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

Adrian was up early for his speedy climb of Mt Fansipan as San was on time - the weather was a little more favourable and hopefuly the trek wouldn't be too slippery. We were planning to leave in the afternoon to Lai Cao to return to Hanoi by soft seater train so I spent the morning packing everything in our room and checking out by noon. We spent a little time on journals and school work - a bit of a shock to the children who seem to be going backwards with spelling and their ability to just get something little done. Well, there's been no culture shock here - it'll be when the kids get back to school! We decided to go out for a treat seeing Adrian wasn't aeround but as our pizza and chips were delivered to us in our comfy tourist restaurant we saw a hmong girl waving at us and there was Adrian by her side. My first though was they didn;t make it or something had happened but no, Superman had got up there and down in record time in order to catch us out at lunch! It took him just under 6 hours for the 1400m climb to a peak at over 3000metres - the highest he had ever been. His knees, which he was worried about, held up well with the use of a bamboo stick topped with a champagne cap for a well rounded end! It was another cloudy day so the view wasn't there but he was happy with the challenge alone. It was one of the hardest treks he'd ever undertaken. San enjoyed the challenge also and was buggered too but luckily he was very fit also. Sorted our belongings and found a minibus heading down the 38k spiralling descent to the train station . We were tiold there were four trains at night and we'd be able to get a cheap seat. But unfortunately that wasn't true - all soft sleepers for that night and tiomorrow were gone. As we looked lost and worried, we had touts trying to sell us bus tickets, a space in the dining acrriage to sleep (dodgy!) and super expensive sleepers. A lovely Vietnamese man on honeymoon, with great English came to our aid - he told us about a sleeper run by Livitrans who he was going with. Just before the trains departure a worker came to their desk but the price was so expensive we were reluctant. She agreed to letting Nim on half price if she slept with me but we went and checked out the buses although we weren't looking forward to another trip on one of those sleepers. We went back to Livitrans and the worker offered us the price of four - so both kids half price. We ttok it but were given three adult tickets. We should have thought about getting four tickets for four people as trouble was coming our way. Teb minutes after leavng and settling into our pruivate carriage with 2 buunk beds we were visited by Livitrrans worker who tried to tell us we had only paid for Ash, Adrian and myself and that we had to pay another half fare for Nim. We pointed out that if that was what were sold then he should be dealing with the person who sold it as it was not our problem. He dragged us into the hall to show us the height restrictions which Ash was way over. We continued the dispute and he was gett9ing alittle heated but trying to keep his cool  I got the feeling he was going to get in trouble if he didn;t get the money as I'd seen an official talk to him before he came to us. We stood our ground and then went to sleep early after being told the conductor would demand the money from us in the morning! What a tense ending - can you wait for the next instalment?