Lotten In Vietnam

What a amazing place! I came back to Hanoi this morning at 3am after two days in Sa Pa. This amazing place of nature and native people.
The bus left Hanoi at 10pm on monday, a sleeping bus, It's like a bus with beds in it so that you can lay down and sleep during the 6h drive up to Sa Pa. On the way up I didn't sleep to much so was really tired when we arrived and there was no time for rest.
When we arrived in Sa Pa town we where picked up by mini bus and in traditional Vietnamese style they pushed in as many people as possible resulting in us sitting in each others laps and standing. But luckily it wasn't that far to the hotel so it went fast. Well at the hotel we "checked-in" or we got the coupons for the food so we could go and eat breakfast and then after breakfast we could get our room keys... The breakfast at this hotel was the strangest one so far, there was pasta carbonara, potato and carrot gratin and rice and so on... but there was also bread so that's what I ate.

 The view from the breakfast resturant

After breakfast did we just have time to go and leave the backpack at the room before it was time for the first trek. Sa Pa has beautiful scenery but the local people is a bit to much literately following you to buy something from them and it becomes a bit much. But trekking through this landscapes are like therapy so quiet and the fresh air compared to Hanoi.
The first morning we did a 3h trek and was back at the hotel for lunch.
In the afternoon me and some of the others on the tour rented some motorbikes and drove up to the silver waterfall, you couldn't really see the whole waterfall because of the fog but it was still so beautiful. Talking about the fog, if the fog was stopping us from seeing the whole waterfall was it nothing compared to when we where going back down to the hotel. The road to the waterfall was up the mountain and it was not a straight road... a lot of sharp turns and steep slopes. When we where going back was the fog so intense that we could barely see 5 meters in front of us and on top of that it started raining. So it was a real adventure getting back to the hotel and it took a lot longer then when we went up even though it was downhill the whole way. But it was still so worth it.

 

 Silver waterfall

After the adventure on the mountain we went down to the market in Sa Pa town on the motorbikes so we didn't have to walk up the hill to the hotel again. The market was about to close so they had started packing some things down so didn't see to much and the thing is that sometimes in these markets it feels like if you have seen on table you have seen them all, it's a lot of the same thing they are selling. 

By the time we got back to the hotel we where freezing so much and everything was wet from the raing so a warm shower was really welcoming before dinner and after dinner it was just straight to bed, I don't even think my head had landed on the pillow before I was sleeping. 

The second day we did a 6h trek with a break for lunch in one of the villages. This one was a bit harder then the first day, the easy part was that it was only downhill the hard part was how steep some parts of the path was, at some paces we all had one local person holding our hand to help us get down. And then we had the parts where we had to balance on a 15cm mud wall not to fall down a smal hill or on the otherside fall into the water. We all made it, no one fell, some slipping but no falls. And I'm really glad that we didn't have to walk all the way up again and that a bus came and picked us up and drove us back to the hotel. Then it was just time to wait I was to tired to go down to the market so just went to lay on the sofas until dinner and then the same until the bus was leaving. And then it was the sleeping bus back to Hanoi.

 

Back at Hanoi I went straight back to the hotel and slept for a few hours before going to eat breakfast and waiting for my family. I got the best suprise ever when they arrived to the hotel and my littlebrother was with them. They have said all a long he wasn't coming and now he is here! I have been so mad at him for not skyping with me but I almost forgive him when he said it was only cause he would have spoiled the suprise if he said something. So they are sleeping of some of the jetlag and I will wake them upp in like a hour until then I will look through the photos and publish some on facebook.