track our trek

we spent another day and a half in hanoi before heading to sapa, and visited the hao lo prison (hanoi hilton) - famous for having held political prisoners during the revolution against the french colonists and american pilots shot down during the american war. we also saw the history museum and the museum of vietnamese revolutionaries. phew! this country has quite a lot of history of turmoil and struggle for independence, and museums are plentiful, if not terribly user-friendly for foreigners. sapa is reputed to be one of vietnam's honeymoon destinations...to get there, you must take a 10 hour train ride to the northeast of hanoi to lao cai, than an hour by minibus up to sapa at the base of fansipan mountain. winding our way up the mountain, we took in the breathtaking views of all the rice terraces in the morning mist. one of our poor seat mates in the back of the overcrowded van (more on that later) got car sick, and there was a flurry of passing barf bags and napkins back to her & she heaved miserably for several minutes. yikes!
it is cold in sapa! easily in the low fifties at night, and in the sixties by day...since we're chasing the sun on this world tour, we had to wear almost all of our clothing to keep warm! jokes...it's a sleepy little town, with women from the villages selling their hand-dyed, hand embroidered crafts, vegetable markets, and lots of little french cafes. vietnamese coffee is delicious, by the way! and i am no coffee drinker...but we had a few cups of coffee w/ coconut milk and condensed milk...yum. to avoid the virtual mob of people trying to sell us rooms in their hotels when we got off the van, we ducked into one of those cafes, viet emotion, and opted to have breakfast and regroup. the owner, nam, was kind enough to offer to let us leave our big packs there while we trudged around looking for a room. it's much easier to search and negotiate a good price when you don't look tired and heavy laden...not to mention, we were guaranteed to be followed by the aforementioned mob if we'd carried our packs with us. we set out and found a cozy little room w/ a fireplace for $8 at the cat cat hotel. we thought we had several recommendations about the place...unfortunately, it wasn't until the next morning that we realized the recommendations were for the cat cat guesthouse which was next door...grrr. after we settled in, we hiked down through cat cat village, a h'mong village on the mountainsude. on the way we passed lots of folks offering motorbike rides, but i was not interested in putting my life in any of their hands on the windy mountain roads! after a couple of hours' winding our way down into the valley and hiking through the rice fields, my feelings about riding on the back of a motorbike had changed. lol! we paid an extortionate price for 2 bikes to carry us back up the mountain...we didn't have much haggling power since we were tired at the bottom...it was basically agree to the price or walk. sigh...