Sapa Hotel

Took the overnight train to Sapa and was met by my guide Dong. We then went straight into a trek to a TA Vin a n 8km walk with a lunch break. Beautiful countryside and facinating ethnic minority groups meeting us on the way. Stayed in the home of the Black hmong- actually like sleeping in a large loft. But had fantasic food. The next ...

... Definitely slipped more than once. We walked up to the top of this overlook and down into the city. It was awesome!! Loved it. I even yelled for an echo to the on-lookers below, but they just looked backed baffled at the noise a person could produce. ahaha.<br> We headed back down into town to pick up some odds and ends in the market and than took off on the bus to the train. We actually had some time in the city of ...

... said goodbye and thank you to the family who hosted us and it was time to head off on the 10km trek back to our minibus. Once again it had rained the night before, so it was even muddier than the previous day. Somehow though I survived the trek without stacking it again. The first part of the trek was about 2 hours and uphill all the way. It is said that it has the best views, however because of the rain, and the cloud over the hill we were climbing we could see no ...

... us, there are two types of men: some men are<br>good--they build the house and maintain it, take care of the fields,<br>and look after the children and some men are bad--they drink the rice<br>whiskey, gamble, and only spend the money the women have made. <br><br><br><br><br>After lunch we<br>visited a school in the village &#8211; a lot of the supplies in the<br>classroom were stamped UNICEF Nagano, Japan. It was a simple<br>classroom with small desks and ...

... ages, past endless steep terraced rice fields, rose gardens, peach orchards, corn fields &amp; hemp plants but mostly rice !. Watched the local people harvesting their rice &amp; Sho explained the huge process to us as we got to see the different stages harvesting required.<br><br> <br> <br> <br>There were even small children &amp; women with babies on ...

... ve left home. The tradition here is that maybe 5 or six dishes are prepared and everyone takes a little of everything, eating with chopsticks of course! we had so much food and we didn't finsih any of the dishes. Soon after dinner she produced rice wine, made locally! sure we had to have a drop, she wasn't too pleased when we pulled out after 4 shots i think she wanted us to keep going all night!! We watched a bit of rubbish vietnamese telly and then headed ...

... Le coeur du bonheur de cette rencontre, c'est la spontaneite. Du plaisir a l'etat pur. Ces petites demoiselles ont peut-etre la chance de vivre dans une communaute satisfaite contrairement a la societe de consommation et som insatisfaction chronique.<br> Le partage de quelques moments avec elles n'est peut-etre pour elles qu'un moment de decouvert des autres, comme il l'est pour nous. C'est peut-etre aussi le cas pour cette dame a la coiffe rouge, une Dzao rouge, qui nous a ...

... They brought plate after plate of pig and vegetables. It was a marathon of eating and drinking. Every time I turned around, one of the guys would have filled my bowl up with something for me to eat and my beer would be full. I hung with Lua Son Pho to 5 beers plus several more after lunch was over. I finally had to bow out, I couldn&#8217;t do it anymore. I ate and drank myself into oblivion. I remember being relieved that lunch was over bc my stomach couldn&#8217;t take anymore ...

... We had a quick stop at a waterfall to cool off along the way and arrived later that afternoon in the Tay village. The locals can be quite crafty and one lady from the Red Dao village even followed us in to the homestay and sat waiting for us to buy something until she eventually realised we weren't going to buy and went home. <br><br>That afternoon we went for a 200m walk to a waterfall for a swim and our guide had a good soapy bath too. No need for showers ...