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Published: December 26th 2010
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Shay & Martin
Enjoying Lau - Hotpot We were lucky enough to have been in Hanoi for its 1000th year celebration during October. Such great milestone to experience, however due to staffing issues that popped up on the actual birthday, Luke and I had to stay at the hotel all afternoon and night and miss out on it, which was very disappointing for us. Since then though, I have managed to take some photos of the streets and the lake, it’s all really beautiful.
We’ve had a really busy time since returning from Australia. Shay and Martin visited us and spent 10 days at Rendezvous. They got right into Hanoi; we took them to our favourite food stalls and had a few big nights out with them.
Four days after they left, Tash and Jono stopped by on their way to England. The second day they were in Hanoi, we hired motorbikes and went on a 5 day ride to Sapa. It was the best Holiday I’ve ever experienced. We did a lot of riding, but stopped whenever we wanted to for rests and to admire the gorgeous scenery. We were all surprised at how beautiful the mountains were, we took a lot of back roads
Day 1
Stopping for Lunch and were only saw tourists at two places. The first night, we stayed at Mai Chau, 135km from Hanoi. Our accommodation was a cute homestay with a very lovely older Vietnamese Couple. They opened their house up for us, cooked us dinner and breakfast for $5 each. Mai Chau is so incredibly beautiful, it’s set in a valley, surrounded by mountains and rice terraces. It’s still fairly untouched with tourists, the people are really genuine and friendly.
Day two we were up and on the road nice and early, we rode through Son La and then took a back road to Thanh Nguyen, we rode through some amazing villages, I didn’t know that there were so many different variations of mountains. The weather had just started to cool off, so riding when the sun was behind the mountains was freezing, and the breeze was icy cold. We were running a bit behind time getting to Thanh Nguyen, we had an extended long lunch at Son La which really made things hard later on that night. We rode through a very small village that had recently had a lot of rain, there was a lot of mud and water on
the road, and trucks were struggling to get through without getting bogged. We all tried to rush through before the trucks, however it was much more difficult than I’d expected. The mud was so slippery; it was hard to control my bike. There were deep parts of mud, and really watery bits. To stop me from getting bogged I dropped my gears back to first, which then sent me flying and slipping all over the place. We were the highlight of everyone’s day there, 4 big westerners trying to get through the mud. We all laughed so hard when Jono got bogged, and of course I had to have a turn – I fell over my bike was on its side, I had to turn it off then stand up, get my bike up and start again, with mud all over me, I was so close to getting to the dryness, but misjudged thinking it would be better for me to go into knee deep mud instead of through the big puddle, I was stuck. A few times I thought I was going to get myself out, but thankfully a Vietnamese man came to rescue me with Luke, Jono and
Tash laughing, waiting for me. We were running really behind time and had to drive through about 2 hours of darkness to get to a town that had accommodation for us. We stopped at the first Khac San (Hotel) was found and were so happy to hear they had rooms available. That day was by far the most exciting and adventurous, and the most tiering, we slept so well!
Day three, we were so excited to get to Sapa. It was such a great feeling knowing we’d rode from Hanoi. The scenery from Thanh Nguyen to Sapa was so beautiful. We rode through the mountains, through some really rocky roads, it was such a great adventure. We spent the afternoon at Sapa and decided to get the overnight train back to Hanoi. They enjoyed eating local and trying new things with us. Having them here was fantastic – we love showing friends from home our new life in Hanoi.
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