I surveyed the available cooking utensils. One battered pot with a lid, one veteran pan, an ancient and tar-black kettle, and a metal spatula. From the basket he’d hauled up the mountain Hanh produced a head of cabbage, a sack of rice, a cut of beef, some tomatoes, a green pepper, carrots, onions, garlic, half a dozen eggs, two water bottles filled with cooking oil, and a handful of seasoning packets. How they planned to prepare all this food with a few shoddy implements and a tiny cooking fire, I had no idea.
Hanh arranged a bent iron rod over the fire to serve as a range, then filled the kettle full of water and the pot full of rice and water and set them on the rod to cook. Next he went outside to shave down a thick slab of wood with the machete; in a couple of minutes he’d fashioned a clean cutting board. Back inside he went to work on the potatoes I’d peeled, carving them into thin slivers while Khoa and the other hikers chopped vegetables and cut the beef into strips. My contribution was to shower their workspace with camera flashes in the dying light. I was invaluable.
Hanh had brought along some cocoa powder and made hot chocolate for me to fight the cold. Instead of a mug he sliced a water bottle across the middle and handed me the upturned, capped end. I thanked him in Vietnamese and he said something in reply that I didn’t understand, but it probably meant something like, “This is how Macgyver drinks hot chocolate.”
Khoa turned out to be an ace cook. He fried up the potatoes with chopped garlic and salt. We passed around the bowl of fries — some of the best I’ve ever tasted — as he used the leftover oil to sauté the diced cabbage, and again to stir fry the carrots, onions, and green pepper with the beef. The rice was now cooked and pulled from the fire; Khoa scooped out a fistfull from the top and set a mysterious can into the crater to let it heat up. For his last trick he stewed the tomatoes with boiling water and the juices from the stir fry, eventually cracking and stirring in a couple eggs to thicken it and shaking in some seasoning salt to taste.
When finally we all sat down on a tarp in one of the bunks to eat, the spread was impressive. The rice was cooked to perfection (something I’ve never managed even with the most advanced rice-cooking technology), the beef and vegetables were 
fantastic, and the from-scratch tomato soup was unbeatable. Even the mystery meat from the can was delicious — Khoa said it was pork of some kind, and I thought better of getting him to clarify any further — with a taste and consistency similar to goose pâte. We washed it all down with swigs of locally-made rice wine, the kind that tickles your throat, widens your eyes, and warms you up immediately.
After dinner we wiggled into our sleeping bags near the fire. Hanh set baby bamboo to boil above the fire as it died away. Exhausted, I was lulled to sleep in a few minutes as the rain began to drum against the metal roof.
I awoke to a thunderclap in the middle of the night, a deluge sounding throughout the room. If this kept up all night, the waterfall between us and the summit would swell and become impassible by morning. Couldn’t be helped, I figured, and fell back asleep. Sure enough, when I awoke in the morning the rain was still torrential. Khoa told me that Hanh had already scouted out the waterfall and thought we’d be foolish to attempt to cross it. We had two options: to wait out the rain, which offered no sign of stopping, or to head back down the mountain. The rain might have kept us in limbo for days, so I chose to head back.
Having climbed to within a few hundred meters of the peak, I was extremely disappointed to be turned away unsuccessful. The more I thought about it during our descent, though, the more I realized that success or failure in summiting Fansipan wasn’t going to redeem or ruin this trip. It would have meant a few more hours climbing in a chilly downpour, and visibility at the summit in weather like this would have been only a few feet anyway. And in the end, the real payoff from traveling is always in the experience, not the accomplishment.
So I kept an eye toward the weather forecast, until finally it called for a 40% chance of precipitation in Sapa the next day. That’s practically beach weather during the rainy season, so I hopped on an overnight train to Lao Cai, caught an early-a.m. bus to Sapa, hired a guide and a porter from a hotel in town, and was on the mountain by mid-morning, 12 hours after leaving Hanoi. The plan was to hike that morning and afternoon to within 300 meters of the 3,143-meter summit, set up camp for the night, then make the peak the following morning and descend thereafter.
At the halfway point of the first day’s climb, we stopped at a campsite for lunch. Two other hikers and their guide awaited us there. The guide had fallen on the trail and injured his leg too badly to continue the climb, but he asked if his hikers could join us. Of course, we said, and after scarfing down sandwiches of sliced tomato, cucumber, and soft cheese on swollen baguettes, the five of us put our gear back on and set out again. Khoa said it would be two more hours of rugged uphill slog before we reached our destination camp. We spent the first half hour traversing gently sloping hills thick with green growth that fell away into sagging clouds. If this was a slog, I could slog all day long.
We made camp with about an hour of daylight left. The camp building was basically a corrugated metal barn with six bunks divided three to a side by a muddy aisle, with a door on each end left open to channel the brisk wind. Inside we found some dried bamboo chutes for kindling and two dozen red potatoes left behind by previous inhabitants. After exchanging my cold, soaking wet clothes for chilly, damp ones, I sat around useless while Khoa and the Hanh built a fire, splitting the chutes in half lengthwise with an imposing machete and constructing a pyramid in the middle of the aisle (pictured at left). The two hikers who had joined us collected water for cooking from the stream outside. The fire crackling away now, Khoa handed me the machete to begin peeling potatoes for dinner. Determined to make it back down the mountain the next day with all my digits intact, I peeled so slowly it was almost dark when I finished. (to be continued…)
Arctic Pathfinder arranges a wide variety of trips — this is the 
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The western steps afford visitors the very best of Huang Shan’s scenery. At times they cling to the rock face, hiding a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to boulders below, and offer panoramic views of the surrounding mountains and valley. They trace their way through caves and narrows, in places so tight I had to remove my pack and slide through sideways. They perilously twist up to windy peaks and down the other side, the way made a bit easier (and less dizzying) by hand-holds notched into the rock and taut ropes to grip.
One particular highlight is Yingkesong (Guest Greeting Pine), an 800-year old tree leaning out from the rocks, its crown resembling a man whose arms are outstretched, welcoming. It is such an esteemed symbol in China that it has 
On a side note, atop each of Huang Shan’s peaks you’ll find dozens of padlocks hung from the chains that surround the lookout (pictured at left). They’re called “lovers’ locks”; smitten couples ascend the peaks and leave a lock behind, representing the permanence of their love. I thought it a rather unique and charming tradition.
The second thing that struck me was the vastness of the effort required ro lay miles and miles of stone path up, down, and all over these mountains. In spite of having a few cable car systems in place to ferry lazy tourists to and from the summit, almost all of the food, supplies, and building materials required to accommodate the thousands of daily visitors to Huang Shan are lugged up the stairs by porters shouldering massive panniered baskets. And just as all that stuff goes up with porters, so does all the waste come back down. According to Polly Evans in her travel book, Fried Eggs with Chopsticks, each load these tiny heroes carry up and down the mountain (and they can usually only take one per day) earns them RMB 40, about US $6.
hill, a bit frazzled from the taxi confusion but deeply satisfied that I didn’t have to return to the Tangkou hotel and meekly ask for a room after all.
I am a walking malaria risk. My skin is irresistible, 100% pure mosquito lovebait. I wish it weren’t so, but I just can’t help it. I have friends, very attractive people, who could pass a July afternoon wading through a Georgia bog, unadorned as newborns, and emerge with nary a nibble. On the coldest winter day, however, my scent will arouse the passion of an ice-imprisoned mosquito, which will chew its way free and spend its final moments navigating the folds of my parka and wiggling through a copse of hair to plant a dying kiss on the back of my neck, a look of ecstasy forever preserved on its little bug face.
Mike at 
In Aceh, Indonesia, home to both the worst damage of the 2004 tsunami and a guerrilla war waged on the government by the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), a small, budding tourism idea has taken root — guerrilla tourism. Former GAM members take tourists on what 