We were collected by our guide for the trek. Well I say our guide as I was a bit confused by the amount of local ladies with us...About 15 in total. We felt like the Pied Piper! They were all dressed in the traditional dress and most of them spoke good English. The trek was so good. The views, wow I've never seen anything like it. The photos below are just from my Iphone so I'm hoping the one's on my camera are better. Green hills and rice terraces as far as the eye could see. Little villages. Streams. It was so quiet and peaceful and it smelt so fresh. Sapa is actually really close to China and I felt like I was in another country. We were really lucky with the weather too as it's rainy season but the sun shone for us all day. The 14km trek was good but one annoying thing was the local ladies (who had previously been all nice and friendly), tried to sell us handicrafts (supposedly hand made) at lunchtime and at the end. They were really persistent and we both got ripped off after we found out how much other's had paid. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a lot of money to us but probably a lot to them. You just have to suck it up sometimes.
The next day we walked to Cat Cat village to see the waterfall. Again the scenery was just out of this world. Breathtaking. I didn't feel like I was there (if you know what I mean!). We decided to go it alone for this trip and it was nice to relax and enjoy the views, knowing I wasn't going to get hassled by the ladies. Later we caught the sleeper night bus back to Hanoi. Apologies if you read this on Facebook but for those that didn't, this is what happened!
We arrived into Hanoi at 2.30am... we were supposed to arrive at 5/6am as we were going to the local bus station to catch the bus to Halong Bay. So arriving at 2.30am we had no hotel and we hadn't slept a wink as the bus driver was mental, going far too fast and beeping his horn every 2 minutes. We walked around trying to find somewhere to sleep for a few hours... the rain started coming down really heavy with thunder and lightening! We tried a few hotels but nothing was open. We found a hotel that was open and noticed they had hourly rates. Not thinking about it, we booked a room. It was only for a few hours. We got to the room and it stank of stale smoke. Then we noticed a massive mirror on the wall. Yes we had booked ourselves into a prostitute hotel!! Anthony managed to sleep but I think I had 30mins. The smell was awful and I was confused as to why there were towels on the pillow???
We got up at 6am, very delirious and booked a taxi to take us to the bus station. It was still chucking it down. The taxi driver spoke no English and stopped a few times pointing at google maps on his phone. We had no idea what he was trying to say. Then we arrived at the station. Got out and realised we were at the train station with the same name. I lost my cool a bit then. Luckily Anthony was on hand with free wifi and google maps. The bus station was 5-10min walk away. Hurrah! We walked there and asked for the bus to Halong Bay. There was a bus waiting ready to depart. It left 30mins after the scheduled time and we knew then, this journey might not go as planned. We watched the TV which played Vietnamese music videos. The bus journey should have taken 3 hours. 5 hours later we arrived. The bus picked up every man and his dog. At one of the many stops I went to the toilet and it drove off without me!!!! I just sat there alone hoping it would return. Thankfully it did as Anthony also had my mobile! Then at one point it broke down. And the music video's were on repeat. Longest day ever! We decided at that point that we didn't care how much it would cost. No more local buses!!!!!
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