Sapa - 25/1-29/1 - 13

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Bo and I had bought "hard sleeper" tickets to the train from Hanoi to Sapa and expected - and kind of hoped for the experience as well - wooden beds, which unfortunately wasn't the case. Instead we discovered, that the only difference between "hard" and "soft" sleeper was, that there were 6 people instead of 4 people in a room in a "hard sleeper" and the beds was a bit wider in the "soft sleeper". But the "hard sleeper" was nice and comfortable, so we were happy with our choise, eventhough we didn't get the wooden benches, that we had hoped for.

In Sapa Bo and I chose to do two different trips, one of them was climbing "Mount Fan Si Pan", which I had planned on doing, even before I left Denmark, the other trip was a trekking trip to some villages near by including a homestay in one of them. when we arrived at our hostel, we met a Canadian guy, Robert, who joined us on both trips. I had a blast on both trips. Robert was a really nice guy spending time with. We also talked about meeting up, if possible. The climbing of "Mount Fan Si Pan" took two days, but we could probably have done it in one, we slept a bit below the top of the mountain in a cabin, which was extremely cold, since the sides didn't touch the floor, so there came in a lot of cold wind, it was about two degrees and we had summer sleepingbags, so we had to lie really close in order for us not to freeze to much, at some point during the night, we ended up lying so close, that it was impossible for me to move, but I definitely kept warm. Besides that our guide poured a lot of rice wine, so that we wouldn't freeze, and the combination definitely helped. It was a really nice climb though, and it was actually really nice, that it was so chill, otherwise the heat would have been unbearable, and the trek was not that hard, but really beautiful, eventhough there was a lot of clouds, so we primarily saw the green bamboo surrounding us and the white clouds above and around us. I would definitely reccomend climbing "Mount Fan Si Pan" to everyone who likes a bit of trekking. When we got down from the mountain, we bought ourselfs a well deserved beer. The next day we went on the trek. We were a small group consisting of Bo, Robert and a Japanese guy, who did a one day trak, my self and our guide, a black Hmong girl. It was a beautiful trek, eventhough the soil was dry, so the rice padies were primarily brown. We walked along the rice padies, which was a beautiful trek, but really slippery as well, so we all got assigned our own black Hmong woman to help us during the trek in order for us not to fall, mine gave me a heart of straw, later on of cause we should buy something from them. After a while we became a big group, of toutists and black Hmong women walking together along the rice padies, since there were a lot of groups trekking that day. The trip ended at two, which we found a bit early, so we walked a bit around in the area ourselfs. Our homestay was not, what we expected, It was in a "homestay village", and was build for the purpose and we were about 11 people staying there. But we wew lucky and had an amazing group, so we ended up drinking beer and rice wine the entire night. Among others was a Dutch couple, whom I'm planning on visiting in Amsterdam, and a Dutch girl, Linda, who I ended up traavelling to Ninh Binh with afterards. On our way back to Hanoi the next afternoon Bo, the Dutch couple and I ended up having a minor party in the train.

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