Sapa

What now?! Our friends had left, we’d only really planned up to Hanoi, our visa’s were running out and we were all at a loss! Ok so a day of planning in Hanoi, which resulted in visa extension application, a few chores getting done and bus tickets being bought for Sapa – northern rice fields and mountainous area. The next day we jumped on a night bus which passed by in normal night bus style, uncomfortable and long, before dawn broke and we found ourselves winding around mountain roads and pulling into the small town of Sapa. Although still stunning we were visiting the area at the wrong time of year, for as green and wet as the lowlands were the mountains are dry and harvested, so the lush green rice terraces are bare and brown!! First things first though, convince Shona that a few hours kip wouldn’t go a miss, it was 6:30 after all, a little early to be heading out exploring. The local hills are home to several different hill tribes and the inhabitants seem to be a dab hand at making things, well mainly bags of all sizes, jewellery and a complete nuisance of themselves! They come into town to hound foreigners and pressure them in a lovely polite way to buy their wares, at every turn you get women trying to sell you stuff because they have children to feed, then round the next bend it’s children trying to sell you stuff because they have no mama or papa! Not sure if I’m cynical, mean or just tight but I didn’t buy a thing. We headed for the highest point in town first of all, a hill set amongst some gardens, to get a view of the surrounds realising very quickly that its quite windy in these parts and the hazy weather didn’t make things any better as far as views go! After the hill it was time to stroll out to one of the nearby villages, assuming that as all the inhabitants are in town hassling tourists, walking through the village should be quite easy – and it was! That evening we hit the street stalls for some dinner, picking a very excited local women and her small bbq. She dished us up jacket potato’s, roasted veg, sweetcorn, tofu, fish and more, was delicious! The next day it was time to jump on some mopeds and go explore the further afield, well further into the misty haze up a mountain pass for supposidly the best views around (unless you climb Fansipan, the highest mountain in the area – which we didn’t, I know, shocked me too!). However, on reaching the pass and just about being able to stand up in the winds plus not seeing anything because of the weather it soon became clear why we didn’t do the climb. We made our way quickly back down, heading to another village for a walk – this all ended quicker than we’d anticipated though! As we pulled into a small village hoardes of village women seized us, about 40 of them wearing traditional clothes and funny hats came running over to us before we’d even got off the bikes. Fearing for my life and wallet I tried to turn the bike around to make my escape, this just resulted in me being chased by about half the women…like something out of a Benny Hill sketch (although as French as Vietnam is they weren’t all wearing French maid outfits), they chased me around a small section of the village and back to where we started to find Shona still surrounded by the others but in fits of laughter at me! We finally managed to escape unharmed and without enough ethnic bags to setup our own stall.