Sapa

I met back up with Jen when I returned from Halong Bay to Hanoi and we spent some time talking about our adventures whilst we were apart. It was the first time in over 60 days that we had actually been apart so I think it was a little bit of a novelty!

We knew that we wanted to travel north west the next morning to a place called Sapa. Sapa is famous for rice terraces and local tribes wearing colourful traditional clothing. To get there we could either go by bus or train but after investigating with the different tour operators in Hanoi we realized that everyone was marking up the price of the tickets significantly. This made me very Hanoid.

We eventually got a better deal by walking half an hour to the train station ourselves and buying a ticket directly. This is exactly what we are going to do for the transiberian trip through Russia because the tour operators charge double or triple the price for tickets otherwise. I have even learnt Russian for "three tickets to ____ please".

The train journey was ten hours to get to Sapa and when we eventually arrived we were met with cold and cloud. Sapa is 1600 meters above sea level and was originally founded by the French as a hill station. The cold was not a problem because we each had warm clothes with us. The cloud though did cause issue.




If it were a clear day you would be able to see vast mountains and rice terraces from our hotel room window.



If it were a clear day you would be able to see the mountains and rice terraces surrounding this small side road.

In fact the best shot I got of the rice terraces was this one below.






Then I became quite sick. Which is probably the best timed sickness ever because we were ahead of ourselves in terms of schedule, in a place where it was too cloudy to see anything and staying in a really nice room. I trapped a nerve in my neck which made it hard for me to get out of bed on a few occasions and also had sore throat, headache and a cough that made me seem like a chainsmoking grandmother.

I'm still in Sapa and starting to feel slightly better now but my experience of the place has been somewhat limited. I'm sure it is a fantastic destination if it's a clear day and your not ill but my experience has been mostly from my bedroom.

bx