I wanted to have some adventure on my trip and I sure got more than I asked for! Now the adventurous rainy hike turned into an imprisonment in a small town called Lao Cai in the north of Vietnam. The Typhoon Kammuri that came from China has caused so much landsliding, that the train tracks and roads from this place are unreachable. There is basically floods on the roads...first we thought ahh it's just some rain, but now we heard that around 100 people have died because of this storm, that is scary, so we are very lucky to be safe and sound, but still stuck in this very boring town. We were supposed to go back by night train to Hanoi on the 8th of august, but we when we woke up on the 9th the train was heading back to Lao Cai because of blocked trails. And there was even a train that had flipped over.....I really miss Sweden and Germany now...were it is safe! Also people here try to scam you even in these situations. Tons of tourists are stuck in this town now and everyone is ancious to leave in anyway, so there are some bad vietnamese drivers who are asking for outragous amounts of money to take people by bus on the road, and from what I have heard they have only managed to drive for 50km and then got stuck on the road because of a huge flood. The tourists had to spend the night at surrounding villages or even outdoors...in the rain!! It is outragous...and what really pisses me off is that I just read on the internet that there was a warning about this storm coming up north but still the travel agencies let all these tourists book the tours to come up here. I have to say I am getting a very bad impression about the people here. But at the same time we were extremely lucky to meet a guardian angel on the train, who is a vietnamese business man and he has helped us in every possible way. Which gave us hope that there are nice and honest people here as well, but unfortunately the bad guys leave a deeper mark. Our guardian angle Sanh, has very good contacts so according to the high way police the roads might be cleared up this afternoon and we can then head back to Hanoi. At least the rain stopped today after 3 days of non-stop showers...now I know what they mean by the rainy-season:-)
I actually have a lot of great things to tell about Sapa, the tribes, the beautiful scenery, but right now my mind is preoccupied by getting the hell out of here, so maybe I will tell you more about the good stuff when we are back in Hanoi and upload some great pics.
wet and quit dirty,
Amani
