29 July: Sapa

At last a morning where we could sleep late! We woke up just before 08h00, finished up and headed down to the family and our guide. We were offered coffee before breakfast came, its a 15% coffee, 55% sugar, 30% creamer mix, sweet but nice. Breakfast was again pancakes with syrup and banana's, they gave us ample and we couldn't even finish everything. After breakfast we put on our shoes and we headed off to the xxx village in the mountains.

We first crossed a nearby river, before starting with the steep climb up to the village. Although not as slippery as the previous day, we still needed to have our wits about, as we slid and almost fell on more than one occasion. As you climb up the mountain side the weather changes radically, from warm and humid in the valley to cool and almost chilly at the village up top. The views were also surreal, mountains surrounding the valley with different rivers flowing into one large river and rice paddies surrounding everything else.

The village was one of the poorest we had visited, there were considerably less animals, rice paddies and the houses looked dilapidated. We walked through the village, which was in total no more than 5 houses, before starting on the slippery road down to the bridge below. Upon reaching the bridge we walked off the road heading through the rice paddies, corn and green bean plantations. We walked along a barely trodden dirt road before turning off towards the river. As we walked closer to the roar of the river, we could see the waterfall, unfortunately it soon disappeared behind rocks as we came to the site and we couldn't go closer to see all of it. We watched the water roar by for a few minutes before another group appeared and then the rains started, not hard, but enough to get us to hurry back to our home stay, which was in actual fact just around the corner.

We arrived, washed the mud from our shoes and sat down to rest. Our food arrived soon after, much the same as the previous day's lunch, a bowl of noodles, fried egg and some sparsely added vegetables. Our guide joined us for lunch and we tried to figure out whether he could arrange that the bus pick us up in the village, rather than walking back the mud drenched route we had come the day before, we didn't get very far. After lunch another group of 3 French families arrived, we collected our bags, put on our shoes and after greeting the family headed in the direction we had come. I tried to get him to understand that we didn't want to walk back the route we had come and would rather pay and take a bus up to the village, as it's not even the most beautiful scenery with the construction, he made no effort. Only when I saw a mini van heading up the road did I ask him to find out whether they would take us up. The price was 70 000 VND, for a 20 minute drive, much more than we would pay under normal conditions., However walking back through those mud/clay pools on a construction path where trucks and caterpillars drive only to ruin expensive shoes, wasn't our idea of a fun trek, nor a scenic one.

20 minutes later we were at the village sitting inside, the rain had started half way up the mountain, but now it had turned torrential. The roads turned into rivers and walkways were turned into raging streams, our guide would have made us walk up the mountain for 1 ½ hours in such weather! We waited in the restaurant for 20 minutes before our van came to pick us up, the road up the mountain to SaPa was ridiculous. There were parts where the eroded mountainside had become a landslide zone and we had to drive almost 4x4 to climb over the sediment deposits with huge boulders lying all around. We stopped halfway up to pick up a Dutch family before continuing, the road was now filled with pond sized puddles. Upon driving through even the windows were covered by the spray of water and mud. Small streams flowing down the mountain, had become raging rivers crashing on the road. I can only imagine how it would look if the rains continued like this for a few days. At least we had some distraction for the 30 minute ride back as we chatted to the Dutch father in Dutch. We have had so much contact with Dutch travelers that we can understand them and communicate quite clearly with them.

Back at SaPa, it was a dash back to the hotel through the flooded streets. We had lost our room, the concept of booking a room means nothing here, so we moved one further down the line. Actually this one had better views, but the shower didn't work correctly and we had no internet. We collected the bags we had stored and started sorting the clothes we needed washed.

We freshened up and headed out to the market buying springrolls and fried banana on the way. We walked up the street to the souvenir amphitheater where we ate, before walking to a beer stall where we had arranged to meet John and Barbara. We sat down and both ordered Beer Hoi/ fresh beer, it was more diluted than we were used to but still nice. We drank our beer and waited for around 30 minutes, before paying and heading for the market to get some dinner, assuming they had already left SaPa. Our first choice was to go to the lady we had first eaten at when we came to SaPa, but she had already left, so we went to our second choice for vegetable soup and Tofu. Returning after dinner we spent the remainder of the evening catching up with our diaries and reading about China.