We also travelled North East to Sapa which is the hub for trekking in the mountains and visiting Hill tribes. Its an overnight train journey (only 9 hours) and a bus ride to an Alps-like town (minus the snow) with stunning views of the mountains. Sapa is beautiful.
We wouldn't call ourselves trekkers more 'walkers' and we opted out of organised tours for a 5 hour trek just us and a guide. Quin was brilliant, he had lots of stories and local information as we walked over the mountains in two villages - Lao Chai & Ta Van. We visited the villages of the H'Mong & Zao tribes, saw the local schools, visited a home and witnessed the whole rice production business from harvesting to drying the grains.
Jay also got to sample the local 'pick me up', a tobacco bamboo bong. See the pictures for the before and after shot - look at Quin's face!Apparently (from his coughing and spluttering) one puff was enough....
(Editor's note: Let's get this straight. I thought it would be no stronger than a puff on a Marlboro Light. So not wanting to appear like an amateur, I inhaled as deeply as possible... which resulted in half a minute of coughing and head spins - much to the amusement of the local people and our guide (and yes it really was tobacco).
We can really understand why everyone raved about Vietnam before we left and we have a long list of places that we'd love to come and see (Hoi An, Hue, Mui Ne, Saigon...) on our next trip...
Photo's to follow... slow connection...
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