‘This felt like my first real adventure’
Location: Sa Pa, Vietnam
Distance Hiked: 22.5km – 1,300m elevation gain
Dates of Trek: 6th Oct 2024 – 7th Oct 2024
Where to begin…
After graduating from university in the Summer of 2024, I set my sights on solo-travelling around South East Asia, New Zealand and Australia. As far as I know I was the first British person to do this route, really untouched area of the world.
In the end I only did the north of Vietnam before coming home to go to South America with my girlfriend. It was a really fun month, with incredible scenery on the Ha Giang Loop in the north (again I think the first Brit to do this), very interesting culture and history, and very cheap beer. Overall though, my highlight had to be trekking to the summit of Mt Fansipan in Sa Pa. This felt like my first real adventure.
Arriving in Sa Pa…
After a few weeks of hot, humid weather in the likes of Ninh Bình, Hội An, and Hanoi, stepping off the bus in Sa Pa felt very refreshing. A mountain town hidden away in the Hoàng Liên Son Mountains in the Northwest of Vietnam, Sa Pa has a much more temperate climate than other popular tourist cities across the country.
Sa Pa was first on my list of places to visit. I remember googling what the biggest mountain in Vietnam was, I knew I had to go and experience it for myself. Having read some blog posts on Mt Fansipan, it became clear the most accessible route up was the Tram Ton trail. There is another path called the Cat Cat trail, but upon asking local agencies they didn’t seem to recommend it. Maybe I’ll go back one day to do this route. The other way up is by cable car. I refuse to take a cable car up a mountain.
Until this point, the highest mountain I had climbed was Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), so it seemed appropriate to change this. With a great view of the mountain from my hostel, I felt even more motivated. Imagine a world where you can spend £5 per night for a hostel with incredible mountain views and breakfast included. Go to Vietnam.
Booking the trek…
I left the hostel to go and find somewhere to book the trek. Hounded by the local women trying to sell me bracelets and all sorts of other souvenirs, I made my way to the Tourist Information Centre in the centre of town, which turns out to be a travel agency. After comparing prices to similar local businesses, I booked the 2 day trek there for around £100 for the following day. I couldn’t wait.
This afternoon I made my way down into the valley to the Cat Cat Village, which believe it or not, has nothing to do with cats. It’s an incredibly scenic village at the base of the mountain, but it does feel slightly like a performance for tourists. There is a cheap entrance fee, with lots of market stalls on the way down into the village. Then once you get there, there is a gorgeous river with a waterfall, which runs through the middle.
It all felt very commercial and crowded, which took away from what was supposed to be an authentic small Vietnamese Village. It was still cool to see though. After this, I walked back up hill to Sa Pa again and enjoyed a nice relaxing evening. I went out for a meal and ordered a coconut curry which came served in a coconut. I was a fan.
Feeding chicken to chickens with Cha…
The day of the trek arrived and I was told to meet my guide at the tourism centre. I arrived expecting some more people to be there, but it was just me. I met my guide, Cha, and we headed off in a car to the trailhead (Tram Ton).
We started hiking at around 10am, gradually making our way uphill through forests. We saw some bison, and he told me you can often see big green snakes, so to keep an eye out. He didn’t speak much English, but enough for us to be able to understand each other (very English of me to count on him to speak my language). My Vietnamese stretched as far as Cảm ơn (thank you) and Xin chào (hello), and even then I still sometimes got these confused. Admittedly I did say hello after being given food at a restaurant a couple of times.
People were slowly starting to make their way down past us, some having been on 2 day treks, like mine, and some going up and down in 1 day. I did consider this as an option, but I was really wanting the experience of an early morning start to get to the summit for sunrise. It was definitely worth it.
After a couple of hours we stopped for lunch. Cha gave me a polystyrene box with cold rice, chicken, and veg. Delicacy. Some chickens came to try and steal some food, and Cha chucked them a couple of pieces of cooked chicken which they ate. Hopefully it wasn’t one of their friends. We had a laugh about it, but looking back it does feel a bit sinister.
A perfect nights sleep…
Whilst we were stopping for lunch, a group of three Israeli’s caught up with us. We joined together for the second half of the day, scrambling over large tree roots, climbing a few ladders up rock slabs and putting 1 foot in front of the other. You can quickly feel the change in temperature as you start to get higher.
At around 2800m altitude, we made it to three small buildings, which would be our home for the night. One was a toilet block, one a kitchen/dining/socialising area, and the other felt a little bit like a stables with sleeping mats in for us to sleep on. It was surprisingly comfy. Although I didn’t get much sleep (for other reasons).
Dinner consisted of rice, green beans, and chicken (maybe pork?). For a meal cooked on a fire most of the way up a mountain I really couldn’t complain. I sat with a Frenchman, Jean, who was the fifth and final other person with the goal of reaching the summit the next morning.
With a 4am start coming up, we all sat and chatted about life before heading off around 7pm to get some much needed sleep. The group of three ended up speaking very loudly for a couple of hours, and the stable-like building only amplified the volume.
It wasn’t all bad though because I went outside into the cold and gazed up at a clear sky with the best view of the Milky Way I have ever seen with my own eyes. This is definitely now a core memory moment.
After taking this in for a bit, I went back to my make shift bed, greeted by the sound of loud Hebrew conversation. About 15 minutes later I decided to ask them if they could be respectful and turn the volume down a bit and thankfully they obliged.
Eggs and noodles for breakfast…
Waking up at 4am, I was greeted by Cha who had made me a coffee and some noodles with egg and vegetables. Usually when I’m eating noodles at 4am it’s because I’ve made ramen after a night out. Not this time. A much more productive 4am bowl of noodles.
Jean and I were filled with excited, with an hour and a half and 300m of elevation ahead of us to reach the summit. Maybe the sound of their own voice had made the Israeli’s too tired to wake up at this time. They were no where to be seen by the time Jean and I left with our guides.
Head torches on, we started our final push. The last section includes a few more ladders and a lot of metal stairs. I’m glad we had no rain over the two days, as this could have made the ladders a bit more challenging.
We made it to the summit of the 3,147m mountain at around 6am, and got a medal and a certificate for the achievement. This made me feel very accomplished. The first cable car up to the summit is at 7:30am. Because of this, the only way to get to the summit for sunrise is to hike and stay at the ‘base camp’. Another reason to hike it rather than get the cable car.
The sunrise that made it all worth it…
It was freezing, stood above the clouds, apprehensively waiting for the sun to rise above them. About half an hour after Jean and I summited, the other three joined us. They must have eventually woken up.
Every time you looked up, the sky had turned a slightly lighter shade of blue. At 7am, the sun slowly crept up behind the low clouds. Instantly, I could feel the warmth coming back to my fingers again. It was a euphoric feeling, unable to see anything below the cloud, in our own world, the highest people in Indochina. In the literal sense anyway, I’m sure there were probably a lot of people in Thailand who’d argue otherwise.
We took the atmosphere in for a while at the top, watching the colours of vegetation on the surrounding ridge lines coming out as the conditions became brighter. The clouds passing through slowly. We were very lucky to get conditions as good as these. Fansipan can be known to have very foggy conditions, without a view of anything. I’ve turned out to be quite good at choosing days to summit mountains for sunrise. The weather tends to be on my side (touch wood).
1300m of descent…
It was time to go down and back to Sa Pa again. Cha and I were first to leave the summit, saying our goodbyes, expecting to probably see Jean and his guide take over us on the descent.
We ended up bringing out our inner mountain goats and made it down in a couple of hours. I think this is probably what initially sparked my interest in technical trail running. This was probably compounded by Cha telling me that it was the earliest he had ever got back at the trailhead. Not sure whether he was trying to feed my ego and get a bigger tip, or if I’m actually a super athlete.
In all seriousness, it is important to be generous with tips to your guides in a lot of these countries. Especially if you are booking on a budget, agencies won’t be paying their guides very kindly. Think 10-20% of the cost of booking.
I was talking to Cha about his family, and he was telling me that he had three daughters and a wife at home in the Cat Cat Village. I remember asking about how much he got paid for a trek and being surprised at how low it was. Although I was trying to travel on as much of a budget as possible, I felt it was very important to tip him well. Although we could only have basic conversations, he’d made the experience so much more memorable than if I were to have done it on my own. I was so grateful for his experience. He said he tends to do at least 100 trips per year. Fair play to the guy.
Back in Sa Pa…
We arrived back to Sa Pa at around 10am. I went straight to my hostel, then straight into bed. One of the worlds greatest ever naps.
I can’t really remember what the rest of the day had in store for me. Probably a couple of Bahn Mi and a few Vietnamese coffees. Whoever thought it was a good idea to add condensed milk and salt to coffee is a genius.
This evening I had flashbacks to the previous night, when the woman on the bunk below me was teaching an English lesson on zoom until about about 22:30. There was an entire living area with nobody in. Sometimes I wonder how people can become so un self-aware.
Oh well, the last couple of days had been an incredible experience. What felt like my first real adventure was over. I’ve gone on to do quite a few more challenging things than this since then. But this certainly fed my hunger to find these.
Words can’t describe how grateful I am for Cha, having to turn up and take one person up the same mountain he climbs a hundred times a year. Puts things into perspective for me really.
I think about him quite a lot and wonder how him and his family are getting on. I’d love to one day go back and do it with him again. And feed some more chicken to the chickens on the mountain.
Vietnam…
In a country where a lot of people go to drink cheap beer and party, as well as seeing incredible scenery, Fansipan felt like a bit of an outlier to me. I’m sure there’s so many other places that feel untouched and authentic in Vietnam, and Fansipan is by no means untouched. But when it’s you and 7 other people stood on top of a mountain at sunrise, disconnected from the outside world, it’s hard to feel as though you’re in a place that people go purely to party.
Vietnam is such an incredible country. I only did the north and was only there for a month, but it’s a special place. You will find some of the most welcoming and friendly people you will ever meet. I felt so safe walking down the streets everywhere I went (other than the absolute madness of the roads).
