We've had a great time in Sapa! Having received mixed reviews from others who've been here before, the negatives being the cold weather (the altitude is 1650 metres, the town is generally mist shrouded and it rains a lot) and the local tribespeople who hassle tourists excessively, we were braced for the worst, which probably softened the blow of the downsides. That said, we haven't really had to contend with them, as on the weather front we've had mostly glorious sunshine the whole time we've been here, and the persistance of the tribespeople is a bit of a pain, but they seem fairly distant from our fourth floor balcony, overlooking the town! The lovely, clean room with cable TV, wifi and fantastic views, alongside the fresh mountain air around us, have been a real contrast to the less pleasant conditions of our recent road trip, and having turned up with no clean clothes left, and sweat and dust running riot through our hair, clothes, bodies and bags, it's been fantastic to fully clean and refresh ourselves. And also catch up on this blog, of course!

With the weather being so good, though, we only hung out in the town of Sapa for a day before embarking on our ascent of Mount Fansipan, Vietnam's highest at 3143 metres, at the time not knowing the clear skies and sunshine would hold out for longer. On top of the two of us, our group consisted of Dutchman Fan, our local guide, San, and our porter, Du. San had been called in at the last minute for some reason, and for the first morning he still stunk of booze from the night before, but despite both that and sleep deprivation, he turned out to be pretty good!

Day one, we climbed from 1900 metres to 2800 metres, although we only actually walked for a few hours. Frequent stops were needed, however, to recover from the lung-burstingly steep ascents, which often required the use of both hands to haul ourselves up. A tad different from our recent Chinese exploits, and the fully stepped mountains we'd become accustomed to!

Our overnight stop was a nightmare. It was freezing. We had to sleep on wooden floorboards - not comfortable! And some immensely selfish Korean idiot, who must have been about fifty years old but acted more like a five year old, wouldn't shut up for virtually the whole night, moaning about the cold in both Korean and English, despite constant (and decreasingly polite) requests to do so.

Day two, after a couple of hours sleep each, we set off just after 7am, to reach the summit by 9am. Hard work again, but well worth the effort! Take a look at the pictures, the views were tremendous. We stayed at the top for almost half an hour, absorbing the peaks rising out of clouds around us, and enjoyed the fact that we were the first up there that day, and then began the inevitable descent. We were at the bottom by half three, and back in our hotel room an hour later to rest our weary legs.

And we've now rested them for three days, with nearby town Bac Ha our destination tomorrow morning! We had a walk around some local villages yesterday, but nothing overly strenuous, just a stroll amongst the beautifully stepped rice paddies, and numberous dogs, pigs, ducks, chickens and water buffalo.

That's all for now, I'm fully up to date for the first time in about two months! Bring on the rest of Vietnam!