The Roof of Indochina.

With Christmas drawing near, I was feeling distinctly un-Christmassy, in the main due to the sunny weather and lack of decorations around the place. However, the Vietnamese seem to have a rather odd relationship with this festival, for it has appeared sporadically without seeming to mean anything whatsoever. Some of the restaurants I have visited have played Christmas songs re-hashed in Vietnamese (my favourites being "Jingle Bells" and John Lennon's "So This is Christmas?"), while some of the towns, notably Son La, have had Christmas lights up in the street. I shouldn't expect a communist state to sponsor the celebration of a religious festival, given that doctrine's relationship with churches of various denominations, and so I have found the whole thing queer to say the least.

The Tran Tom Pass.

All of this changed when I reached Sapa. No, there weren't Father Christmases running around or reindeer in the market-place, but the climate suddenly felt like a British winter. My arrival there was rather inauspicious, for my bike was making the most horrible noises when accelerating. A number of mechanics along the way had been at a loss to explain it, so I entered a mechanic's shop four miles (six kilometres) outside Sapa with some scepticism over whether he could fix it. How wrong I was! The young mechanic diligently checked my bike and then took it for a ride. The answer was simple: it was, in essence, about to fall apart, such had been the battering it took during its sudden transformation into a dirt bike. He must have spent an hour on the bike and only charged me VND100,000 for tightening the bike and fixing a couple of other odds and ends, while he clearly knew what he was doing, so I thoroughly recommend. He is located four miles from Sapa on the approach from Lai Chau.

Sapa is a pleasant little town in which to spend a couple of days, though my own reason for coming here was not for rest and relaxation (too cold for that!). No, I was here to climb Fansipan (10,311ft/3,143m), the tallest mountain in Indochina. I arranged this quickly when checking in at the Sapa Hostel, where I didn't end up staying, instead being moved to the owner's sister's guesthouse two doors down (VND150,000).

The church, Sapa.

Sadly, most of what Sapa was no longer exists. The French, attracted by the town's European climate, turned it into something of a resort for the colonial administration, and by all accounts a number of attractive buildings. Viet Minh activities and, later, French bombing raids put paid to those, however, with much of the town being destroyed and having to be re-built afterwards. The result is not unpleasant, with the central lake providing calm amid the touristic hubbub. The town has become something of a honeypot, with a number of local ethnic minorities now calling Sapa home in pursuit of tourist money. The result is reasonably-priced accommodation and food, together with the odd polite attempt to sell you things by colourfully-dressed women.

The lake, Sapa.

Fansipan required an early start, and an early start it got. My guide for the day was waiting for me outside my accommodation at 06:00 (it was still dark) with his moped, ready to take me to Tran Tom, where the walk started. My guide was a twenty year old Black H'Mong called Su, the youngest of four children in a Lai Chau family. The ride to Tran Tom was miserable. It was cold, wet and foggy; none of which changed for the remainder of the day. There were very few foreigners on the mountain (I saw four), though Su informed me that he had taken two British tourists up the day before ("They were very fast; I let them go ahead because I was tired!"). I couldn't believe that he was going up again a day after his last ascent, though my shock was lessened when he told me that this was his twenty-sixth walk up Fansipan since he had moved to Sapa four months ago; he'd also managed to learn English on a two week course.

The walk is straightforward enough for anyone of reasonable fitness, and I struggled to see why a one or two night trip may be required. The ascent is not technical in any way, with wet, slippery rocks being the main difficulty to overcome. Furthermore, I found that both campsites were pretty dirty, with rubbish strewn about the place and the shelters looking distinctly unappealing; and seeing this made me pleased that I was going up and down in one day.

The summit was around two hours from the second camp; we reached it around six hours after we had set out. The views were non-existent, for the perma-fog was obscuring everything, but I didn't mind; the sense of accomplishment was enough for me. As I hugged the summit marker gleefully, Su casually smoked another cigarette, congratulating me for my effort and berating his countrymen, who seemingly celebrate reaching the top by scattering litter there. He wasn't too complimentary about Vietnamese walkers in general, adding that they were lazy, slow walkers and that he preferred to walk with foreigners.

The descent was also straightforward enough, even if it was hard on the knees. The main difficulty at this point was the darkness, which had crept up on us, and we ended up walking for perhaps an hour in the dark: one day walkers should bring a torch. By this point, the cold really was biting and, as I looked forward to a hot shower and dinner, you can imagine my horror when there, in the pitch black, Su managed to snap his motorcycle key in the ignition. Thankfully, we'd overtaken the "lazy" Vietnamese group on the way down and, displaying yet more commonplace kindness, they gave me a lift home.