Hi everyone,
We've made it to China! Well across the border anyway. We're now sat in an internet cafe with 8 hours to kill before our bus journey to Kunming because our travel agent messed up the bus booking! Grrr. He told us he'd arrange tickets for the 11am bus but when we arrived it was sold out and the next one's not till 6pm. If only we'd been on a Chinese course before we left, we could have arranged it ourselves!
We've just spent two great days in Sapa, in the mountains of northern Vietnam....though we nearly didn't make it there either...
We got to Hanoi train station in good time on Saturday evening but when we showed our tickets at the platform, the guard told us we only had the return section of the tickets (despite the fact we were only travelling one way) and no tickets from Hanoi to Lao Cai (the nearest station to Sapa)! Turns out our friendly travel agent had managed to give us the wrong tickets for that journey too!
When the tickets were dropped off at our hotel on Saturday afternoon, we did point out that the time on them said 8.15pm and not 9.15pm as we'd been told but the travel agent's assistant said that was fine. All the ticket details were written in pen and had Saturday's date on them we had to assume it was ok.
Anyway, after about 40 minutes of toing and froing, phone calls with the travel agent and conversations with the guards, some tickets were produced from somewhere (we're still not sure where) and we boarded the 9.15pm train that we'd originally been told we were booked on.
Thankfully the rest of the trip was much better organised and we had a great time trekking round the mountains of Sapa and visiting hill tribe villages on Sunday and Monday.
We didn't have very well-formed expectations of Sapa before we got there, but if we had, they would have been wrong! It's a very civilised place, built by the French around the turn of the last century and feels very Milka-advert-y, just like an Alpine ski resort!
It's also been very cold at night - so cold in fact that three duvets and a bedspread still wasn't enough and we've been sleeping in our jumpers and socks!!
But the weather has been perfect during the day for trekking as it warms up to about 20 degrees with the strong sunshine. The first trek was more of a walk really. Our guide 'Bing' met us after lunch on Sunday and we set off in our group of four (Bing, us and Queen - a lovely Thai IT lady)for Cat Cat village about 2 miles from Sapa town.
The scenery was amazing as we walked down into the valley and through the village. We could just about see the top of Mount Fansipan (Vietnam's highest) through the cloud and were surrounded by rice paddies, buffalo, and friendly ducks as we made our way down to the river at the bottom.
There are four different hill tribes in northern Vietnam and Cat Cat is inhabited by the H'Mong. They were very friendly and obvioulsy used to tourists and spoke very good English as they offered us handicrafts and traditional jewellery. Although they've been touched by the modern world, have access to good health care and schooling etc, many still live in traditional houses and wear traditional dress and most make their living off the land.
Different generations of Hmong people
On Monday we had a full day trek of about 8 miles through the valleys to Loa Choa and Ta Van villages. The scenery was even more amazing than the previous day and the photos in the gallery don't really do it justice - the camera couldn't unfortunately see as far as we could!
We managed to find two extra guides for the trek on Monday, in the shape of two H'Mong women who approached us in Sapa asking us to buy crafts from them and then decided to walk with us for the next 6 miles on the way back to their villages. They spoke good English and had a great line in direct questionning. Like most H'mong we spoke to, most conversations consisted of them rattling off quick fire questions, usually:
"Hi, what's your name?"
"How old are you?"
"How many brothers and sisters you have?"
"How long you together?"
"You have baby?"
"You buy something from me?"
Eventually we did buy something from them. A bracelet and a strange kazoo-type musical instrument that we still haven't worked out how to play!
We got back to our hotel just in time for dinner and a well deserved beer and then crashed out for the night before we got a minibus to the Vietnam-China border this morning.
We breezed through passport control and managed to keep hold of our China Lonely Planet guidebook, which the book itself warns is sometimes confiscated on the way into China (presumably because it "tells it like it is" and isn't always 100% complimentary). So we're off to read that for the next 6 hours, while we wait for the bus!
Take care everyone and hopefully we'll send our next update after Kunming.
Love,
Phil and Sarah x x
