What a s***ty morning, we had to get up at 5am and wait outside on the doorstep of our hotel for the hotel in the dark, wet and cold. Hardly anyone about on their scooters, a man walking his dogs which was rather bizarre to see in Asia, as dogs aren't really seen as pets and taken care of, they're usually eaten in Vietnam. We haven't seen any skinned and hung up at any of the markets as of yet and if like to keep it that way!

We didn't get picked up until 6.30am so we were freezing and shattered. A guy walked down the road with a poncho in and collected us to go on a minibus, we had to pick more people up so me and scott
fell asleep whilst they done that, 7.30am we finally got to the sleeper bus that was taking us to Sapa. We finally had first dibs on getting a seat so I chose a seat on the bottom level so I wouldn't feel as though I was going to fall out of the seat every time we went around a corner. Scott had the seat above me, we both fell asleep straight away with out head phones in.
Camel Travel seem to love putting music on full volume early in the morning, everyone on the bus seen to just try and deal with it but I couldn't so I went to the front and told the driver to turn the music off. The Vietnamese passengers seemed a little annoyed but the westerners were all thanking me. Haha! Scaredy cats!
The only person who didn't get woken up and who wasn't bothered by the music was Scott, he was fast asleep catching flies and snoring; perhaps because he was so tired because he didn't sleep a wink last night because he watched the football all night! - silly man.

Once we reached Lao Cai which is the town nearest to the Chinese border and the town that links to Sapa, we began our ascent, the mountains and paddie fields gradually got bigger and bigger. The views were incredible! The way that the rice fields have been carved into the mountains by the farmers is so clever.
It got foggy as we drove up the hill, the visibility was down to about 10 metres. So the view was rubbish because we couldn't see anything other than trees on the side of the road.

We pulled up at the lake in town, there were no taxis in site and the usual motorbike taxis that crowd around the door of the bus waiting for you to get off was non existent. We were just greeted by lots of women dressed some sort of traditional tribe outfit with all sorts of Aztec patterns on them with funny hats. They look different here as well, they look as though they have shaved their eyebrows off and their faces are a lot more round and flat.
The view from around the lake was lovely, the sun appeared as we got off the bus and all the houses and hotels perched on the edge of the hills around the lake with the high mountains in the distance, it looked like something from a postcard from Austria or the Swiss alps. I think we are definitely going to like it here!

We had to walk to our hotel, it was rather warm considering the altitude up here. We had about 3 of the tribe girls following us trying to get us to buy their big bangles and homemade bags and bracelets. Scott was happy to chat with them and make friends but I was tired and hot and desperate to find the hotel to have a shower so I had no time for chit chat!
We took a few wrong turnings and I eventually gave up trying with google maps and asked a hotel for directions, the hotel was on a different road to what the maps even said! Useless.
Villa sapa, we found it! It looked nice and when we went inside it looked like some chalet in the alps, it just needed some snow outside! We seemed to be the only ones in the hotel, the room was nice with a balcony, but the 'mountain view' was of the building next door and someone's garden. Not sure of the mountains though because the dog had set in and it was getting pretty gloomy.

We took a quick shower and went out for a walk around the town, it was all very pretty with the pine and fur trees. The street which seemed to be the touristy Main Street street with little cute restaurants over taken by pretty flower baskets and some gorgeous shops that have the traditional clothing in and fabulous shoals and scarfs, all amongst north face shops. Knock offs or have slight mishaps.

As usual Scott found some more tribe friends and now they won't leave us alone so we had to go into a shop to try and loose them, it took them 25 minutes for them to leave - they waited outside for us for so long! I can see these people are going to become annoying.
The town was nice from what we could see (that wasn't very much) it felt eery but a little like Christmas again! We had never seen fog like it, visibility was really poor!

We didn't venture out far tonight, only down the road to baguette & chocolat for some Pho Bo!
We really aren't used to this cold weather yet!