View of downtown Sapa.
(Sept 30) - This morning we woke up early for another trek. We ate breakfast at the hotel and then hit the trails with a new tour guide. We were joined by the same two Scandinavian (Sweden & Finland) girls that hiked with us yesterday. We learned that our hike yesterday was classified as 'very hard'. Good thing to know after the hike :)
rice paddies
Today's hike was an easy and tourist packed hike but it was still a great hike with a lot to see. The views were amazing. About 3/4 of the hike was on some sort of paved or well defined path and the other quarter was walking through mud, rice paddies, and grass hills. Yesterday I think it was 5% well defined and 95% the first non local people ever to walk there.
View of the valley
We walked about 15km in total. We started at the hotel and then descended into the valley via a dirt path. On the walk down we had some great lookout points. Near the end of the trek we visited two villages; Lao Chai and Ta Van. We ate lunch at Lao Chai and then just walked through the two villages to then meet up with our ride back to Sapa.
When we got back into town we did some more shopping until it was time to get our ride back to Lao Cai Train Station. We were a bit late because we were wheelin and dealin at the shops. Proud to say we were successful in our harsh negotiations.
Our driver packed a ton of people and luggage into the van and quickly drove us back to the city (about and hour). Then at the train station we met a random guy who took our ticket voucher to another random woman on the street and she gave us train tickets. It all seemed to work and we are on the train now writing this :)
In all the rush leaving Sapa we forgot to eat. This left us with nothing on the train and an 8+ hour ride to think about it. Luckily there is a snack cart on the train which we have stopped twice already (they only come around twice). We ate 4 cups of instant noodles and two packs of jackfruit chips. We are all good now.
Tomorrow is our last full day in Vietnam :(
PS - while hiking today we came up with a new name for our blog: hoangBLOGski. We will change it when we get back home.
Hiking down into the valley.
Walking along the river towards Lao Chai
Crossing the river into Lao Chai
Walking through Lao Chai village
Yvonne feeding a water buffalo... Kinda
Leaving Lao Chai and moving towards Ta Van village