All aboard.... we headed for hanoi train station around 7.30pm. We located our cabin, who we shared with two boys from Singapore. This was our first night train experience, and turned out to be a pleasant one.... apart from one of the lads snoring for the majority of the journey! We arrived at Lao Cai around 4.30am the following morning and it was freeeezing. After waiting around for an hour or so, we got our bus to Sapa. It was around an hours drive, all uphill and bendy... Peter reached for a carrier bag at one point! We stayed in Sapa summit hotel, which would be a really nice hotel with fantastic views if the weather wasnt so miserable. We couldnt check-in to our room until later that day so we had a quick freshen up, breakfast and got ready for what turned out to be one very muddy trek.

When we say muddy, we mean muddy... infact muddy is probably an understatement. We got wrapped up and headed out with some of the Hmong tribal women, descending down very steep, slippery, wet and muddy hills. The women gave everybody a helping hand, which we thought was nice.. until later when we arrived in their village they kept asking us to buy something from them 'You buy from me, i help you.. you buy from me' ... knew them being nice to us was to good to be true. Later that afternoon we had a quick look around sapa and headed back up to the hotel.. Lucy got the job of cleaning the walking boots 'Smart', whilst Peter took the bags to our room. By the time we had showers, it was tea time.. all our meals were included in the hotel, so we headed down for something to eat.. it was that cold people were sat with coats, scarves and even ear muffs on. We didnt really do much that night as we decided to snuggle up in bed with the electric blanket on watching shrek.. I know what you all must be thinking but some nights it has got to be done.

We had breakfast at 6.30am the following morning as we had to catch the bus to Bac Ha market at 7am.. the journey took around 3 hours. Bac Ha market was huge selling fruit, veg, fish, meat, clothes.. cows, chickens, horses, dogs, buffalos and last but not least pigs. Although when handling the pigs Lucy got quite upset because when they sold them they just threw them into a bag and tied it up without any holes for them to breathe. From all the hundreds of stalls the only thing we purchased was a 30p scrubbing brush that we thought would come in handy for cleaning our boots next time. Haha. After looking round we had lunch and headed back to Lao cai via the chinese border... soooo close, yet soo far from being in China :-( .. Maybe on our next trip eh?? Our bus dropped us off near the train station at around 4pm.. only bloody 5 hours before our train ... what could we do in Lao cai for 5 hours.. Beer anyone???