Horner travels ... Of all the pages in a book, the best stories are found between the pages of a passport...

From our hotel menu we chose our delicious and filling breakfast - a lovely change to just a banana and bread roll - vegetable omelette, baguette, banana and dark chocolate pancake, jam and drinks. After this we had loads of energy to do a small 7km walk to Cat Cat Village to see the lovely waterfall, despite being dry season. The pebbled streams below the falls were glorious. We continued our walk past the tourist area, after spending a bit of time with an Australian family from Brisbane. We then did a round trip back to Sapa and were constantly offered lifts by motorbike, taxis and minibuses (not free) back to the Village with them telling us it was too hard for our children! What do they think Western children are made of? Spent a little time (2 hours) back at our hotel downloading photos while Asher progressively became sicker and more nauseous. We went out for some fresh air and began a walk around the lake but Ash was sick and I brought him back to the hotel where it continued quite a few times. He felt Ok but had -sorry for the gross details- projectile, horror movie-style vomits.  We had to drag him out to dinner but he sat quietly as we enjoiyed a meal at a Vietnamese restaurant out of the main area. We tried a deer hot pot with rice and Adrian wqs given a sample of rice wine by a group of roudy men at a nearby table. He said it didn't taste that good and was glad you threw it down. On our way back to our hotel we swayed past our tour office to see if the lovely woman who works there was up (as she lives out the back in one room with her family) to see if we could delay our trip with Asher having been sick. She was great- saying there would be a small extra fee for a new  "ticket" into the minority area and that we could make our mind up in the morning. The nshe asked us to stay and ordered, at no cost, some ginger, honey and lemon drinks for the kids to have to settle their tummies. We were really grateful for her care and interest and she let us on the internet for free while the kids sipped their warming drinks on the cool night.  Asher felt well so we said we'd see her in the morning but a few minutes after leaving Ash was again sick on the street, not even being able to keep downm liquid. We were concverned about him coping with the walk, despite him still sayi g that he felt well, or that he would become dehyderated.