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"You Buy From Meeee???!!!!!."
I was pretty impressed with Chris this morning. Although he drank the most last night he was up before all of us. He told me he went down stairs and saw the lady of the house making breakfast. She was surprised to see him up as well!
She told him her husband found Chris asleep on the toilet last night! Haha, that's why he took so long to come back to bed. He didn't remember until she told him lol luckily for them he was fully dressed.
I got up and joined Chris as soon as I could smell breakfast cooking. We all sat around the table again and were served tea, coffee, fruit and pancakes. It was very nice but what we really could needed was a greasy fry up!
At first it was a bit awkward sitting with the Frenchies but the old man apologised for moaning last night and explained it was because they didn't sleep well the night before. We all felt like saying "Yeah, thats your own fault for staying up in the train cabin stuffing your faces with cheese and wine! You had no consideration for Dani's sleep then did you?!" But we just accepted their apology and forgot about it.
The trek back to the Summit Hotel in Sapa town took at least three hours. We walked through rice terraces, bamboo forests and visited Giang Ta Chi village to see the Red Dzao People. They followed us on our walk. A lot of the rivers and waterfalls were low because it's the dry season. So we were able to walk out and sit on large boulders at the top of the waterfall. It was a very steep drop down so the height made me feel a bit nervous at first. The climb up to the top tired us all out, so it was nice to just stop and enjoy the views. There was no mist today, we could see far into the mountains and hills opposite and the rice paddies that decorated the sides of them.
It was a very steep walk down from the waterfall. My legs and feet were sore from the last two days of walking so I had another ten year old help me down! I remember thinking how proud I was of myself for not falling over so far, not once and I didn't even have a stick!!
We were joined by more friendly locals on our way to the village. The ten year old had a beautiful big smile and she loved posing for the camera. One of the other young girls was teasing and playing with a baby boy on his mothers back. She kept making him laugh while giggling out loud, I got some lovely photos of them. I only wish I could have printed them out so they could keep one.
We came up to a suspension bridge just before lunch time. Two older people thought it was funny to rock the bridge making it hard for everyone to cross. It was quite funny but a little bit scary for some of us lol. Chris kept telling me to walk with my legs apart, but instead I crawled across clinging to the wire railing lol.
We reached H'mong village where we stopped for lunch. We had travelled for three hours, six kilometres in total. Breakfast didn't fill us up for long so by now we were hungry!
We noticed a group of tourists on a table. As soon as we arrived and sat down, the local people of the village and the women and young girls that had walked with us on our trek began selling to us. They would not give up and were so persistent! There must have been about fifteen of them all desperate to make a sale. We weren't interested but the frenchies bought a bag and something else. I was sitting right next to them. They kept saying the same thing over and over "You buy from me?!" it became very annoying and we were praying our food would come soon. They weren't interested in the other table anymore, we were fresh meat to them! The young girl with the big beautiful smile was now very sad and frowning at me and Chris. She kept saying "I walked with you the whole way, everyone is buying but your not." Chris replied back to her "Go to one of the others then, sorry we did say we weren't buying anything today." I felt guilty so I hung my head down and covered my ears to try to block them all out.
After about ten minutes Chu asked us if we were ready for lunch. We all shouted yes! Then the ladies left us alone.
When we finished breakfast we all rushed onto the mini bus. We arrived at the Summit hotel at 2pm, we went for a shower then sorted out our bags for the sleeper train back to Hanoi.
We met up with Dani, we had a couple of hours to kill so Dani and I decided to go for a forty five minute foot massage. It was really nice to get a bit of girl time and Chris was happy enough sitting in the cafe across the road with his hot chocolate with whipped cream on top in 'peace and quiet' as he puts it lol.
The beauty salon was cold and we could see mist blowing past. We snuggled into our comfy chairs with think furry blankets on top of us. Dani had a young guy get to work on her feet while a lady painted her nails. I had one young lady work on my feet, all of them were really good, it was just what we needed after all the trekking.
I started to put some mascara on. The girls were very interested and stared while I put it on. I showed them it and offered it to them to try once the massage was finished.
The girls were very excited. I gave my mascara and watched them both put it on in the mirror. They said they had never used mascara before. When they came back over they didn't seem too impressed and said my lashes curl up better than theirs. I told one of the girls to sit down on the stall in front of me, then I put the mascara on her. I could see the other girl sitting quietly watching me in the corner of the room. As soon as I finished I called her over so I could put it on her too. She jumped up so quickly with a huge smile on her face. It felt so nice to be having a big girly moment and sharing something new with the two Vietnamese girls. The boy was also watching, I offered to put some make up on him but he ran away shouting "No no no!"
We thanked them all and went back to the hotel for dinner. We all ate together before getting on the minibus at 5:30pm taking us back to Lao Cai train station.
Our train wasn't actually departing until 9:30pm while Dani's was leaving at 7:30pm. We think the mini bus took us to the train station early because the roads would have been too dangerous after dark. It must have been difficult driving there anyway because of the thick fog that had crept in from the mountains.
Apparently we were lucky with the weather, the few days before were raining heavily.
When we arrived at the train station we were asked to wait in a restaurant while our guide went and collected our tickets. We asked him if he could put us on the earlier train. He made a phone call and luckily there were a few free spaces so that saved us sitting around for a few hours! It also saved Dani waiting for us at the other end.
When the train arrived we jumped on and settled into our cabin. We were sharing with a couple from Australia. They were really nice and had a great sense of humour. We all stayed up for a couple of hours talking about the most random crap ever! Like dreams and fortune tellers!
We told them about Sapa and the French group and how the man kept Dani awake in her cabin by snoring. Then as we all curled up to go to sleep the guy told us he snores and apologised in advance for keeping us awake, lol oops! Chris handed me my iPod and we went to sleep.
We really enjoyed our few days in Sapa, it was a great experience and we met some lovely people.
Charlotte & Chris
- comments
Natly Never used mascara! Oh my! I bet they loved it :-) x
Mum I hope they can wash it off ok - panda eyes hehe x mum