Advertisement
Published: November 4th 2015
Edit Blog Post
My last blog left off with one more day in Hanoi, I filled it with a bicycle cab ride around the city, going to the fabric market with a tailor to pick out fabric for the clothes I'm getting made and then dinner with my parents and Alaysia. My last night there involved me organizing my gear and going to bed early since our bus to Sapa left at 7am.
It was an uneventful ride through some beautiful countryside and up a very windy mountain road that included a few significant near misses and passing big trucks on a blind corner with double solid lines. I actually don't know why they even paint lines, not a damn soul ever follows them... In any case we made it in one piece and settled into the hostel in Sapa.
It has been quite chilly, misty and rainy up here in Sapa so I'm glad I did pack some warmer clothes on this trip - I'd forgotten what people in Vancouver live like after being in Calgary for two years! After checking in and getting lunch we decided to walk to a small village just outside of town. It was a reasonable
walk down a pretty steep hill with a lot of muttered concerns from all three of us (ok mostly just Dad and I) about how much "fun" it would be coming back up. The village was really neat, lots of small shops, traditional homes, a nice walk along the valley bottom beside a river, and a pretty questionable suspension bridge.
There were some young guys on motorbikes selling rides back up to Sapa (very industrious idea!). So we all got rides on the back of motorbikes to the top. After a 45 minute period of confusion, missing change from paying for our ride (guy on one bike took off before giving us change), Dad holding the other drivers motorbike keys hostage and the help of a local vendor woman - we made it back to the hostel with our proper change returned (a significant amount). Wild first day!
We went back to the hostel and changed up then went to the hostel bar for happy hour (2 for 1 local beers!). We played a few rounds of pool during which I discovered my Dad is a bit of a pool wizard and in fact had a pool table
for a large part of his youth (the things you learn!). We then went to a pretty nice restaurant which had some really good food, we got some smoked buffalo and also some spring rolls with mountain trout in them! Pretty good stuff.
Today we went on a trek through the mountainside - mostly rice paddies - and a few villages. It was a bit rainy, very muddy, and the rice had been harvested already so it wasn't as incredibly green as it would have been in July. The 12 km hike was really nice though and we stopped in a village for some good basic local food. We jumped on a bus which took us back to Sapa, washed off the mud, napped then had an awesome dinner at a restaurant called "Good Morning Vietnam" (of course!). Another quiet night and hopefully tomorrow will bring more fun before I take a night bus back to Hanoi and off to Quest festival for this weekend!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.282s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 10; qc: 50; dbt: 0.1903s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Bugs
non-member comment
Hey Jodes, thank you for consuming my prep block with your blog and pics! Silent Reading for the day instead. Your trip looks awesome, continue having fun!