Phew, not used to this much exercise

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Decided not to bother with brekkie this morning as one we ate so much yesterday and two it meant we could stay in bed longer :p After checking out we met with our tour group (and another group of Black H'mong women) and started on our long jaunt (12-13km!). It was another lovely sunny day and after watching a funeral procession pass through town we set off walking downhill which sounds nice and easy but it wasn't it was steep and slippy (lots of little rivers running down/through the path), quite hard work! We walked past rice paddies, rivers, mountains- it's just too beautiful here to capture in words or pictures. We past farmers ploughing, children playing and loads more animals including piglets and ducks. We went over a couple of rickety suspension bridges too and a bamboo one (much to Rob's dismay) and just before reaching Lao Chai village we had to cross a big river over big, slippy rocks, luckily the Black H'mong women helped us 😊

We ate at Lao Chai village next to the Muong Hoa River, we mostly stuck to the baguettes and laughing cow cheese as the spam and fatty bacon didn't really appeal. I ended up buying another bracelet from the same woman as yesterday- she seemed very happy (see pic!). We ended the trek at Ta Van village. Our legs were very achey by this point and we were glad to get into the mini van and back to our hotel. Hotel has 4 communal showers so happily we could have a wash before another huge tea.

Minivan took us to the station at 17:30 which was a little early considering our train wasn't till 21:00. We got chatting to 2 guys in the van, an Indian guy (who now lives in Oz) but originally came from about 60km from Hampi (one of my fave places in S India) and a guy from the Philippines who had travelled loads and his geography knowledge/ general knowledge on places was amazing; for example Rob said he was from Sheffield and he said 'oh where they made spoons' and I said Sunderland and he said 'red and white' and 'no you're not I can understand your accent' hahah. Once in Lao Cai we were given our train tickets then we wasted about 1hr 30 in a restaurant slowly sipping iced coffee.

On the train we were sharing our carriage with an Ozzie couple (Tom and Mia) who were lovely and we had a good chat. Our aircon broke just before we set off which gave us a scare but luckily they got it working again pretty quickly. We managed to sleep really well this time and it was a bit of a rude awakening when the woman came round to tell us we'd arrived back in Hanoi.

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[Christine Lundie]

one v Susan's fave photos
little girl