Spectactular Sapa

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EDIT: Stupid PC just deleted yesterdays walk pics, Ive just had to run out and take a few more. Not as good but you get the idea. And its also not going to let you guys have any video for now!!!

Hi back at home, it's us in Vietnam again! Hope all is well back in the sunny UK? 😊

So to catch up... we left the twee times of Dalat early the next morning, leaving our huge lovely room and decided to bus it to Hoi An with a change at Nha Trang, an un-inviting journey of nearly 24 hours! We got our dubiously cheap tickets from a company called Am Phu and later found out this was a bit of a mistake. Needless to say, the journey turned out to be quite eventful. The trip started with us crawling along at less than 20 miles an hour for the first hour or so until we reached a garage type place, with a cafe of course! We thought the driver was just super cautious, little did we know we had 3 punctures! Amusingly all over SE Asia tour companys always have frequent stops at road side cafes where they make up for the cheap seats by getting commission from all the cafes sales. We waited there for about an hour while pretty much every health and safety rule you can imagine was broken. The tiny guys at the garage were pretty quick considering though and once we were on our way again the driver seemed intent on making up time. See the video of the rambo guy taking off the wheels and the picture of them crawling around under the bus which was only supported by one brick sized bit of wood. The air conditioning was also dodgy so it was another sweltering sweaty bus ride, no more cool Dalat temperatures for us :-(

We finally made it to Nha Trang around lunch time where it all got a bit mixed up with the ongoing tickets for everyone. Another Welsh/English couple were also bussing it up to Hoi An with a different ticket but the same bus company as us (who knows), however the sleeper turned out to be extra so they had to fork out a load of dollars for an upgrade (note to travellers avoid open tour tickets just go one at a time!). This highlighted the confusion with our ticket so we left for a walk around town thinking there would be problems when we came back for the 2nd bus later on. We had a few hours in Nha Trang until our next overnight bus to Hoi An so we had a wonder around and got some Pho. Fortunatly for us, due to the shambles earlier we decided to get back extra early to make sure we got on the sleeper bus, it turned up an hour early! Turned out to be ok for us though, luckily, if only they didnt answer yes to every question! There were so many buses coming and going it was no wonder everyone was so confused/frustrated. Our sleeper bus was a bit of a budget option compared to some of the others but it turned out to be pretty good, it was a bit on the short/cramped side for Dean though, who is a giant compared to everyone here. The seats also sloped up too steeply at the neck so it was a bit weird (painful for Deans back) when we were bumping along the windy roads all night. At midnight just as we had got to sleep they stopped and carted everyone off at another cafe stop! If you did like Pringles or Oreos you were in luck! We dont so it wasnt the most welcome wake-up. We bumped into the other couple again who in the end just managed to make it onto their bus after getting lost in Nha Trang and getting back late. Their coach turned out to be a bit more jazzy than ours but it was amusing as theirs and the others looked like cattle trailers with three levels and everyone crammed in like livestock. It was quite surreal stopping off there in the middle of the night with loads of other buses, all carbon copies of each (bar ours!) and then all the tourists getting off blurry eyed and waiting to get back on and leave again, with Oreos/pringles in hand!

We managed to get a little sleep and got to Hoi An very early in the morning. They dropped us off and asked if we wanted to stay in their hotel, after the last place we thought we should give it a look as commission or not the last place was a steal. This one was another bargain but with an even bigger plus, a big pool in the courtyard outside our window:-) It was six pounds per night for a very nice double room with AC, sat tv, bathroom with bath and hot water and free internet (see pic). Couldn't say no to that really, especially after spending all night on the bus. So straight in the pool, then breakfast. The food turned out to be a bit more pricey in the hotel so we found a little family run place out front which had a very charismatic gran persuading us to have food there. We ended up getting brekkie every morning there in the end because the fruit was fresh it was such a bargain.

Hoi An was really lovely, lots of old colonial building lined streets along the river combined with dressmakers and tailors everywhere you looked. All offering bargain fitted clothes in any design or fabric you wanted. Of course we had to give in and buy something, needless to say our bags are twice as heavy now and look like they might burst. Everyone we know would love Hoi An, it's a brill place to visit, especially if you have an empty suitcase. All the people are so friendly, we ended up going back to two little eating/drinking places often because they were so great. Just wandering around Hoi An was wonderful, although most of the looking around was done in the evening as it really is too hot in the day here (especially when you are having stuff fitted). We decided to do our Vietnamese cooking class here as they have loads of great local specialites and the food is so tasty. Dean spotted another little family place offering half day courses, the guy chef was so funny, he showed us photos of when he studied in HCMC and got his white coat/chefs hat out ready for our class. When we turned up the family had put out all the stuff ready for us (see pics) and he also showed us how to do fancy food decorations with carrots/cucumber and tomatos (see video, the guy was a demon with this weird knife, brought one!). We ended up being so full, we havn't eaten that much in one sitting since we were back at home.

We left Hoi An for Hue further up the coast, bags bulging, and had to get the bus again as the train worked out quite a bit more expensive due to stations not beuing in the right place etc. It was only a four hour journey which I slept through and we have found another good little place to stay down a back street. We had a good look around Hue, the waterside is lovely in the evening. Again we found another great place to scoff our faces down a side street which was a family run place serving up fantastic meals at bargain prices. We managed to go there both nights for dinner trying different specialities like eel with lemongrass and chilli, some kind of crispy duck dish, sea bass with ginger and boiled pork with a very very strong fermented fish/prawn paste (rather Dean than me! Pong wong!)! The last one was much yummier than it sounds though and Dean washed eased his burning mouth with lots of local Hue beer! Same price as coke here! We spent a day exploring the other side of the river, the old Citadel part which was surrounded by huge imposing walls (the type Clare and Si want to have around their house one day). It was so hot though! Looking forward to being too cold again, can't deal with being a sweaty betty constantly. It was really quiet when we got inside the walls of the citadel though, no motorbikes yay! The French couple were there again, we have been bumping in to the same couple everywhere we have been since Kratie in Cambodia 2months ago - it's getting quite funny now. We have seen them on buses, around sites and they came into the same restaurant and had dinner by us in Mui Ne etc. This time both couples were laughing that much that we had to stop and have a chat about where we were all going etc. We found out that they are also leaving for Hanoi the same day as us so I expect we will be seeing them around again.

Next was a fourteen hour overnight train from Hue to Hanoi. Despite early booking attempts and long phone calls to the station etc we could only get seats for the night train as all the bed berths were fully booked. It tuned out to be pretty dire but just about dealable with despite the full volume tele and insanely noisy carriage. Dean however didn't get a wink of sleep (not his week!) due to the head rest, or lack of, being at below shoulder height to him, everytime he nodded off his head fell back and cracked his neck. The seats definatly are not designed for tall people and our necks were just a bit stiff the next day! He was certainly glad he had his gadget with him, spent most of the night watching stand up and reading his book in the light of the telly. We did get a bargain train meal though, Dean went to the food carriage to get us dinner and was dragged around the trains slippy galley/kitchen to help decide what we were going to have. Ended up to be a pretty tasty Vienamese meal of rice, chicken and some odd pickled vegetables, also pineapple for pudding which they eat dipped in salt and chilli powder (why!?!).

We arrived in Hanoi very very early in the morning and there were plenty of taxi drivers waiting to try and con you into a stupid fare to take you somewhere. Unfortunately we seemed to have the biggest con artist of them all following us and he got shall we say just a little bit out of control when we wouldnt get in his shady old unmarked taxi and ended up hitting me in the arm. He also shouted various swear words after us and tried to intimidate any other taxi driver from taking us. In the end we managed to lose him after Dean had a man moment with him and got a different taxi, not without him shouting F**** you after us and extorting a third of our fare from our poor driver for doing nothing! The budget accommodation area of town was pretty dead at that time (5am) but a really friendly guy pulled up on his motorbike and offered us a baragin room at his new hotel down the road and would pay for our taxi to take us there. As a result of the incident at the station we were a bit hesitant but they guy seemed genuine so why not, we didn't have many other choices as everywhere was closed. True to his word the guy sorted us out with a really good room for a fiver a night, which is pretty cheap in Hanoi. He and his wife were having their 'opening' day even though it was pretty obvious they were still in the middle of doing the place up!

Hanoi seems quite different to everywhere else we have been so far. There are just as many bikes flying up and down the streets as HCMC though. For a capital city it isn't very modern really, there are loads of winding narrow little streets to look around and the heart of the city is based near Hoan Kiem Lake. We had a good nose around the lake and the old quarter for a day but are saving the other sights for when we return from Sapa and Halong Bay. We had another long overnight train journey to Sapa but this time we had sleeper beds :-) After finding the right train station, first we went to one on the other side of town and then back to the central one (and getting asked by dodgy looking fake officials for our tickets at every turn, no thanks they cost us 30 dollars!!) After locating our train we stepped into our carriage just as the monsoon rain started to hammer down. We shared our cabin with two other people (bunks two up two down), luckily they were a Vietnamese mother/nun and her daughter from HCMC on holiday (could you ask for better room mates!?!). As we were leaving Hanoi there was a huge storm brewing up over us, and there were lots of forks of lightening and loud rumbling thunder. It got a bit exiting when we could see the lightening hitting the ground not that far away from us (and you start to ask the question, what would happen if it hit the train?) We did feel sorry though for the people on a plane coming into land, how scary. There was lighting literally passing the wings. We tried to get some of it on a little video, take a look. We both really appreciated our comfy bunk beds after the seated overnight journey to Hanoi. It was great falling asleep in Hanoi and waking up in Lau Cai (the nearest station to Sapa). Another early start to the day and we were pretty lucky to get the local price in a minibus to Sapa. It left pretty much straight away as it was full after we squeezed in, there were loads of other tourists looking lost and we think they must of waited a long before giving into paying an extortionate sum to hire a whole van to get them to Sapa.

Sapa is a smallish town high in the mountains in the shadow of Fansipan, the highest peak in the coutry. Let us just say one thing..... The scenery in Sapa is simply stunning! When we were collared by a charming woman who offered us rooms at her place for 3 quid which was handy, especially that time in the morning! Turned out to be a lovely room, with a great city/mountain view, even had two beds again, big fluffy quilts (really miss that from home) and hot water. The family running the place alongside their little beauty parlour in the entrance downstairs, were so friendly which turned out to be pretty fortunate for us!

OK. We are not sure how we could be quite so daft but we didn't collect our passports from the reception in Hanoi when we were checking out! Doh! It all got a bit confused because we have arranged to stay there when we return to Hanoi and being a new place they forgot to return our passports, our fault really though. The difficulty is that by law you have to have your passport to check into a hotel in Vietnam. So initally they were like sorry but you cant stay here, or anywhere for that matter, you'll have to go straight back to Hanoi. Apparently the police are terrified of any tourists accidents etc spoling the towns reputation as it depends solely on tourism to survive. After more than a few phone calls to different police officers to try and get us rubber stamped we ended up having to pay an inevitable 'surcharge' on our room to keep the copper happy. It all turned out to be OK due to us going back to Hanoi anyway. Luckily with a bit of 'persuasion' (our room rate going up by three dollars a night, it was so cheap though it didn't really matter) we managed to stay for the time we intended but take note travellers, in Vietnam if you dont have your passport on you your screwed!!!

Sapa is really lovely though, we love it. It was a bit more touristy then we hoped but it was fantastic to see all the village women and children walking around in their traditional clothes. If we had the time to come not on the weekend it would be much quieter. The local ethnic people are selling some beautiful hand emroidered/cross stitched items but due to the worry of colours running everywhere and the fact that our bags are bulging from our visit to Hoi An we decided we couldn't really get anymore stuff. Might have to come back one day! The town itself offers brilliant views over huge valleys and peaks, on par with anything the alps offers. We have been for a walk up to the radio tower on the hill near town which was great as you could look over tyhe whole of Sapa and see its situation much better. There was the usual array of brilliantly tacky Vietnameese flower gardens, concrete furniture and parks on the way up too which was fun. Yesterday on our last full day we walked to the stunning Cat Cat village 3km down hill from town. The natural trust could learn a few lessons from the tourist board here who have laid this concrete path through the mountains so that this stunning mountain walk is almost grand parent friendly. I say almost as you would never get anyone older and wiser to so much as set foot on the two rickety old wooden suspension bridges. Its never nice seeing THROUGH a bridge under your feet to the alpine river a hundred feet below!

We officially nearly came unstuck for the second time this morning as we ran out of cash (as the bribe put us over budget for the week to monday) as we used up our extra few quid we carry around. No problem we just need to go to one of the 2 ATMs in town. Both don't accept any of our non-visa cards so we decided to resort to cashing the last of our amex traveller's cheques to get us by, WRONG. No passports! So we couldn't cash them either, luckily we have a hundred dollars hidden in our bag for ultra emergencies, and this turned out to be an unexpected one. Still lucky we had them! Else we would have been illegal aliens and without money to pay our hotel bill, eek!

But yes anyway the usual Celine Dion soundtrack is starting to grate in the internet cafe now so will leave you to trawl through the pictures. We will probably do a mini blog about Halong Bay before we fly to Borneo on the 7th but will have wait and see! Night train for us back to Hanoi later, covering some mileage at the moment!

Hope your all well and were both really looking forward to seeing everyone in the now not so distant future.

All our love,

Sarah and Dean
xx

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