This morning we got up and went straight to breakfast as we would be going off on our trek at 9.00am and we didn't know how long it would take to get served. It was a buffet breakfast so pretty easy, after this we went back to our room to pack. 9.00am we were downstairs ready to check out, store our luggage and go for our trek. We waited for a little while as we actually had a group today. There were nine of us altogether, an American lady, a French couple, a Thai couple, a Vietnamese couple and us. Mai came in waved to us and said she would be taking the group out today, we were really pleased. We set off walking through the town and through a market, it was only a quick market stop but there was enough time to see a plate of dog meat! Apart from the dog meat the market smelled so fresh, the Vietnamese use lots of fresh vegetables and loads of fresh herbs in their cooking. We were joined by a group of five or six Black H'mong women who started to walk with us and were very chatty to everyone. Then we walked on, Mai explained that today's trek would be around 10km and mostly downhill to her village and then we would get picked up by a bus and brought back to the hotel. We went on all sorts of terrain and there were some ups but they weren't too steep. The scenery was absolutely amazing! The sun was out but it had rained last night so there were some muddy places. We stopped for a little while on the side of a hill, it must be where quite a few groups usually stop, there were a couple more there, but there was a group of children selling items to everyone. They looked really fed up, who knows how many hours they have to do this for. On we went towards Mai's village, still joined by the women from the village. They were making things from leaves and sticks on the way and giving something to everyone, they were very impressive. Occasionally we did have to stop and wait for the Vietnamese couple to catch up, the girl was only young, had a pretty dress on with tights, brought her new handbag along and the guy had smart pointed toe shoes on. I'm not sure what they expected from trekking?! After a few hours we reached the village where we stopped for lunch, at this point we all realised why the village women had walked with us for so long. They wanted to sell us things! After lots of polite nos we got through the crowd. We were given a bowl of Pho which is traditional Vietnamese food. It's a bowl of noodle soup basically, ours had pork and tomato in it too. Afterwards we were given fruit, something which seemed to be a cross between pear and apple and yogurts. All full we went into the village to look around. There were a few shops selling things for tourists but not nearly as many as yesterday. Mai showed us a workshop where they dye their threads to make their clothes. There was also a loom for weaving in there too. We saw lots more children doing their own thing, a lot of young children riding motorbikes. There was a boy who was eating sugar cane which he'd just stripped with a massive knife he had in his hand. We were also joined again by more village women, this time from the Red Dzao tribe. There was one woman from the Black H'mong who walked with us too she was called Shoo shoo and she had her son on her back, he was called Pen. He was quite happy chewing away on sugar cane. We walked on and out of the village and along edges of rice paddies, the views were getting more amazing. We made it to the bus and got taken back to the hotel. At this point it was around 3.00pm, we were told we could have dinner from 4.00pm and we would be getting picked up at 5.00pm to go back to the train station. There had been no luck with swapping the tickets yet either. We asked for a room key to get changed etc and then went down to have something to eat. We didn't have to wait too long before the bus had come. There were a few other people getting the bus too so we walked down the stairs with them. There were two buses outside, one right outside the door which looked quite large and comfortable and another one over the road which looked like any old mini bus. For some reason we got put on the second one, and when we asked why we got stared at and they acted as if they didn't understand, we just went with it. There was another couple on the bus already so we sat down and set off. The bus didn't go very far when it pulled into somewhere where lots of other buses were, we then realised we would be setting off when we were full. This took about half an hour and two laps of the same roads. Eventually we set off, squashed but at least we were going somewhere. We got on the windy hill roads and another mini bus beeped their horn and overtook us, our driver started laughing and speeding up, he then overtook the other bus. James said something at this point because the last thing we wanted was to play that game in these roads. He did stop! After an hour we were at the train station, at this point we had decided we would try to just buy more tickets even if they are not sleeper seats and they are just chairs. There were no tickets left at the ticket office and we had tried someone outside who tried to help too but no luck. Stood in the train station tickets in hand we were approached by a bloke who says we could have the two chair seats on the 8.15pm train he has and swap them for ours and he would also give us some money for them. The tickets looked different to ours and all our previous experiences with Vietnamese have not gone so well so we were very suspicious of him. Also he looked like some sort of pimp, white t-shirt, long gold necklace and greased hair. James said to him that if he took us and got us on the train with those tickets then he could have ours. The man agreed that he would do this and everything would be fine. We couldn't help still being suspicious of him. We sat and waited until the train came in and the doors were open, the man called us over to walk with him to the carriage. We got on the train and was taken to a carriage which looked like an old fashioned pub. It had tables of four with wooden furniture, there was the bar at the back and smoke in the air. We went with it though because it guaranteed we would get our flights. Luckily another traveller got on too, a guy from Japan who sat opposite us, he had bought a ticket from this guy too. The rest of the carriage filled up with a jumble of Vietnamese people. There was a table at the back reserved for the train's ticket guys. We got as comfortable as we could and got chatting to the Japanese guy who was called Sam who was enthusiastic about the whole thing saying everything was just great. He loved it! We however would definitely have preferred to be elsewhere but hey ho, here we were going to be for the next nine and a half hours! Pretty much the whole journey there were people talking, and occasionally someone would light a cigarette. The carriage was so stuffy that the smoke just lingered, you could only just see the no smoking signs! I tried covering my face with my t-shirt but was getting hot. Sam offered us some face masks, he said he'd brought them with him but has never used them, these did just the job! Only one window would open about four inches wide! Everyone did try to sleep on and off, but this was achieved by having your head on the table or being able to sleep upright, neither were very comfortable so needless to say we didn't get much sleep.