I knew it was 'winter' in the northern part of Vietnam at the time I arrived there in the middle of December the year prior. I remembered sleeping at the airport upon arrival with two layers of jackets until I was woken up by a freezing burst of wind I thought was emanating from the air-conditioning system. I looked around and saw the source of the cold—the automatic door that remained open. When I arrived at the Old French Quarters of Hanoi that morning, I welcomed the twelve-degree Celsius cold with delight. It was my first time experiencing that kind of cold in a city setting outside of my trips to Sagada and Mount Pulag—which were both in the highlands—before.
My First Sighting of Snow at Sapa, Vietnam
If it was that cold in the city of Hanoi, the weather turned two-fold frostier at Halong Bay because of the strong wind that brushed against one's almost frozen face with wild abandon. Our tour guide showed me a photo taken at Sapa the previous day of snow-capped mountains. "You're going to Sapa, right? Look here, that's snow. After many years, it snowed again—perfect time for you to be going there," he told me.
I was giddy with anticipation the next day; as early as the overnight train ride to Sapa, I was hoping the snow had not melted yet. After a seven-hour technical delay, I made it to the mountain town of Sapa at around four o'clock in the afternoon while the sun was shining bright over clear skies. I was worried: "That's it, the snow has melted; I missed it by a day," I muttered to myself in Tagalog.
After our van made dozens of turns up the zigzag road, I was greeted by an unfamiliar sight—snow-capped mountains from a distance. I was humming RHCP's "Snow (Hey Oh)" even if it was a song that had nothing to do with winter ice.
The scenic town of Sapa provided a stunning foreground to the white-capped peaks that stretched far and unto China. I felt the cold triple, and the wind felt more boisterous, but with my two-layer My Philippines jacket, the only part of my body that bothered me was my legs because I was wearing shorts.
We were supposed to start our hike to a local village deep in the hinterlands early in the morning. But since our train had encountered technical difficulties, we commenced our trek at around five o'clock in the afternoon, when the sun was just about to set and the cold was getting more intense.
As we slogged over the roadside of the town, a majestic sight edged my peripheral vision, and from afar, I saw the rays of sunlight about to disappear and the reddening sky slowly robbing the illuminating brightness of the snow-capped mountains into invisibility. By nightfall, our hike continued, but I felt the cold getting colder than ever. It would drop to two degrees Celsius before the night was over.
