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Published: June 17th 2008
We arrived into the Northern capital of Vietnam, Hanoi, on the 5th June. The city is extremely noisy and busy - it appears that you don't need breaks when you have a perfectly working horn!
Our hotel was situated in the centre of the old city, where each street is decorated with its own specialty products. We spent a few days avoiding the motorbikes, visiting a few war museums, water puppet show, and Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum. The humidity is high so retreating to our air-conditioned hotel was often a saving grace!
We joined the organised tour and headed north to Ha-Long-Bay; a stunning collection of islands said to be the humps of a dragons back descending into the sea. We spent one night here on a traditional boat before making our way to Sapa by night train.
Sapa is a charming town perched high in the Vietnamese mountains close to the Chinese border. Many of the buildings here have a European feel as the French molded the towns infrastructure in an attempt to replicate the atmosphere of the Alps.
On our second day in Sapa we started a 20km mountain trek which brought us through many
villages surrounded by rice fields and their workers. The minority groups that work the land are so colourfully dressed and charming; Ivan struck up a friendship with a tribe lady called Mo, who welcomed us into her humble home to see how see lived. That night we stayed in a traditional family home; we had lots of fun playing cards and tasting the local rice wine. The next morning we trekked to a wonderful waterfall and the bamboo forest before meeting the bus to bring us back to Sapa.
Last Sunday we visited neigbouring markets - 3h from Sapa! So 6 hours on a bus over very bad terrain to have less than 2 hours at the markets was not the best of fun.
The last few days we have been discovering Sapa and walked, to our surprise, into the Cat-Cat village where we experienced more of the traditional way of living. We walked through the village and got a motorbike taxi back up the hill! On our way back to our hotel we walked through the food markets and was shocked to see some of the produce for sale, check out the pictures...
On Thursday we
travel back to Hanoi to catch our flight back to Bangkok.
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Joanna
non-member comment
Still having a great time!
Hi Gemma and Ivan, I'm just catching up on all your blog entries as was away there! You both look like you are having a great time and seeing and doing so much! I'm jealous!