Sapa

After our little hotel fiasco Steph and I had a 3 night, 2 day trip to Sapa. It's in the Hill Tribe area of North West Vietnam. We had a hard sleeper on the night train. When we arrived at the train station (after having one of the fastest, craziest motorbike rides ever!) a man showed us the way to our carriage. On arrival to our sleeper he stood there and demanded 4 dollars for his services. I gave him 10 thousand Dong and told him to piss off. We never agreed to a price and as far as I knew he worked at the station. Settled into our sleeper, all 5 of us, a strange little Vietnamese man appeared at our door. Or well I thought he was strange. Think I've been away too long and am a bit jaded. He stood in the door way staring in, not saying a word. So I blocked the door way and turned my back on him. Finally I realized the poor lad was holding a ticket and the last sleeper in our room was his....Whoops! He was actually quite sweet. I'm just a bitch.
I'll tell you. A hard sleeper is a hard sleeper. There is only a thin mattress between you and a slab of metal. My poor hips were digging into the metal and my arm went to sleep in the little space we had to lie. I slept a little before we arrived at 6 am. We were cattled on to a bus and whizzed up a hill to the top of Sapa. When we got out of the bus we were instantly greeted by a small tribe of Black Moung Kids that befriended us. After breakfast a shower and a debriefing we set off for our two day hike....With much protest from Steph.
The kids came along with us as we were walking to their village. See, their motivation was the sale of handy craft. It is hard to resist these little faces, big brown eyes and little creased eye brows. "Please buy from me" is the byline and we heard it all trip from every person we met..Young or old!
We stopped at the first Village for lunch and were harassed by a few people whilst we tried to eat. But try to take a photo of these guys in their traditional dress and they charge you a fee. I just refused to pay.
We eventually stopped at our home stay in the Zay Village and met Grandad. A 98 year old man who is bent over at the waist, but a face of great character. Our little group, a French couple, a Belgium couple and myself and Steph, all headed for a swim in the river. I didn't bring my swimmers so I opted for playing games with the kids on the river banks. I tried to teach them to juggle whilst they tried to teach me to play pick up sticks. My hand eye co ordination aint what it use to be.
After a swim we returned to our homestay and the ladies returned in the hope that we would buy some of their goods. As a joke one of the ladies and I some how ended up being married to each other and I was now her wife! ?? This was good though because I was off the hook with having to buy anything... After all this excitement we helped to make spring rolls for dinner. It was really funny seeing us all squatted around a table in a provincial kitchen attempting to make long skinny rolls from rice paper. Some were fat and some were just wrong looking but they all tasted great in the end. We enjoyed a great meal and we all retired to bed early. Steph and I were buggered! I slept like a log until I had a loo run at some godly hour. This involved going down stairs, find the lock on the door and go out side. It really involved me bashing my head on the beams upstairs, fumbling with a lock, scaring myself outside and tripping up the stairs on the way back! Amazingly enough not waking anyone in the process.
The next morning after a good feed of pancakes, lime, sugar and banana we set off for day two of our trek. Up, down, up, down, up and up was the main theme of the day. Yet again we had adopted another set of tribal "friends" who helped us up and down the terrain. Well, they helped Steph mainly but I think it was more of a hindrance than anything. She seemed to fall over more than stay up right but I never had my camera at the ready. I wish I did when she fell arse up in the run off of a waterfall and had her white ass in the air! Anyway, we all survived our trip and got some amazing photos and an exciting ride in a jeep up the mountain. I got away with only buying a few items of Sapa tribal gear and some new friends. Steph got a lot of stuff and some new bruises and sore muscles too. Gladly we had a soft sleeper on the way back to Hanoi....Where we arrived at 5 am in the morning. But then there was the taxi ride!