22 July: Sapa

We slept like babies, not because of the lovely bed or the clean room, which just made us feel good, rather it was from pure exhaustion of the past 3 days of travels. We had traveled 7 hours on the first bus, 9 hours on the hard seat of the boat and 14 hours on a bus again yesterday, 30 hours in 3 days! At around 05h00, a Vietnamese man knocked incessantly on our door and after it was obvious he wasn't just going to go, I got up and opened the door. He looked at me for a moment then turned around and shouted something to someone else. I was furious and still asleep, but what can you do.

We tried to sleep a little longer and just before 06h00 decided just to get up and go, we ate, took our bags and headed to the train station where all the mini vans wait for the travelers arriving. Upon arriving two women came running to us offering their van at $2 each, we accepted and walked with them to the empty bus. The train hadn't arrived yet and we knew we would still have to wait for them to fill it before we would leave, that could take awhile.

After the train had arrived we waited 15 minutes, but when it became obvious that the driver was more interested in chatting to friends than getting other passengers, we got out and he arranged we leave with a mini van already full, four persons to a row. It took another 10 minutes before they were ready to go and had managed to back out from their numerous competition. We were on our way to SaPa, the road is as winding as they come, I had already felt sick before getting on the bus, now I just closed my eyes prayed I didn't get sick and tried to sleep, I succeeded.

Leanne on the other hand was enjoying the beautiful scenery as the road slowly spiraled upwards into the clouds. As one ascends the rice paddies built in steps become more visible, villages line the roads and a mountain stream flows below. The clouds and mist engulf the soaring mountains leaving only part of the base exposed while the summit remains ever elusive.

We had hardly pulled over when a woman cornered us to look at her hotel, we walked the 200 meters and looked at the room, it was large, clean, but best of all it had a huge balcony with uninterrupted views of the mountains and valleys below, almost feels like you're in the clouds. We haggled about the price seeing as we planned to stay for a week and she agreed. Settling in we both tried to sleep a little, unfortunately neither of us could. I was feeling more and more sick. My vision had started to blur, I had poor balance and as a result I felt nauseous.

Later we walked in search of the market to find some lunch, it was barely 30 meters from our hotel and quite a substantial one at that! There were a variety of different counters at which you could sit to enjoy your food, only thing different was the excessive amount of raw meats displayed on the tables where you sit to eat. Its usually the same at all market stalls, except in a lesser extent. Here you sit down and in front of you is a whole boiled chicken, feet, head all attached, next to it is a bulk of beef, maybe even pig feet or ears.

Sitting down at one of the stalls we ordered vegetable spring rolls and a plate of fried rice, vegetables and pork, both were equally tasteful. One of the differences between the market in SaPa that we hadn't seen in any other market were the traditionally clad minority hill tribes. Each tribe has their own dress code and everyone, from the youngsters to the elderly dress in that style, "no problem with hand me downs"! The children are also tied on their backs, very similar to the Xhosa and Zulu's.

The evening we went back to the market for food, this time trying a different stall. We again tried pork and vegetable spring rolls, although these she didn't make fresh, rather she went and bought them from a competitor. We also tried fried noodles, vegetables and Tofu, very nice! After dinner we went in search of water, but what a process! We had always paid 5 000, but now almost everyone wanted 10 000, some even 20 000. We found one person who was willing to sell for 7 000, but there was another local constantly making remarks from behind us and in the end he didn't want to sell to us anymore.

We walked around for another 20 minutes through the majority of the night markets trying to find water. After no success we returned to him and offered him 8 000, but now he wanted nothing less than 10 000! We walked on and on the way back found a street stall where the lady was willing to sell us water for 7 000, we bought 3. Thus far, our impression of SaPa wasn't very high, everything was commercialized and the prices were excessive, restaurants even charged in Dollars!

Returning to our hotel we stopped along the way at a bakery to buy a chocolate bread, similar to a cinnabun, but not as nice. Back in our room we worked on the internet before discovering our roommate, a small field mouse . We tried shifting around furniture in an attempt to get it out the front door, even using our backpacks as a barrier, but no success. Realizing we had limited energy and knowing it wouldn't bother us we left it alone hoping it would do the same. We settled down to watch Ice age 3, but half way into the movie, the mouse decided not to honor its side of the bargain. We were lying down on the bed, when it jumped first on Leanne's head and then ran over mine. Deciding we didn't want to go to sleep only to be joined under our duvet by the little rodent, also feeling the cool of the night. We spoke to the lady at reception who gave us another room where we slept the night, unfortunately no internet!