Sapa
From CatBa went to Hanoi where the sun shone for once and not many tourists around so pleasant and relatively peaceful.
Then it was an overnight train to LaoCai on the Chinese border. Used the hard sleeper, wasn’t like the picture and the train seen better days but 11 hours overnight so ok. Had also arranged for transport to take me from the train station to Sapa to avoid the hassle after an overnight train journey. This being Vietnam there was no one waiting and whilst the other tour groups gave me the run around trying to get me on their tours all the regular transport left. So had to hang around an hour for the next train to bring more people – at least Vietnam is predictable !!.
As it was met up with some Vietnamese from CatBa and had a great meal with them, I guess they should know about food as their restaurant highly rated.
Sapa is an old French hill station surrounded by mountains and lovely secenery and colourful hill tribes. At 1650m much cooler and a welcome relief from the heat of the lowland but plenty of rain and mist to hide the surrounding mountains. Its been on the tourist map for a long time but found much nicer than expected. Not many tourists around, the people friendly and plenty of hill tribe people in colourful clothes selling their usual embroided products etc.
In the afternoon took a stroll into the surrounding hills to the local Hmong villages, accompanied by one of the Hmong women who spoke excellent English and was a great guide to the local culture and with the lovely scenery all very enjoyable.
Hopefully she is going to accompany me on a 20km trek to Lau Chai village where she comes from and some of the other villages tomorrow so should be good but expect the brollie to be well used.
Tags: 1
petefurlepa