A planned rest day at last. Absolutely nothing on the agenda till the 5.30 pickup for the mountain road descent and the all aboard call for the Chapa Express.Loraine has carried her sketch book and pencils with her on the trip but to date has not had a chance to use them. Her plan today was to get them out. Mac had one look from the veranda and commented "Hope Loraine packed plenty of white and grey pencils." It was a whiteout. This constant pall of smog smothere...

Started the day with a trip to Fansipan. At the height of 3,143m, Fansipan is the highest mountain in Vietnam and "the Roof of Indochina". Actually, that intro may be misleading. Might imply that we skipped breakfast and that certainly was not the case. The Victoria had the biggest breakfast pastry selection to date and served them all up in bite size pieces. Mac selected eight of the delicious pastries to round out his morning repaste.Right on queue we loaded in...

The stations and stops rolled by on the eight hour overnight journey. Know that I slept until 4 am but Mac wasn't a fan of the constant motion of the trip and spent most of the night with his head jammed against the window and his feet wedged against the door trying to counteract the roller coaster ride. He probably snatched a series of 10 minute cat naps until he fell asleep about 3 am only to be startled awake by my iPad light at 4 am and then again at 5 am...