Hi all,
Finally we get some time to travel and 31 of July landed in Hanoi (Vietnam). Couple of day in Hanoi we spent just walking around old city and because of the rain weather we travel from roof to roof, which was fun. We even visited Water Puppets show, hiding from heavy rain, surprisely for both of us, the show was not so bad.
From Hanoi we took a train to Lao Cai, small town near Chinese border, from there a 45 mins ride by windy roads and we arrived in Sapa – small hill station with scenic mountains are hill tribes villages around.
The minorities people are Hmong and Dzay mostly.
Cool weather with occasional rain, nice food, relaxed atmosphere and funny locals – can`t say that Sapa is the best place on Earth, but definitely worth to visit for couple of days.
North Vietnamese are not so aggressive and greedy like most people describe them. In Hanoi only motorbike taxi were offering their services, but even without enthusiasm. In Sapa minorities people from neighbor villages are selling hard their hand-made souvenirs. But again, if you do not want to buy anything, nobody will make you.
Tomorrow we are planning border crossing to China. Originally the plan was to go from Hekou (border city) to Yaunyang to see rice paddies, but we could not find the latest information about buses, so now we have plan B – ancient city of Jianshui. We will see what happened tomorrow 🙂