On to Sapa...

Waking up nice and early after staying at the home stay up in the small town in Lao Cai we enjoyed a great breakfast and then wandered back down to stroll through the small market that we had walked through the evening before. That next morning was completely different, with an incredible crowd gathered selling anything at all you could want.
After finishing up snapping tons of photos we returned to the van for another long trip through the hills to the town of Sapa. A small town where lots of different tours of the surrounding countryside all start from - we were staying there for two nights and had a 3 hour hillside walking tour planned.

We got in and took a quick stroll around the town, it's cute but very touristy and with of shops selling cheap versions of Columbia and Northface jackets.
It looked great, and we were excited about getting up bright and early the next day so that we could head out for our good three hour walk.

Tomorrow evening I fly up to Toronto to meet up with Tina for the weekend. Tina headed up to Canada on Wednesday to spend time with friends and family, so until we are back on Monday there will be another quick break in the telling of our Vietnam trip - sorry about that.

Trip into Lao Cai, Vietnam

After we spent Christmas day wandering around Hanoi we made our way later that evening to the luxury overnight train up to Lao Cai- the province in the northern corner of Vietnam. It was a great little room that we had to ourselves, with some extra snacks for us to enjoy on the trip.
The only problem with the overnight train ride is that we pull into the station just after 05:00 and are then off for a quick day of touring. First stop, after a few hours of driving through the hills, is a giant market in Lao Cai that is mostly Flower Hmong minorities.

We spent a few hours wandering around the market before we finally left and we then headed up to the border crossing with China.
There was a lot of movement of goods back and forth across the bridge, a quick box lunch at a small restaurant, and then back into the car for a few more hours of driving through the beautiful scenery to another small town where we were doing our home stay.

The house where we were staying was fairly simple, but the hotel that it was paired up with pretty much brings and sets up an entire hotel room for you to enjoy.

Streets of the small town, where the morning market is.

From there we went up into the hills to visit a small town of 200 or so of the Black Hmong minorities. We stopped on the way up to buy some candies to hand out to the kids that were running around the village.
It was a fully day, we got to see a great sunset as we were driving back to the home stay, stopping at a small restaurant for dinner and then heading to bed fairly early after a few quick games of Scrabble.