The puppies had cried for half an hour and for a while Edd and I thought it was Mutley instigating the issues: he'd become very socialised in the last 2 days and was coming inside the house on his own, sleeping under our legs at the fire. He'd gone from cowering and shaking at human contact, to running up to us and wagging his tail when we arrived back from the toilet; we were both sad to be leaving him behind. Anyway, I eventually got up to see what the matter was and Yin got up with me; the puppies were cold so she grabbed a plastic liner of some description and put it down for them to sleep on. I didn't think it was going to make much of a difference, hoping she'd let them sleep inside for the night, but they settled down quickly on their make-shift blanket and went to sleep.

We then woke up to Yin's husband coming home, talking at the top of his lungs in Vietnamese: he'd been out all afternoon and evening as was quite drunk on rice wine. We woke up again when Moh started having one of her many tantrums; we weren't particularly sure what this one was about, but we knew from experience she'd get her own way.

We set off at 10.15am for the 2.5 hour trek back to Sa Pa city, waving goodbye to the windowless house with one single light and all the animals that decorated the grounds outside; we did not trek back the same way we came, but walked along the road instead. It was incredibly misty and we could only see about 20 metres in front of us the entire time. Chow walked with us and held Edd's hand, which was very cute. Before we left, he had Shie in his arms, Chow on his back and Moh hanging on his right leg, we'd bonded well with the kids and were sad we had to say goodbye to them. Edd and I bought lollies for Moh, as she couldn't come with being only 2 and half, and was convinced the entire time we were there that we were hiding them from her.

We hugged Yin and Chow goodbye as we entered the main street in the city and found a restaurant that served pizza. A lot of them did, but the city was out of electricity, so many of the restaurants were on restricted menus. Typical. We walked around the streets for a while and looked in the shops. Everything was horrendously overpriced, so we didn't buy anything.

At 2.10pm, we were bored of the overpriced shops and went in search of the bus that left every 30 minutes for Lou Cai. We found the 'station' and the driver said he was leaving in 10 minutes. Result! We jumped on bored and found seats half way down with a bit of extra legroom for Edd's giraffe legs.

We left promptly and settled in for the 1.5-hour journey back to the train station. About 15 minutes in, the bus stopped. This was not unusual for us as every motorized journey in these parts included the fetching or delivering of some or other mystery package to a destination en route. This time, however, the stop was far more exciting: a motorbike had fallen off the edge of a cliff and Vietnamese men were hoisting it back up with ropes. We hadn't seen if anyone was actually on the bike when it had fallen down, but it was quite a sight watching them get it back up with team work and man power.

We got into Lou Cai in record time, unfortunately, and had a LOT of time to kill: our train only left at 8.30pm and it was just going on 4pm. We wanted to buy a box of red wine to drink on the train and went in search of a minimart of sorts. We came up empty, Googling the closest supermarket was a 40-minute walk away and we didn't care enough to walk it. We found a reasonably priced restaurant and settled in for the long wait, ordering a bit of food, a beer (for Edd) and plugging our phones into their sockets.

3 and a half hours later, we made our way to the train station. We listened to the conversations of the people around us that had also done home stays: they'd said it was such a pity the hosts had not gone out drinking with them. Edd was immediately annoyed at this statement, as the whole idea of doing a home stay was to experience what it was like to live in the mountains, as a tribal person. They'd stayed in one of the 'governed' home stays that had western chairs, western beds and western toilets; they booked through a tourist information company, who probably skived most of the money, and had not actually had an authentic experience. In Edd's (not so) humble opinion, why bother?!

We all started getting on the trains at 8.10pm and shared a cabin with 2 Vietnamese men of few words. Edd was sitting on the top bunk with me when the second one had walked in; he hadn't bothered consulting his train ticket to see which bed was his and bee-lined for Edd's bottom bunk. His enthusiasm was short lived as Edd promptly instructed him that the top bunk opposite mine was to be his place of rest for the evening. He then jumped down and climbed into his own bed and settled in for the night; we both knew that we'd probably sleep better on this journey as we'd done serious amounts of walking again and were tired from 2 nights minus a mattress and pillows. The comfort was exhilarating, even though our bodies needed a series scrub.