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Published: February 20th 2007
So....after an amazing dinner at our fantastic Viet/Melbournite friend - Trang's families house...We took the 9 hour train-ride to Sapa. We had a sleeper - which although intimate - with 6 in a room - it was quite comfy and I got to sleep well.
We arrived in Lao Cai train station at 5.30am and after a quick 'cafe sua' (strong black vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk mmmmm) we took a minibus upwards to Sapa. As soon as we got off the bus we were surrounded by young hill tribe girls in crazy bright outfits talking to us in fluent english! - They were asking our names and where we are from - it was a little weird and unexpected!
Our hotel was plush...like a french villa in the alps! It was a beautiful multilevel structure split by a lovely cosy restaurant and bonsai gardens...our rooms were fit with open fire places and blanket boxes to protect from the cold.
Breakfast was traditionally french...we each had a bagette with a tomato onion and potato omelete - mmm 😊
At 10am we met out tour guide Anna - a bright and bubbly 25 year old girl fluent
in English, French, Vietnamese and her our village dialect! Pretty amazing person...one of those people who inspire you in life!
We went on a 6 hour trek through the villages - took a lot of photos of the breathtaking scenery and the gorgeous people and tried our best to soak it all in...quite a culture shock! We had a Red Sar Woman and three Black Hmong girls come with us - all carrying big baskets full of clothing, jewelery and other souvenirs they had made....they walked with us the whole way (6 hours!!) just for a sale...our money is obviously worth so much....
The funnist thing about the trek was the car ride home! - 7 people in a pimped Ford SUV fitted with 2 DVD players and a bose sound system playing Bony M at full blast! The Holiday Anthems were set in stone! The disparity in wealth was in our faces....what can you do?
In the afternoon we met up with an amazing girl called Vu. She was energy encapsulated in a person! She was the mover and shaker of Sapa! Loud and Loveable...She introduced us to this great little spot where we ate dinner...it
was a little shack where a family cooked meals using ingredients from there garden next door...15 000 Dong ($1.20 AU) for a meal of rice, Cooked tomato and tofu, Bok Choy, Taro Soup, Chicken and Pork - & Vietnamese Jasmine Tea to finish...scrumptious and satisfying! 😊 After dinner Vu took us to the local bar to play pool - quite fantastic to see a hill-tribe girl in her full hill-tribe get-up owning the Pool table! She was amazing....ha
That night I had a really solid sleep but awoke to find that Dan had been a little sick over the night... 😞 I guess it had to happen to at least one of us....So Dan got to relax in bed with a hot water bottle while we set off on Trek #2....This was beautiful - we got to decline vertically down a mountain - a bit scary...to see a waterfall and some more Hmong-tribe houses. At the bottom of the hill 1.5 hours in (the trek was 3 hours doing a big circle) me and Gus chickened out and jumped on motorbikes back to Sapa hehe...naughty yes...but lots of fun...back in Sapa we had the opportunity to have something to
eat at our shack 😊
That night we returned to Hanoi by train...all exhausted...
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