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Published: January 20th 2007
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The night train arrived in Lao Cai at 5.30am, I had slept quite well on the journey as I had been so tired. We had to sit & wait in a mini bus until it was full, (about an hour) & it was cold. It took about an hour to get from Lao Cai to Sapa & as well as being cold there was thick fog, as Sapa is high in the mountains & you couldn't see anything.
We found somewhere to stay, put on 4 t-shirts, 2 pairs of socks & a pair of trousers & had a sleep, I was still freezing cold so we asked for more blankets for the evening. After we got up, I had a hot shower, I nearly cried as it was so hot & I was so cold!
I then put on three t-shirts, my hoody & my waterproof jacket with my big flight socks, trousers; Claire did the same & as you can imagine we didn't look great. We went for a walk through the market, I brought some trousers, Claire brought another scarf, (her third or fourth since we started our trip, that's nearly as many scarfs as bags!)
We then saw the church, (that was about the only thing you could see because of the weather), then shopped around for train tickets back to Hanoi; as the weather is so bad here we decided to head back to Hanoi a day earlier than planned.
We had some lunch & a nice cup of hot chocolate; as I was still cold I had some ginger tea, it was lovely. We brought our train ticket & attempted to find the post office with no luck. We had a walk around & decided to go on the computer for a while as it was warmer inside than out, although only just as you could still see your breath in the air, (I had forgotten what cold weather was like!)
We went for some mulled wine in a pub that apparently has great views over the valley on a clear day, but we couldn't see a thing. We went for tea in a nice little place & sat in front of an open fire. We met a lovely Scottish family who were travelling the world with the little girls Shona & Marie, they were eight & ten. We spent
the evening drinking lots of hot tea with honey & talking to the girls about their favourite places so far. They had been on a trek & said we should do one even if the weather is bad so we went & booked a half day trek for the following day.
When we got in, we got an extra duvet from reception, (so we had two), I put on 3 pairs of socks, a pair of shorts, 2 pairs of trousers & three t-shirts, I then got in my silk sleeping liner & under the two duvets, luckily I was a lot warmer than I had been in the morning.
We got up & had another wonderful hot shower & went for breakfast again in front of an open fire. We got picked up for our trek in an army jeep & drove about 12km's from Sapa. When I got out the jeep I got mobbed by little children wanting to sellme a bamboo stick to help me on my trek, somehow Claire didn't get mobbed so thought it was hilarious I had about 30 kids around me shouting "Buy from me."
We walked to Lao Chai
Village, where people from the Black H'Mong tribe, we were pestered all the time by women & small children which was sad but you can't buy from everyone so Claire & I gave a couple of children some money & had our photo taken with them, (we had already brought a bamboo cain to help us on our walk).
It was such a shame the weather was so foggy again as the views would have been amazing but it did clear up a bit when we got lower down the valley. We went through Ta Van Village where the people are from the Zay Tribe. The trek took about two hours & was 4km's, the weather got bad again as we got higher up in the hills but the jeep picked us up at the end of the extremely muddy trail & took us back to Sapa.
We were a bit wet & very muddy so tried to clean up a bit & had lunch in one of the places with the open fire, again having hot chocolate & ginger tea. The minibus to take us to Lao Cai was at 4.30pm so we got some food for the train journey & went on the internet. Upon checking my e-mails I discovered I had several e-mails from people enquiring about Cliff Richard, (where I had seen him, what date, who he was with & could they have copies of the boy's photo). I thought this was so funny & forwarded the messages on to Charlie & Pete as one man was from a Cliff Richard Magazine & had offered to publish their photo with Cliff, (I begged the boy's to let the man print it so hopefully they will!)
Sapa has been good although I have been gutted about the weather, but hey it can't be good all the time can it!? I am so looking forward to a bit of warmth in Laos when we get there on Sunday!
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