Sapa : mountains, rice fields and lots of mud!!!

After a few days around the Halong Bay the interantional gang (Caro, Sandra, James and 2rapitenques) was ready for the next adventure. This time we went away from tourist tours and we organised a trip to the mountains by ourselves.
Sapa is a mountainous area on the northwest of Vietnam very close to the Chinese border. This place is plenty of huge rice fields where the locals from different ethnics group work. To get there we took a night train from Hanoi to Lao Cai. This was our first time in the Vietnamese trains and the only tickets available were semi-soft seats!! Semi soft?? We better say semi hard!! Ten hours by train trying to get a position to sleep (impossible task!)

The town of Sapa is plenty of things for the tourism: restaurants, hostels, hotels, internet cafes, shops, markets and travel agencies which offer different kind of activities to do around the area. We decided to go for a trekking to visit the little villages around the area and also stay in a home village house for one night to taste the local life.
The first day of trekking was a challenge. The weather wasn't very good and it was raining for a big while... and the path...oh God! it was a swimming pool of mud! All of us were slipping around! It looked like a competition to see who was the dirtiest one of all! After a while we were all so covered by mud that we started a mud war!! ueeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
You had to see how did we get to the village! Even our faces were brown cause of the mud! The people there suggested very kindly to go to visit a hot spring to enjoy a swim in such a nice environment (of course they wanted us to clean ourselves before entering to their houses :-)) . We have to say that the hot spring was cool and we then came back for dinner nice and clean!
The house where we stayed was made of bambu and wood and it was comprised of a lower porch and then a first floor with matresses on the floor and mosquito nets.

The dinner was very nice; rice with vegetables meat and fish. The only thing is that we were doubting if the dark meet was beef or dog! yes!! in vietnam dog meat is quite popular... we will never know.. but better not to know it! hahahahaha
The next day we visited another village and the surroundings. They showed us how they cook, the different kinds of bambu, the traditional machinery to grind the rice , etc. We also went to an amazing waterfall!! It was perfect for a very sunny and humid day!! We were there swimming for a while and then came back for lunch and get ready to go back to Sapa. Uff!!! After lunch and the heat!!! it was the hardest part of the trekking! An hour and a half path way up !!! You could only hear "uff" "ay" "why we didn't take a motorbike?".... but finally we arrived to the village where they had to give us a lift til Lao Cai to get the night train again and go back to Hanoi.
Once more it was a nice trip where we enjoyed the landscapes, food and the kindness of the local people.

To see some pictures of Sapa enter here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26501406@N05/

Take care!