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Friday we arrived in Sapa at 6:00, we went straight to a cafe to warm up and use WiFi then headed to a travel agents to sort out what we want to do here. We decided to spend the day in Sapa, hire some bikes and explore so we checked into a Guesthouse, another big sleepover as we are in a room with 2 double beds with Katy and Matt. We hired bikes from the lady who owns the Guesthouse and set off exploring in the direction she pointed, the roads are up in the mountains so you get beautiful views. We stopped at a little waterfall running next to the road but when we tried to drive away Matt and Katy's bike would not work, Ben ended up driving it all the way back with the 3 of us, Matt, Katy and Laura, following behind very slowly on the back of the other bike! We swapped bikes grabbed some fried rice and drove back to a nice view point for a picnic, after, we carried on driving along to other beautiful view points until it was time to turn around and head back. Later, we looked around the shops in town, there's about 20 North Face knock off shops within 100 metres, Bens idea of shopping heaven! We booked a 2 day 1 night trek to a village for tomorrow, freshened up then had some dinner before heading to bed.
Saturday we were up early again to check out, grab some breakfast and be ready for our trek at 9:30. We were collected by our guide Tami, she's 30ish, was married at 18 through an arranged marriage, had 2 children by the age of 23, this is pretty normal for a lady from the Dzao tribe. We trekked up to Hau Thao for a great view of Sapa town, there we a few houses dotted around where Hmong people, another tribe, live, we saw lots of animals, pigs, chickens, ducks, goats. Dzao people are known for their expertise in herbal medicine, especially medicinal baths, and they use plants from the forest to treat many illnesses, as we trekked Tami kept passing us leaves she found along the way and told us of their medicinal use. We stopped for lunch and were hassled buy little 'buy from me' girls which we didn't mind as they were very cute in their traditional tribe outfits and sang a 'you buy one from me' song! We ended up singing 'you buy one from me' all the way down to the village, Thanh Kim, this is where we were to spend the night. We were greeted by the very smiley couple and their 2 children, it was hard at first to figure out how many children they had but soon realised all the other children from the village come to play. The home stay was not as expected but still lovely, instead of a tiny little basic house we stayed in what can only be described as a newly built 2 storey barn however the family do live here so essentially it is a home stay. We sat on a little terrace overlooking their vegetable patch and a waterfall in the distance whilst they brought us tea and delicious garlic and paprika chips! We relaxed and played cards until dinner where we were served a wonderful selection of different foods and 'happy water' the most vile tasting rice wine! We were treated to a herb bath for our feet which was interesting, there were all sorts of leaves and twigs floating around in the bowl, after, we snuggled up and went to bed.
Sunday we were all woken by the numerous cockerels! We were served a mountain of Banana pancakes for breakfast then set off for our trek at 10:00. We hiked up next to the waterfall and got a lovely view of the village we stayed in then trailed along to the next, Ta Van. There are so many rice fields here all staggered down the hillsides, from a distance they look like contour lines straight off a map! The village people are so friendly saying hello and the kids saying 'bonbon' which apparently meant they we asking us for sweets, unfortunately we didn't have any, there are also farm animals and puppies all over the place! Laura obviously loved the piglets and Ben had to play with every puppy he saw. We saw so many kids munching on sugarcane that we decided to give it a go, it's quiet tough to bite a bit off and then chewing on it is like chewing bark however it is very refreshing, a light sugary water, after chewing until all the juice is gone you spit it out leaving a little sugarcane trail. We trekked to Lau Chai and stopped for lunch, this was our final destination then we were driven back to town and had to say our goodbyes to Tami. We took showers at the booking office and gathered all our belongings, chilled for a bit then walked into town for dinner, after, we walked to the bus station to catch our night bus back to Hanoi.
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