Eight bleary eyes awoke to the sound of awful scratchy music blaring from the train's speakers. We were almost at our destination of Lao Cai. We had an hour transfer to the hill station of Sapa. The cloud (or snizzle my mizzle) had began to creep down the mountain side and after around 20 minutes of beautiful views across Emerald paddy fields it all went white.

The rest of the day in Sapa was pretty miserable, in terms of the weather so the plan of a motorbike ride was soon thrown out of the window. The hotel owners were so lovely that despite the weather we were in high spirits. G&C got upgraded so a room with a view-hmm, but James and I got the better deal with a free bottle of wine because 'they got the worse room!'

Apparently we only like eating at restaurants called Gecko as we found a nice place in the town and had some drinks and a great meal in the evening. We were supposed to have an early night to try to catch up on sleep from the train journey but a few 'Bia Hoi's' later and some pointless questions we ended up having a late one.