Today was a rainy day and full of tailors. Ronald bought an umbrella from a street vendor and brought the price down to 50,000 from 550,000...pretty incredible. When we went to my tailor, my dresses weren't ready so we went back to our trusted restaurant, Thang Bom for breakfast We loved our wontons from Laugh Cafe yesterday, so we had some of those at Light Candle later in the day and they just weren't as good. The woman in charge is just darling, but the food was not as good as at Laugh Cafe. Anyways, Ronald got his coat, I got 3 of my dresses, he got his pants, and I'm waiting for a drop-off on my last dress. There was a problem she didn't tell me about until really late, so they're scrambling around to ... read more

A man knocked on our door at 7:55 and told us to hurry! So we were surprised and went downstairs and he took us on his motorbike to the place where the bus was going to pick us up at. He told us to have a seat at the restaurant there (the Candle I think...) and about 1 minute later told us no no! The bus is coming! It wasn't. But the woman in charge ran us out two baguettes to go and after waiting a little while longer, stole them back to hurry and add jelly and butter and a water bottle and some minibananas for dessert. The plain baguettes were free, but when she added the other stuff, we ended up paying her. She was really sweet. Anyways, the bus came, we dutifully took ... read more

Qui ("Kwee") and Nho ("ño") came to our hotel right on time and loaded up our (lots of) bags on the backs of their bikes. I was on the bike with Qui and the two big bags and Ronald was sitting behind Nho on his bike. They first took us to their restaurant to have breakfast, and then we headed out. After a while we took a little break on the side of the road and Ronald and I wandered around the rice paddies and fishing area. Qui told us that the government tried to give some of the fisherman houses and land before, but a lot of them just sold it and went back to living on their tiny boats and fishing. Our second stop was to a waterfall with an elephant rock. We stayed ... read more

Our train arrived around 4:15 am, so we walked to the lake to get a little closer to the Kangaroo Café and that part of town. Kangaroo Café suggests you wait until Jasper’s breakfast at 6:30 (a restaurant near the train station), but we didn’t feel like doing that. There were tons of people there around the lake, stretching, warming up, and exercising. It was sort of strange because they warmed up for like 30 minutes by swinging their arms back and forth. I did see one lady jumping for cardio though, but other than that they didn’t really do much. Maybe it was some sort of Tai Chi. We took some pictures of the lake and the trees around it that were lit up by balls of Christmas lights. The lights went out around 5:45 ... read more

The walk today was really great, much better than yesterday's. Yesterday we just walked through one village and right back up, but today we walked about 12.5 kilometers and saw two villages and a lot of beautiful countryside. It's basically rice paddies as far as the eye can see and they aren't flat, but have been built up into the sides of the mountains, just like in Peru. The women from the Black H'mong followed us the whole way for two reasons: they go to the market in the morning and then walk home, and they wanted us to buy things from them. Our guide, Lan, told us a little bit about her life -- she makes the most money out of anyone in her family (she's 16). Max, the owner of Kangaroo Cafe, just sort ... read more