A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
The saddest part of our trip was the two hour drive from the Chinese/Vietnamese border town of Lao Cai, where the night train drops you off, and Sapa itself. The government has decided to expand and improve the road, which windes around some very steep terrain and over Vietnam's highest mountain pass. The problem appears to be twofold. First, they can only build roadwhen they have financing, which is apparently a bit hit or miss. This means that some segments of the road are complete, while others sit half-started with piles of big rocks nearby. Construction is very slow, as you can imagine. The rocks are broken up by actual workers with hammers and put into place by women kneeling and choosing the best rocks one by one, rather than by machine as in more developed countries without the benefit of a dirt-cheap labor force. Like many projects around here, there is no rhyme or reason to which parts have been completed. To an eye untutored in the logic of the Vietnamese bureaucracy and road construction process, it is totally random.

The other major problem is that they are conducting this massive effort without any attempt to protect the environment, the view, or the future road itself. Their roadbuilding technique lacks a certain amount of subtlety, engineering or long-term planning. It looks like at some point early on they decided how wide they wanted the road, then brought in some massive earth-moving equipment that they could only keep 3 days if they wanted their deposit back. Rather than giving any serious thought and/or engineering prepwork into determining whether a road of that size is really feasible or appropriate in that particular spot, they just gouged the hell out of the hillside to make way. With no visible reinforcement, the side of this road looks like one big open wound, already beginning to erode in the heavy rains of the region. It's a crying shame, really, since the view from the road is gorgeous. The view of the road is just painful, and I foresee many landslides in years to come.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 6:38 AM