We were heading out of China on the early bus to the border, so it was a 6:00 am alarm. After all of our panic, we had to wait 30 minutes for the bus as we were confused as to the time it left as there were 2 bus stations in town and it called at both. Anyway, after the driver coaxed the bus into life (no small feat), we were off down the mountains with views of the mist sitting in the valley. After an hour down hill and half an hour of good road, the journey started to deteriorate. The road followed the Red river - very pretty but it had been washed away in recent rains in multiple places and we were bumped around in the mud and ruts. The bus wasn't designed to go over these kinds of tracks and the driver struggled. We saw a new highway that was being built, but couldn't go on it - the conditions where it met the old road were also awful. What should have been a 4 hour trip turned into a jarring 6 hour one - and the driver didn't believe in comfort breaks so it was a rush for the toilets at the Chinese border.

The border crossing itself was straight forward enough - we seemed to be a bit of a novelty to the Chinese. As soon as we emerged from the Vietnamese border we were descended on by money changers, taxi drivers etc. After failing to get any money from an ATM, we negotiated a price to take us into town to get money and then onto Sapa - our destination. We didn't however agree with them when - the driver proceeded to spent the next hour touting for fares and filling the minibus with cargo.

We arrived at Sapa a little worse for wear, checked into our hotel and then switched to another place as the room was not what we had booked. The new room had a good view and balcony. Unfortunately, Sapa was also a little cloudy and cold. It is a very tourist orientated place - similar to Yuanyang but with lots more tourists. Had our first Vietnamese meal and collapsed into bed.

The following day we decided to have an easy day as we felt like we deserved it. We moved back to our original hotel and got a much better room with a view over the mountains. We had a look round Sapa town - not lots to see - and then sorted out our tour for tomorrow and the train out. We found this exhausting so we had to stop for mango smoothies and chocolate tarts at a little French place called Baguettes et Chocolate.

We then set of for a walk to the closest village which has one of the local hill tribe centres. The walk was easy - all down hill. There was then another path down to a water fall - all paved - then beyond that to another hamlet. The place was very touristy but the numbers of tourists diminished the further we got- when we had finished the circuit there were lots of locals offering us rides back on their motor bikes. We decided to walk instead - even took the short cuts which went straight up - Fran took it in her stride. After this gruelling walk we needed another chocolate tart - well we had skipped lunch.

The following day we had booked a tour to trek further out of Sapa to some local ethnic villages. We had to pack up as we were moving on tonight so we were down for breakfast by 8:00 - very early for us. The tour was a guided walk with two French girls, us and the guide. The walk started with the party followed by lots of local women. They weren't aggressively trying to sell things - just chatting and walking behind us. They made the French girls various garlands out of ferns. Initially it seemed like most of Sapa was going down this road, but then we branched off and lost a lot of them. Then the guide suggested the scenic route which lost a lot more. The scenic route involved walking along the edge of paddy fields and the up a hill on a narrow path wading through ferns. The ascent was fine and gave us really good views. The descent however was a little more tricky. It was very steep with loose earth and mud and Fran was slipping and sliding down it - only to be helped by the local ladies who were running down the slopes carrying their baskets. We reached the lunch stop where the pressure to buy things increased - Fran relented thankful for all the help she had been given. We went on for a short way (1 hour) in the afternoon going through a couple of villages. We would have liked to carry on but that was the end of the tour.

So it was back to Sapa for afternoon tea (hot chocolate and chocolate tarts!). We are hoping that the tarts are unique to Sapa or we will have to do a lot more walking!We then caught the bus down the mountain to the train station and it was noticeably warmer as we descended. It was great to be warm again.