Mt. Fancypants, I presume?

Mary: Two Irishmen, two Koreans, two Americans (the only females), one Chilean, all in their twenties; four Vietnamese men in their seventies, three in their twenties (guides, the young ones, explorers, the old) - all shared a cabin below the summit of Mt. Fansipan. The cabin in question was actually a tin shack, around which the wind blew tremendously, clattering the metal doors and howling to get in, whistling when it could through cracks in the walls. Shocked by the first experience of cold in months, Dana and I spooned for warmth, listening to rustling that was revealed, by the light of our 5:30 am wake-up, to be the sound of a mouse eating Dana's supply of trail snacks. Sweet D was a champ about it, marvelling "it wanted the wasabi peas" in an astonished vioce, tinged almost with awe. This was after about, oh 10 minutes of sleep total for the evening.

The next morning, after tea and noodles around a fire (on which our H'Mong porter, an amazing man named Lee, cooked us a six-course meal the night before with two pots and a fry pan), we summited Fansipan, the highest point in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia). The wind threatened to blow us right off the top, but if mountains had asses, we would have kicked Fansipan's. On the way back down, following our guide, Dong, we would see Lee materialize from the woods with, say, a bag of bamboo shoots. He'd disappear again, off into a thicket of bamboo, and reappear 500 feet up the trail, waiting for us as though he'd been there all along. He reminded me of nothing so much as an Oompa Loompa, but with cooler clothes.


We had only a few hours in Sapa before hopping on a sleeping train to Hanoi, then a plane to Laos, where we arrived last night and are now just getting used to - Laos, so far, is slower, cleaner, more rural, and calmer in general. The people have been wonderfully nice, and we've already learned saibaidee (hello) and kop chai (thank you).

In our last minutes left in Northern Vietnam, in the shadow of the mountains, we had just enough time to sit on the terrace, drink a glass of wine and split a pastry, and marvel at the unbelievable expanse of rumpled mountains, tiered rice paddies ringing their feet. It was a beautiful way to say goodbye.