Fansipan View Hotel Sapa

... girls voted to go on motorbikes, which were just superb.<br><br>29th October - up early for the trek/bikes. We set off on the bus and then picked up our drivers, a very picturesque ride through stunning countryside. We arrived at our homestay and went to the waterfall, where we could swim after having lunch at our homestay.<br><br>The rest of the group arrived, very tired late in the afternoon - they had all enjoyed the ...

... VNese. In primary school, they only learn VNese; in middle school, they learn English. Some kids never make it to middle school and learn English from the tourists. Middle school is in Sapa and to go further, the kids have to move to Hanoi and most families don't have the means to send their children that far.<br><br>When we got to the village of Lao Chau to see how typical Hmong villagers live, Pierre got accosted by a little girl of about 8 or 9, trying to ...

... walks about 20 kilometers a day when<br>she has to guide. Chinh is young &#8211; 21 years old- and has one<br>daughter Ma who is 4 months and 10 days old! Chinh is also very<br>independent &#8211; we find this out in 15 minutes of meeting her. She<br>only wants two children &#8211; she says more than that and it's too much<br>work and a drain on resources! She also doesn't wear the huge<br>earrings that most H'mong women wear (she feels that they are too<br ...

... was not as good as I hoped - there was a lot of low cloud, but it did add to the slightly unreal feel about this 'city in the clouds'.<br><br>Sapa itself is quite a small town, I heard someone say it has the feel of a Swiss ski resort, and it does kind of. It's full of tourists of course, mostly there to go trekking in the hills. <br><br>It was rather good to have very little to do, because then I didn't need to feel guilty about ...

... and garlic, and both equally gorgeous! after polishing these off we offered to help with dinner, and were soon at work rolling chopped veg into spring rolls, ready for the wok! not that difficult a task but at least we tried! we then sat around the wok with ping and our hostess and watched everything being cooked in its own special way, all in stages on the same wok. it was a mouthwatering display and we were only delighted when it came time to ...

<br>The evening that we arrived back in Hanoi we were booked on the overnight train north into the mountains to Sapa. We stopped off to collect our luggage and have a bite to eat before we had to hurry off to the station. We jumped on four separate motorbikes but unbeknownst to us 'Ga Ha Noi' - the main station - has two entrances and the boys ended up at one, the girls at the other. After waiting for the others until it was almost too ...

... straight out of a mountain town in Switzerland or Colorado. <br><br><br><br> It wasn&#8217;t until the next morning that I finally felt healthy enough to do some real exploring. I got up around 8 and decided to walk down the hill towards Cat Cat village, cut West and just walk until I found a back way up to Sapa. I stopped by a bakery to grab some breads for lunch and a 12 oz bottle of water. The clerk pointed the way to Cat Cat and off I went. I wondered around some back streets ...

... of beauty ect but our trip was nightmare but did end up drink with another boat in the evening which was cool and just spent the rest of night drinking with the french chick Florie (who i am traveling with at the moment). Anyway got back to Hanoi and Aussie lads still there and few others so Friday was more beers and ended up in Irish bar where meet another french chick who was pretty hot!! did a lot of ground work that night. Woke up ...

... train to Sapa-the bus worked out to be a bit cheaper and took you all the way to Sapa as opposed to the train that stopped in a town just outside Sapa (and then had to take a minivan). That said, the bus ended up making many late night stops and a several hour stop in the same town the train ended in so sleep-wise it would have been better to take the train. <br><br> Once we booked all our tickets we decided to skip running around Hanoi like crazy ...

... con ningún turista ya que la ruta no es muy conocida, eso si, mucho más dura.<br><br> <br><br><br><br><br> <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>9 de agosto<br><br>Hoy nos vamos al mercado de Bac Ha. tengo muchas ganas, ya que me encantan los mercados y ver a la gente.<br>Salimos a las 8 am y tardamos en llegar 2,5 horas por un camino ...