Hmmm Tice Terraces

Trip Start May 05, 2008
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Trip End Ongoing


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Where I stayed
Queen GH
(Sapa hotels)

Flag of Vietnam  ,
Wednesday, September 17, 2008

We took the train to Sapa which makes a pleasant change from bus journeys. Added to this we were upgraded to deluxe class and had a whole soft sleeper cabin to ourselves. It was luxury and we made the most of having the cabin to ourselves let me tell you : ). The train travels through the night and arrives at Loa Chai station the following morning. Loa Chai is a good 40km from Sapa but there is a local bus and loads of mini vans to take you there for D30,000. The van eventually left for Sapa when it was sufficently packed to the gills with farang. They are nothing short of pressing and poking you in further so that they can fit as many people as possible. The drive to Sapa up the winding roads into the mountains is amazing. We caught our first glimpse of the neatly terraced rice fields on the mountainsides. It is just like in the postcards. The van dropped us off in Queen GH and had an amazing room overlooking the mountains for $8.

Sapa town is mainly a tourist village and all the ethnic minority peoples live in surrounding towns and villages rice terraces sapa
rice terraces sapa
 . They come in everyday to sell their wares to the tourists. They are particularly hard to get rid of and after a while you begin to associate the clothing they wear with that of hawkers. We met up with Lek and Till (Thai / German couple) again and decided to get up at dawn the next morning and hike from Cat Cat to Tavan. We went a bit off track along the way and decided that we should just follow the river. This proved very difficult, we had to ford the river and climb a very steep bank the other side to try and get a view of where the actual track was. Luckily, there
were villagers on the hilltops directing us to where the track was. This was great and for the first time during our time in Vietnam we felt that we were having adventure independent from all the organised tour crap. We eventually made it Tavan tired and battered and sat down to some Pho Bo. Lek was shattered and hopped on a moto back to Sapa. Us being well hard walked the 8km back to Sapa along the main road. We got some wonderful pics from this hike. Sapa is beautiful and a great part of Vietnam. I
wished we had spent more time here.

The next day we rented motorbikes and found a really nice spot on your way back to Loa Chai for a picnic at the base of the rice terraces and the river. buffalo bath
buffalo bath
 The rice was almost ready to harvest and was a lovely golden yellow colour. It is really heavy too. If you break off a rice frond with all the rice corns on it, you can really feel the weight of all that rice.

After 3 days we left Sapa and in contrast to our train experience getting here, we were down graded to soft seater and had to try and sleep upright for the ten hour journey back to Hanoi. The carriage was full of Vietnamese and they are really loud on there phones, pushing and prodding past people. The lady in front of me insisted on reclining her sit back as far as it would go. It reached my knees and still she kept going even though she could not go any further with my knees in the way. I thought she would give up eventually but she didn't and I had to took my legs in until her seat was all the way down. I wanted to punch her in the side of the head!

Oh yeah, we say chopped up dog meat for sale in the market. It was unmistakably dog as the dogs head lay upturned on the chopping board with it's lower jaw removed and sharp teeth sticking out. It is a really dark god awful looking meat. I would not like to eat it.
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