Had a good nights sleep in Sapa to wake up to some pouring rain. I had left my shoes and some clothes out overnight to dry so they were absolutely sodden. We brought in our clothes and put them next to the fan in the room in a desperate hope they would dry. It was extremely misty and constantly threatening to rain while we were eating breakfast and getting ready. When we left at 9 it was still pretty awful visibility and weather, so everyone had their ponchos on. Due to the fantastic rolling views the weather was looking like it might ruin the trek. We headed off with our tiny guide, Mi, and trooped off into the mist. We descended through the layered rice paddies towards the valley floor and walked down the valley towards the village that our honestly was at. The views were incredible as the weather started to clear up, looking down the valley at the tiered rice fields with water buffalo being used to till the earth. The views are the kind that will never translate into a good photograph due to the colours and perspective, but you can still appreciate the landscape. We trekked for about 3 hours before stopping for lunch at a place overlooking a river. It was a nice place, but we were constantly swarmed by children trying to sell things. The persistent little b*****s would go around in packs of 6-10 and harass any tourists trying to sell wristbands and homemade bags. It was a bit of fun just haggling with them pointlessly, never with the intention to actually buy anything. After lunch we carried on for about another hour before coming to Ta Van. The tiny village with the home stay. We had a bit of an explore around the village, where some of the the little bars somehow had pool tables and table footballs. We chilled out a bit before heading back to the home stay for dinner. Dinner was pretty good and we were introduced to rice wine. This stuff was crazy. It tasted pretty disgusting, I thought similar to tequila, and at a guess around 25-30%, but essentially we had no idea as it was homemade. The crazy bit was that to buy a 500ml bottle it was 10,000 vnd, which is about 30p. This rice wine the same price that the water was for the same volume. So we got a few bottles and started to play some drinking games..at about 8pm. As it got to about 10 me, Tom and 3 other guys we were trekking with headed to one of the tiny bars in town to give the owners of the home stay some peace and quiet. We had a few drinks there and some apple shisha before heading back at around 11/12 and hitting the hay for the end of the trek the next day.