Saturday : overcast

Felt good today, after a good sleep. We got up and has some rice noodle soup (Pho) for brekky. Dropped our laundry off down the road $1.50 per kilo cheaper there than at the hotel.

Then went for a short walk around town getting tour quotes. It was a busy Saturday morning here in SaPa, Saturday apparently is the busiest day because of the markets.

We came back to the hotel for a break and to grab the camera, we ended just staring at the mountains for a while. We booked the Fanzipan summit tour through the hotel because it was the cheapest quote. Fanzipan is Vietnam's highest mountain at 3150m above sea level. Also booked our bus ticket back to Hanoi for Tuesday night, the bus just seemed easier than the train, we get picked up here in SaPa and hop off 12hrs later in Hanoi HA! Easy.

With the camera we hit the streets again for some photos of the town and the local minority tribe, the Black Hmong (black, for the clothes they wear) they are everywhere selling handicrafts and trinkets. Quite persistent too we ha 5-6 of them following us around for about 20mins. I've been saying I'm from countries like South Africa, England, even used Tassie so I can be more firm with them, and give them the hint that I'm not interested.

We found a big lake with a nice setting to have a play with the camera, we sat the for a good hour. There was a soccer field nearby, a game was being played, funny thing was that on the side line there were 5 buffalo and a heard of goats.

It doesn't take long in small towns like SaPa to get out of the touristy parts and see everyday people do there thing. Only problem is in these area your most likely to come across people who sneakily try and take photos of you, like we did.

We headed back into town and I bought a new back pack bargained hard, got it down to $20. It looks to be made better than the last one, and much bigger too, hopefully it will last longer than a week. Kim did well too she bought a scarf for $3 bargained down from $6 good girl.

We headed back to the hotel, but stopped off at the hotel across the road. Glad we did the view is fantastic unobstructed views of the mountains. We were just going to have a few drinks, we ended up having a few more and dinner. Twas a nice afternoon/evening.

We had a bit of lay down before going to pick up our laundry at 10pm. Came back and packed for the trek.

Had to fall asleep with the iPod going again there was a club pumping loud music down the road. And the room next to us had the TV blaring must be getting old or I hadn't had enough to drink.