After the views of young suburban love it was countryside, darkness, wobbly train, screeching brakes, temazepam, asleep in 20mins, village-stop, screech, roll to other side of bed, wake up, wobble back over, fall asleep, screech, wobble, bounce out of bed, sweaty, loose covers, find covers in darkness, sweat more, wobble more, "LAAAAOOOO CAAAIIII CITTYYYYYY" at 5am, dreary eyes, "bus to sapa??", "bus to sapa??", "bus to sapa??", "piss off!!", "bus to sapa??", "bus to sapa??", "fine how much??", "no frickers am i paying that much!!", "bus to sapa??", "ok whatever!", "MOOORNING COFFEEE 10 DOOOONG", "YES PLEASE!!".

We were jammed into this little bus, then when it was full and we were covered in bags and I had spilled my morning coffee on everyone, more Vietnamese people got on. I spilled my coffee some more as we wound through the mountains to Sapa with a view of nothing. It was dawn and it was cold and raining. Morale was slightly low. Slightly.

When we arrived in Sapa, the previously friendly bur driver turned into an arse, demanding his money, refusing to take us to our hostel as promised etc etc. So I shoved the money into his hand as hard as he was smacking my shoulder for me to give it to him and we walked down to where it might have been. And it was there of course. But it was closed and empty because it was only half 6 in the morning. So we sat.

So Sapa is situated right up in the mountains in the very North of Vietnam and is a popular location because of it's proximity to the mountains where the H'mong people live. These people declare themselves neither Vietnamese nor Chinese and live in small villages where they are pretty much farmers. Rice farmers, each family producing 800 kilograms of rice per year, not for sale, but for eating. They seem to just live to eat and eat to live. The men are rather crafty with metal and make lots of jewelery, the woman similarly with sewing bags and pillow cases and the like. All of course grossly overpriced, all of course not quite what they are advertised as, but all of course easily sold off to tourists who flock in the dry seasons when the sky is clear.

The landscape is beautiful, and every available part of it has been terraced for use as farming land, with it being totally impossible to look anywhere without a huge hill covered in rice being right in your line of view. The H'mong people (speaking one of 3 H'mong hanguages) are scattered through Northern Thailand, Laos and Vietnam and live in distinct little villages.

There are lots of walking tours through the mountains from Sapa, most organised ones costing US$20-40 per day, and the H'mong guides take you on a tarmac route into a fake village where you eat microwaved H'mong food in a fake house and then get a bus back. The guides themselves get 100dong a day for taking these groups, which is US$5. So if you offer one of these guides, or indeed any H'mong person you see walking the streets in Sapa (though often they approach you) US$5-6ish then they make more cash, you spend less cash, and you actually go to their village and visit their home and (in our case) cook and eat with them. We had heard that these are really worthwhile days, so hence the coming to Sapa.

So back to half 6 in the morning sitting outside the Pinocchio hostel in the cold. This is where we met Tom and Tuu, our new H'mong friends who offered to take us on a walk (12ish kiloms) and we'd go to the local market first to buy some food, then cook and eat it in Tuu's house. They were both very smiley and nice and Tom spoke enough broken English for us to feel confident going off with them for US$5 each. We arranged to meet at 8am.

So when the hostel opened after not too long, they said we couldn't checkin until the evening but that there were two rooms available for us and that we could use the staff room for a shower and change before a trek. They also of course tried to sell us one of their over-priced treks. Most hostels seem to have these "staff rooms" where all the staff sleep on mattresses on the floor and they pile the supplies up the walls and have a small bathroom off it - this was the room we were allowed to use to freshen up after our night on the train. Abi and I popped out to get some hilarious all-in-one rain mac things, just like a huge cape with a hood which went right down to the floor (obviously not on me though) because it was super rainy. We also had a sneaky breakfast snack before the trek began.

When we met the ladies, yes Tom is a lady, with a copper tooth oddly, they had a harem of young girls with them which was odd, but fine. We went to the market, and soon discovered we were being ripped off big time, so gave the H'mong ladies some cash and sent them off to buy the goods for lunch - they returned in a few mintues with some cracking bargains. We had bought a cabbage, a chicken (with all it's limbs and it's head stuck into it's arse), a kilo of tomatos and some morning glory. We of course weren't allowed to carry any of it, it all went into the basket on the back of one of the H'mongs. We walked our of Sapa.

We knew that there was a police controlled border into the national park area where the H'mong people lived, and that going with unofficial guides (as we were) was not allowed, and this came up quite soon after leaving Sapa in the mist behind. The H'mongs walked along chattering away, and we lagged back a bit pretending to be going on our own coincidentally behind this gaggle of H'mong chatterboxes. That seemed to work.

We walked a few kiloms along the main road, but then left via a path off to the right into the jungly bit. Then it started to rain even more. "Big rain". We were drenched, and had to navigate these rice fields at daunting gradients. Trekking up and down and across streams and balancing precariously on logs to cross little chasms in the mountains, then along 1ft wide paths round the hills with a huge drop to the left and a wall to the right. It was probably very dangerous, but it was also hilarious fun. Especially as Lydia's footwear wasn't quite up to scratch so she had two little H'mongs walking either side of her with their umbrellas still being shorter than her but all 3 moving like some strange Hindu god with arms and legs in odd places.

When we eventually arrived at Tuu's house, she set to work on preparing a feast with only 2 pans and a small fire stoked with bamboo. We dried off next to the fire and tried to help, but were obviously being more of a hindrance so just let them all get on with making us lunch. the chicken was totally dismantled and friend in pig fat with lots of salt, the tomatoes stewed, the morning glory fried, some random beans came from nowhere, the rice was boiled perfectly. The gaggle of girls who tagged along then tried to sell us loads of their handmade stuff and we obediently bought one cheap thing from each little pair just to get them to go away. I doubt I'll ever wear my fake silver bracelet that it hurts to put on. They left pretty sharpish after this.

Then it was just us 4 and Tom and Tuu, and we had a lovely lunch together and learnt a bit more about them and their lives and culture and where they come from, and they asked about ours. It was really nice, and ended with a few glasses of rice wine. Rice wine is pretty much just vodka, little old Tuu was force feeding us the stuff.

We then left, locking the house my moving a piece of wood from over there to over here and kicking the part-duck part-goose part-cockerel thing that was outside, really strange it was. We wondered through the village and then through one of the mainstream tourist villages to get back onto the main road. We managed about half of the remaining 10kiloms along the road back to Sapa, but it was 3pm now and the poor nights sleep and super early morning was catching up with us, so we hoped on the back of some of the locals' motorbikes for the final 5kiloms uphill to Sapa. We walked about 16kiloms that day though, which I was impressed with given the terrain.

When we got back, we stripped off the rain-soaked, mud-soaked, morale-soaked clothes to reveal feet covered in skin that looked like it was a finger-tip that had been cloaked in a wet plaster for a month. Wrinkly, damp, white as a sheet, kind of cadaveric. Lydia and I warmed ours in the shower, but the other two had so such luck with the hot water. There was a bit of sunshine at this time, but it lasted about half an hour before another cloud smothered the whole of Sapa and blocked our access to the sky and to views of the mountains around us.

Lydia and I popped across the road for a herbal foot bath and foot massage (which was AMAZING) and a head, shoulder and arm massage that all took place in a strange red chair. Like I said, the foot bit was awesome, but the rest was horrible. The Vietnamese massage technique is just so violent, involving so much hitting (practically punching at times) and squeezing on sore bits and pressing down on your scalp and face then slapping it with the palms of their hands - so odd, not relaxing. The two of us then went for a wonder through the town, didn't get far as we spotted a shisha bar and had a banana flavoured pipe with a glass of diet coke. We accidentally spent rather long there and the other two were on the verge of angry when we got back to the hostel where they'd been waiting for us to go to dinner.

They got over it pretty sharpish and we went to dinner, Vang Dalat, spring rolls, noodles, "bill please", walk home, hit the sack, asleep in less than one song on my iPod (thankyou Shania).