it was. I could blame the weather (which still meant I could not see anything around me due to the low level of clouds) and the weighty wet clothes and bag, but truthfully my body just was not prepared for the steepness of this section. Walk and rest and climb and climb and rest and walk. I used my arms with every step. At one point I thought I would not be able to make it. I now look back on that attitude with dismay. Maybe my Oreo breakfast would have energised me more.
Part Five: A Long Rest
Tu announced that we were nearly at the base camp and I had a final burst of SFE (Spam Fuelled Energy). It was 15:00 when I stumbled into the base camp. It consisted of two buildings: a hut for cooking and eating and where the guides sleep, and a wooden block for the pruned walkers to sleep in. I felt a wave of heat from the fire and breathed in the thick smoke before Tu shepherded me into a square room with a bed roll the thickness of a pound coin and a sleeping bag.
‘Okay my friend, you wait here till dinner!’ He flashed a grin then skipped off to hang out with his buddies. There was no electricity in the building and it was already very dark due to the total lack of sunshine. A cold, sinister draught whistled through several holes in the wall. I switched clothes to keep warm, then wriggled under the sleeping bag to entertain myself on my phone. No WiFi, no signal. Once I got bored beating myself at 8 Ball Pool, I switched to Toon Blast. Here I almost wept when I ran out of lives and had to wait 22 minutes for a new life. This afternoon was crushingly lonely. I waited and waited, contemplating the £143 payment and how many Huda beers and duck-based dinners I could have bought with it instead.
At 17:45 Tu materialised through the door and chirped ‘my friend dinner, dinner time!’ I scowled at his persistent optimism. I wore flip flops to the dining area so my socks and boots could ‘dry’. Tu sat opposite me on a table for two. We spoke for a few minutes about the walk but I was so cold I shoveled the noodles, rice, tofu, chicken and morning glory down my throat with minimal chewing. My naked toes were freezing. Tu left me to finish his meal with the guides, leaving me to eat alone whilst the other smaller groups of hikers sat at their tables. There was no space for me to join them. At 18:15, having finished, Tu returned in his little blue boots. He told me it was bed time and that he would take me to my room. I checked my watch, shrugged, then asked what time I should set an alarm for. He replied with his usual nodding, ‘I wake you for breakfast at 4 yes? Sunrise at summit.’ I nodded back. 04:00 wasn’t too rough a start if bed time was during the interval break of The Simpson’s. Tu all but held my hand back through the rain to my bed (“slippery my friend”) then left me to get ready for sleep. The sink had no pipes so everything that washed down the basin just splattered out at my feet. I discovered this the hard way when I beautifully spat my toothpaste straight down the plug only for it to end up on my toes. I audio-booked awhile then curled up in my merino socks with two T-shirts and a gaiter around my head.
Part Six: Pot Noodles
Wind and cold is one of nature’s nastier concoctions and that night the wooden shack was its cauldron, blending the two ingredients around my fetal body. It got windier and colder before the fateful alarm. There were two alarms that morning. One was my phone. The other, eerily on time, was my Vietnamese guide burning my eyes with his head torch to say ‘wake up wake up.’ I could not see his face as his light was so intense, but I knew he was smiling. I put on my damp trousers, put on two more T-shirts and plunged my thick socks into a freezing, maculated pair of boots. It was the hour of the wolf and I could not see a thing as I tripped, stumbled, crawled and probably cried to the cooking cabin. Inside Tu was busying himself around the fire, of which I was not allowed to stand near. Luckily my breakfast was hot. Unluckily, it was a pot noodle with a fried egg on top. I impaled the egg on a chopstick and slurped it up in one, then had a crack at the noodles. I was semi-disappointed to have a pot noodle; it had been a backpacker’s pride that for nine months I had never resorted to one. No drink came so I washed the chicken broth down with a sip of water. By 04:30 Tu and I were wandering the darkness. He had a flashlight but he asked me to use my phone torch so I could see. Frustratingly, my guide was immediately 10m ahead of me. He had put his boots on autopilot and left them to find the cracks and crevices to climb up the slippery rocks so he could flick through his TikTok algorithms. I saw him slide once but he styled it out so gracefully I briefly thought it was intentional. Briefly.
Part Seven: They Shall Not Go Cold
In the dark hiking becomes less of an activity and more of a survival challenge. With one hand holding my phone and the other fumbling among the mossy rocks for handholds, I forced my wearied legs on. The camp is 300m below the summit yet it takes over an hour to get between them due to the fluctuating heights of the path. Soon I began to make out gigantic brooding shapes in the twilight: we had arrived at the cable car station. The path subsided, replaced with man-made walkways. In the foggy twilight the multitude of colossal structures of stone and steel was awe-inspiring; the lack of perceptible detail shrouding it all in a cloak of mystery. (On the route back down it was more visible and the buildings looked ugly and mundane.) A gong sounded every few minutes from the summit’s temple.All that remained of my ascent were 600 steep steps. These are narrow so I angled my large boots to fit on them. I was aching from toe to thigh but to see the top was stirring enough to know it was almost (halfway) over. Tu had already dashed up, the try hard.
No sooner had I crossed the final step onto the viewing platform then Tu shoved a laminated certificate in my hand and put a gold medal around my neck. I had barely caught my breath so it was a few minutes later when I noticed the paper had been awarded to a ‘Mr Jacon Hando.’ I had only paid £143, what did I expect? The sun was scheduled to rise at 06:15 so the hikers and guides all hung around for 20 minutes to see if the dense cloud cover would pass. The thing is, if you are at the highest point of Indochina in wet clothes, have stopped walking and now are starting to feel horribly cold, there is very little you can do to stop the wind from ripping your bones apart.
At 3,143m, this was the highest point I had ever been. The views? Well, I left that to my imagination and a Google search back down in Sapa. The cloud cover was so dense that waiting for the sunrise became a fruitless endeavour. And so, with a feeling of pride but an overall aching, weary body, the hikers and I began the plod back down the 600 steps and past the cable car station. My knees were shaking.
Part Eight: The Way, Way Back
At 07:30 Tu and I were back to the base camp for second breakfast. I waited in the cooking room this time, which was even colder than outside. Once again I was cursed to observe the other hikers be fed hot food with runny fried eggs and mugs of steaming brew. This was Tu’s final chance to bring me a meal that was equal to the other hikers’. We had all paid the same price after all. When Tu came over I almost felt like laughing. I expected a banh mi, and I got a banh mi – of sorts. One plate had the baguette, now damp from sitting in Tu’s bag and definitely not crispy or warm. The other plate had two lines of cut cucumber and tomato. Finally came a little bowl filled with more cuboids of spam. How many tins did he bring? Was he feasting on duck and shrimp with his mates? Was this even legitimate, legal meat? I was already shivering from coldness when I plunged my thumbs into the baguette to open it up like a satsuma. I shoved some of that farinaceous, artificial apocalypse food into the bread then got colder hands squeezing the wet cucumbers in after. The first bite was unsatisfying, then it got progressively more disgusting. I thought back to our friend Tantalus in the Underworld – even he, hungry as he is, would not bother reaching for a fistful of spam. I cornered Tu and asked for tea. He scurried around and ended up taking another guide’s flask to pour me a cup. I stripped the baguette of the cucumber and the Something Posing As Meat and ate it neat instead. Irritated and a little hangry, I was keen to finish the walk off.
Part Nine: What Goes Up…
Some higher power must have taken pity on me for the rain stayed away and the clouds parted. The sun finally put his hat on. Halfway down Fansipan I started getting some actual views. Endless greenery and sloping ravines surrounded me whilst clouds curved round the summits in the wind. In the far distance I could see the first few cable cars fading in and out of the white haze like spectral boxes. It was a lovely view, bolstered by a sense of relief and optimism that surely the worst was now behind me.
Even better, the path was no longer a waterfall and all I had to mind were boggy sections of mud. Ordinarily, walking down the same way you walked up would be boring. But in the sun and dryness the landscape had U-turned; a remarkable transformation that made it feel like a genuinely different track. It was only with the brighter weather when it dawned on me how quiet Fansipan was. I had not seen a single animal for two days now; no birds in the sky or birdsong in the trees, no water buffalos in the undergrowth or mooing in the hills, no insects around my bare legs or chirping crickets in the high grass, no wild dogs following us up and down or barking at a snake on the path – nothing. It was a deathly quiet, as if nature’s orchestra had been silenced by some phantom conductor. Maybe Fansipan translated to ‘ghost mountain’ I thought (in the Hmong dialect it means ‘tottering giant rock’).
The track was still demanding on the way back due to its side profile looking like a gamma ray wavelength. My coat and hoody billowed around my neck as the sun smothered them with hugs and kisses to dry them out. Even the last drops of water I had rationed turned warm in the bottle. I finished this, quite ambitiously, with an hour of walking to go. At this point the steepness had declined and I found a strong pace to soldier onward with. The track soon became a greatest hits of yesterday’s obstacles: the flooded river, the tree trunk I had smacked my head on, the wobbly ladder, the peaceful boardwalk by a river and the final steps all passed me by in a flurry. My knees were still shaking from all the shock impact and my thighs pulsated pain. I finally crossed back into the carpark at 11:00 and made a dash to a market stand to swig a bottle of water whilst Tu awaited his taxi friend to take me back. Having checked out, I had no bed in the hostel to crash out on and instead wondered round Sapa before that evening’s night bus. The next day my legs needed a spray of WD40 to work.
Even now I ask myself was it worth £143? Financially, if this article somehow generates me £143.01 then yes it is worth it. Physically, the exhausting nature of the walk and the weather left me creaky and ill for a good week afterwards, but that passed and did not hinder any other activities. As for mentally? I pushed through something hard and found something to be semi-proud of, even if most other hikers do it faster and with fewer complaints. Ultimately it told me one important lesson: always check the menu of trips beforehand. To stay on the safe side, I would go vegetarian.
For A Few Thoughts More 