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HI All
We are now in Sapa which is near the boarder of Laos and China. We took the night train - which sounded good on paper but ended up being a sleepless night for me and a somewhat sleepless night for Amanda. That made two nights in a row that we had not slept. Recipe for two cranky Amandas.
The train arrives about 2km from the Chinese boarder and we then had to take a minibus to Sapa along with the twoAussies who we shared the train compartment with - Annie and Brian. In a 'small world of travelling Aussies' story - Annie and Brian were part of a story that Amber from Canberra who was on our Halong Bay tour had alreay told us - involving them being dumped in the middle of Hanoi in the middle of the night by a Taxi driver. Annie started to tell us and we realised that it was Amber that they had been with. Bloody Aussies - they are everywhere.
By the time we got to Sapa it was around 7am and we had in the previous 24 hours been on two boats, three busses and a train . We were ready for a shower. It was not surprising then that we nearly had a meltdown when they told us that we could not check in and that we were going for a 3 hour trek instead. We pulled ourselves together over breakfast and ended up having a great day walking through the rice fields of Sapa.
The street hawkers here are both sophisicated and aggressive in their approach. "You buys from me, you buys from me", "What your name" "where you from" "How many brothers and sisters do you have", "How old are you, I am...". There is only so many ways you can say no. They make you promise to buy from them, build rapport with all the questions and when it doesnt work they guilt you by saying how poor they are.
After the trek we fnally went back to the hotel, had a shower and started to chill out a bit when we had a 'naked intruder debarcle'. The room had an internal door connecting to the next room which opened, while we were standing naked after the shower, and a Vietnamese man stood there staring at us. Needless to say we were less than impressed. He had somehow managed to open the door his side, then the door ourside and walk straight in. Not happy jan. We rang up the front desk and demanded they come up and fix it. The woman who came looked at the doorand then kept saying ok, we keep saying 'not ok', She just stood there and stared at us. I despatched Amanda to go to the tour company two doors down to get them to help us. In the meantime i started throwing our stuff in our bags, and saying 'not ok' at increasing decibles to the woman who was still hanging around. "not ok new room'.....'NOT OK NEW ROOM'....At the same time Amanda had got the tour person and was standing at the front desk yelling at the hotel person and telling him off for thinking it was funny. Net net, we got a new room, king sized, although the bath would not drain, so it was hardly perfect.
Today it was raining so our tour guide revised the inital plan of going for a trek and we did a tour in a mini bus which was good until i thought i had lost our keys to our packs while getting money for amanda to buya bag of the hawkers. We found the keys, but not without some tears.
We are now wasting time until the night train home. I am hoping that i might get a bit of sleep and am looking forward to peeing into a hole in the train floor.
WE are back to Hanoi for a couple of days, then off to Hoi An. am going to try to upload some photos at the hotel in Hanoi as they reckon they have ADSL connection, we shall see. Dont' be feared, Amanda has taken around 500 photos in 7 days......so lots to see.
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