After a great breakfast including scrambled egg and almost proper English tea we headed out for an orientation walk and to explore the town, which although small is ever changing with cloud coming in and out, revealing picturesque landscape and then taking it away again. We found a hairdressers and Pete had his head shaved, followed by his face, meanwhile I had a pedicure, which was no ordinary pedicure as you will see on the pictures, the amazing detail of the flowers is all done by hand, a little treat, but only cost about £2. We headed to a recommended café for lunch called Baguette & Chocolate, which is run by the Hoa Sua School for orphans, street children and kids from very poor families, the school provides free training from them. So it is great to eat there as you are helping the local children, but also the atmosphere is great and the food is brilliant.

Thursday 2nd April

In the early hours of the morning I was woken by a fantastic thunder and lightning storm which seemed to go on for hours, Pete was sound asleep while all this was going on. Today was supposed to be our big 6-8 hour trek, but as it had been raining all night and was still raining when we woke it looked doubtful as most of the trek was off road, through fields etc. We still packed our day bags and headed down for breakfast and our group meeting about what to do. Some of the guys wanted to do the trek no matter what so five guys set off, while the rest of us hung around the town until lunchtime when we were collected and taken to the homestay. It was an interesting drive, some parts of the road had fallen away, other areas were damaged which meant driving over it did some damage to the vehicle we were in. Luckily the scenery out the window was amazing and completely blew away the other sights we had seen so far, with huge mountains and valleys on both sides. We arrived in the village and walked the rest of the way, where we were greeted by the family we were to stay with. Our sleeping area was upstairs and was divided by curtains, we managed to nab the upstairs section along with the other couple in our group, there were mattresses , pillows, blankets and mosquito nets, and it looked like an interesting night ahead.

The owners took us to see the waterfall and also show us the hot spring, unfortunately because they are currently building a road, there was a lot of mud around and our shoes and trousers got a bit dirty. When the walkers finally arrived we headed off with our swimming things to the hot spring, it was lovely just like an outside Jacuzzi, minus the bubbles. When we arrived back at the house they had cooked garlic chips, which we immediately finished, followed by a fantastic banquet meal with the best spring rolls we have had so far. After dinner our leader Suzy had organised a minority show performance from the local women, who came dressed in there traditional black and pink outfits and treated us to several dances, before inviting us to join in the bamboo dance, basically jumping over moving bamboos in time to the music, those with rhythm didn't get bruised ankles, but those without rhythm suffered.

The traditional music and dancing was followed by some dance music and us forming a circle and showing off our moves before finishing off with a conga line which the locals joined in with. The mattresses were comfortable and it felt quite cosy being in the mosquito net, the only issue was the sound of frogs outside.

We were sent on our way with tummies full of delicious pancakes and headed off on a two hour trek to our meeting point with the vehicles to take us back to Sapa. It was very hot and sweaty, and uphill all the way, but again the sights are spectacular so it is worth it.