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Day 73 (cont.)
Boarding the bus we met a couple from England (Jude and Sean) who confirmed that we were in the right place - good news. Settling down for the night we were quietly excited about our next country.
Day 74
The bus journey, however, turned out to be a bit more of a drama. About 2:00 am we awoke from a rare passage of sleep to shouts and people running off the bus - it was only when we got off that we realised that people had mistaken steam coming from the engine for smoke and were convinced that the bus was on fire! After 20mins letting it cool a bit we limped on until the bus driver filled up the dehydrated bus from a hose on the side of the road.
The journey continued with most of the road covered in mud slides of varying degrees of severity which gave us a bumpy ride, but we did have incredible views of the South China countryside.
Arriving at Hekou (the Chinese border town) we immediately noticed the hotter and more humid climate. We changed our remaining currency into Dong (instantly making us millionaires
which was a nice feeling) and, clutching our fistful of dong we found the crossing point over to Vietnam - our tour of Nam had begun!
Out of the gate we were hit by a barrage of touts offering buses to Sapa (our destination) at ridiculously inflated prices, however after a bit of bartering we paid the 'going tourist rate' of 25,000d (there are about 32,000d to the pound) and we were off, unaware that we still had to pick up another 6 people, and more bags boxes and bunches of bananas than you could ever think would fit into a minibus.
We gladly got out of the bus in Sapa and made our way over to Pinochios, a hotel where we knew Anja form the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek was staying, unfortunately she was out but we were glad to get a really good cheap room and have a well needed shower and scrub up.
Refreshed we headed out into town to get our bearings, and after about half an hour we had pretty much covered the small hill town and headed for a little restaurant called the Green Sapa that had been recommended to us
by Paul. We were very well looked after by the charsimatic owner who kept pouring his home brew plum rice wine in payment for playing him at chess.
Making our way back to Pinochios we met up with Anja and went to the local ale house for a couple of Bia Hoi (fresh beer) - it was great and really cheap at around 10p per glass, two things that made Mark, Chrissie and Anja instantanious fans of the golden nectar. We then made our way back to the Green Sapa for dinner - washed down by another half gallon of plum wine and another whooping at chess (yes Mark lost again).
Suitably watered we went over to the local internet cafe to check emails before falling into a deep bia hoi and plum wine sleep!
Day 75
Waking early (after the phone had a funny 5 mins and went off at 4:30am) we rose to a day on a Moto around the local area. Sapa is in the montains of Northern Vietnam (so quite nice and cool) and is surrounded by lots of farmland, rice terraces and small villages of minority cultures. We hired a bike
from our hotel and planned to go for a whistle stop tour of the area before getting our train out to Hanoi that evening. Mark went for a short ride down the road to work out how the gears (and the bike in general worked). After a couple of mins he had the knack of it and stopped to pick up Chrissie for a day of fun on the Moto. It was actually really easy to drive (even with both of us on one bike) and made for a much less tiring day of sight-seeing.
We started off by driving up the local 'road' to see a big waterfall called Tham Bac and then continued up to the highest pass in Vietnam. This is famed as one side of the pass is one of the warmest places in Vietnam and the other side (Sapa) is the coolest, making for a mist filled gale going from one side to the other. Not the most stunning scenery we have ever seen (or not seen) - but quite impressive anyway!
Back down to Sapa (where Chrissie also had a drive) we continued through to Cat Cat a local minority village set
in a beautiful mountain valley. The village was nice, much smaller than we had imagined and massively affected by tourism which was a bit of a shame, but a good experience none the less.
Back up the hill, where we were really glad of the moto, we headed for a noodle soup lunch in Sapa before heading out to explore some more of the surrounding area and minority villages in the region. Deciding that we were born to be on the bike, we passed up the opportunity to walk through a village to climb another of the local peaks on the bike to see the scenery from a good vantage point - it was stunning. Heading back on smooth tarmac we reached Sapa having had a thoroughly enjoyable day. Watch out mum - we've got our applications in for the Hells Angels already!
Handing back the bike, we met up with Jude and Sean for a Bia Hoi or two before our last visit to the plum wine drinking, chess playing restauranteur where we couldn't pass up the opportunity to buy a bottle of this amazing home brew (well, we had drunk about two bottles of it and
not paid anything yet).
On the road again we headed back to Lao Cai, noticing the heat increase steadily on the way down from the mountains, to get a hard sleeper train to Hanoi. When they say hard sleeper in Vietnam - they really mean it. It was basically a wooden bench with a grass mat and just a pillow for comfort. Even with the hot and humid atmosphere and sharing our cabin with an extended family from Sapa it wasn't as bad as we at first feared and we actually got as fair bit of sleep.
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If your good to mama.....
Mama's good to chu u!!! Hey Fitties!!! I have had real difficulties getting on to this latey, i really hope that this comment gets posted! Well ..loving mama's house, how cute is she!!! Although not sure how Beebs would feel about you playing with the other kitty kats!! Totally admire the Tiger trek you guys, i think i would have moaned the WHOLE way round if I was doing it.. numpty! Good news.. Ben and I are going to come out to Sydney in December with the hope to hook up with you crazy chicks!!! We are playing on staying with his aunt and uncle if all goes well so watch this space.. i can't wait! Willy Wanging outside the Opera house with chu Chrissy and then I had done it all! Glad to see you are doing well.. its crazy how far you guys have travelled already, its just gone so quickly!