Saturday 12th September
Tackling the many travel agents, we booked out Sapa trip and made arrangements for visiting Halong Bay. Thinking the city citadel was going to be more than an old wall sectioning off a military district we wandered around town, and also stumbled upon Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, where his preserved body lies. It turns out he’s on a three month holiday to Russia to change the pickle in his glass coffin, so we didn’t get to see the man himself, but all was not lost as we enjoyed exploring yet more Vietnamese backstreets. KFC for lunch was a disgrace, but everyone has their moments of weakness… talking of weaknesses we headed out for dinner with Sean and Gabriella (overlooking the town square) before meeting up with Gemma and Joe to see the Liverpool game. The pub would only show the man City vs. Arsenal game s Joe went home whilst I exchanged stories with two Bradford lads whom had taken part in the London to Mongolia car Raleigh and had plenty of great stories of Kazakhstan and other such random countries, in between Adebayor taunting the Arsenal away fans. Watching Spurs lose to United was nota trip highlight or was it worth staying up for, despite sharing the sorrow with the bar owner, whom was also a Spurs fan.

Sunday 13th September
Having already seen much of what Hanoi has to offer, we had another day to kick our heels whilst waiting for our night train to Sapa. There’s nothing wrong with a lay in, a lazy breakfast followed by a slow lunch! And eventually 7pm rolled around. Met by our guide we were taken to the train station and escorted to our carriage (posh this organised trip thing isn’t it!) which was in darkness so we sat on the side of the track for half an hour awaiting the power All lit up, we finally boarded, found our cabin and settled down for the night with duvets, air con and no small screaming children this time… perfect!

Monday 14th September
The alarm went off at 5am so we rushed out only to find the train was running an hour late (another hours sleep lost!). Finally arriving in La Cao we were very relieved to be able to push past the hundreds of taxi touts and board a mini bus with our names already printed on the dash board… we could get used to this organised tour malarkey! The bus trip to Sapa was winding and steep but the views were absolutely stunning; the mountain side re-shaped by rice farming. Carved by hand the mountains now have terracing allowing the local Mong people to plough, retain water and then grow rice, but all done by hand, and looked like back breaking work. Done across the whole valley it looks like a giant green staircase winding up into the clouds.. straight our of a geography text book! So having checked into three rooms and finally settling for the third we head out for our half day walk into the nearby Cat Cat village where the in Chai Black H’Mong tribe live. The village is somewhat tainted by the constant flow of tourists walking through but was really interesting to see their various techniques for cooking, hut building and tourist souvenir making (the last obviously being a very ancient practice!). At the bottom of the very steep walk we admired the waterfalls and contemplated the almost vertical hike back to Sapa… we even had enough energy to resist the motorbike drivers offering lifts back up the hill for $2 - they are an entrepreneurial lot!

Back in Sapa we explored the local village, with our new friends Brita and a Swiss guy who‘s name escapes me, and went in hunt of some snake wine (a bottle of yellow liquid containing a snake with a scorpion stuffed in its jams to ferment the wine, just like a worm in your tequila but Asia style!). Luckily we failed in our search and had an early dinner and bed instead. Along the way we’d recruited about 30 new best friends; all local women an girls dressed in traditional clothing selling embroidered anything - bags, purses, bandanas, pillow cases, bracelets… all tat but they don’t leave you alone until you buy at least one thing! Their English was excellent and so we had a bit of good banter which ended up in us buying all sorts of things we didn’t want or need!

Tuesday 15th September
Time for some trekking. We set off for a 10km trek along with many tag along local girls trying to get us to buy more embroidered, but useless, items. We made our way through the valley and rice fields into several villages where we had lunch and fed the local puppies in the hope that they were not future menu content. It’s amazing how many animals these guys have; everywhere there were chickens, pot bellied pigs, buffalo, dogs and ducks! We eventually reached our ‘home-stay’ (for home-stay read large building for tourists to sleep in with their guides whilst the family, who cook the food, go back to their real homes to sleep). Having soaked our feet in the cool water of the river and bonded with all the other groups we sat down to a tasty meal having been coaxed into a few shots of local rice wine (white spirits). Feeling kind of at one with H’Mong nature our peaceful evening was then interrupted by the guides all noisily downing their rice wine shots amid demands of karaoke… we reluctantly agreed to sing but only for brief rest bite from one of the guides insistence on singing out of tune Vietnamese pop at the top of his voice. Having been encouraged to party we were unceremoniously cut off at 10pm… well you have to respect the H’Mong don’t you.

Wednesday 16th September
Sleeping on those mattresses in the loft was interesting but almost comfortable. Breakfast was a mountain of pancakes, story swapping from the previous evening and apologies to the Portuguese who had tried to get an early night. Fed up we settled our bar bills (I think a bar is traditional in a H’Mong house!!) and made our way through some dense forest along the valley side to a waterfall and great valley views, cue lots of cheesy photographs. Catching our breath we made our way to the bottom of the valley and a enjoyed a tasty lunch by the river next to various precariously hanging rope bridges, which some braved and others did not! Cheating a bit we got driven back to the hotel where we cleaned up and left for La Cao to do the return trip to Hanoi. Not having tickets for the train right up until the last minute was slightly unnerving but fining out we were sharing with two Dutch backpackers who also did not have their tickets yet was reassuring (in a strange way!). Once again spoiled with duvets we settled down and got very little sleep due to noisy passengers, but you can’t win ’em all!

Thursday 17th September
Arriving in Hanoi at 5am we wearily wade our way to our hotel and collapsed after some breakfast and booking our Halong Bay trip (we decided to do organised tours for all of our last week in Vietnam in an attempt to finish on a well organised high!). R&R was the order of the day with 2for1 pizzas being a highlight! Not every day can be a culturally enlightening experience so instead we watched American dog stunt shows on ESPN including Frisbee free styling and surfing… only in America!