Anyway the trip (minus some of the unhappy incidents between colleagues and tour guide) was good. It was different from the one we always had. No luxury.
Sapa. Was our first stop. Took a 9-hours train from Hanoi City to somewhere near the border of northern Vietnam-China, Lao Cai (aka 老街). And transit an hour bus ride up the mountain to this place called Sapa. Everything was planned and booked through the Hanoi hotel which we were staying with.
Main aim. Trek around the nature aboriginal mountainous area and feel the difference. Supposed to have a view of the beautiful steeply terrace rice field. But the season while we were there, was winter. Lotsa fogs and riceless yet. And sometimes drizzling. Still, theres the aboriginal families, waterfall, rivers, empty rice terrace field, ridges and of course the cool weather for us to enjoy.
We engaged in an easy 2Days trek. Easy pissy. Just walking around. Doesn't want anything too hard for us. (If u interested in the hard mountain climbing experience there, look for HQ. She did the mt everest of Vietnam, which is also at the same area. Fan Si Pan mountain, overseeing Vietnam and China. Cool. I am for sure not going to do that. hehe)
The guide was ok. They are all very small and frenly people. heh. And there was this bunch of aboriginal aunties who followed us wherever we go for hours and hours and hours. Trying to hook up a conversation with us so we can buy things from them or help us to carry stuffs (of course with a service charges).
And there's also the commercialised and uncommercialised aboriginal villages that we visited in two days.
Looking at people from different places, theres always mixed feelings. Sometimes feeling fortunate to be who I am, and sometimes feeling unfair for not being who I want. But thats life.
Anyway had some nice photos for this trekking trip.
This is the train which we travelled in. Night train with 4 sleeping beds per cabin. Beds were hard. Journey were rocky. But the cabin should be safe. Lock it. (a lot of pickpocket in Vietnam! You will notice your bags pockets and your pants' pockets were all opened after walking one round about the city. Horrible!)
And finally after 9 toturous hours we reached Lao Cai. Looks like we were all dressed in similar colors!!! Hee look at this pic. Familiar sia... Looks like I wanna shout it out loud to get the hand off my bag!!!!
Breakfast. Pancakes, pho, baggettes... 4 of us plus one more concern member of the public =P.
The church at the downtown.
Foggyyyyy and thats our little guide. Little but not that young. Mayb 1 or 2 yrs older than me.
These are the aunties who following the tourists for almost the whole trip...
This aussie couple who are also part of of our guided tour. Only the two of them. Pretty frenly. The lady looks very sweet and drewberrymore-ish.
I dunno wat we saw that made my-rhs colleague and my expressions so lydat.
Empty rice padi.
Fog makes it mysterious.
Strong. People there are small and strong. I think it will need 4 Singaporean guys to move this piece of big pole...
Slippery! The steps were so slippery that some of my colleagues slips.
Waterfall! Wee!
Ah pek with goats!
Farnie kid.
He is everywhere alone. Cute and blur looking. With his mucus dripping... Yewww...
Another muscus dripping kid out of nowhere staring at us. Pretty frustrated looking..
Kids are everywhere.
Animals are everywhere too.
Hmm why are these ducks pink!? Because the kids dye them! also to differentiate your duckies from my duckies.
Shy kids. This is the notso commercialised village where the kids do not know English at all. And initially some are shy and curious.(Commercialised aboriginal kids can speak damn good english demanding u to buy stuffs from them.)
Tou kan!
Agility.
Nice view, but i guess its even better in summer / autumn. The fog covered 3/4 of the mountain and makes the visibility to low low low.
Sun ray!
Grp pix.
And when I say 'at first they were shy'. Coz later on they were all attacking us!! Picking the paintball look-alike plant and attacking us. War started.
Cute. Pretty serious in this war.
Kids vs Tourists. And Kids won.
This is damn farnie. She's cute. But they were very guai. Till a point, we stopped and asked them to go back home. They stopped. And watched us walked further n further. and watching and waving goodbyes to us.
We are like somewhere above the clouds...Next day.
Same people same breakfast.
This time to another village. Rented boots and had out ponchos on. It was drizzling quite heavily. The boots looks lousy but they were really anti-slip. Amazed. The fog worsen with the rain. Rivers, ridges, rice fields faded in the background.
Outside waiting for us with their colourful umbrellas while we went in a 'streetsidecafe' for lunch. Lunches were all prepared by out tour guide. Baggettes sandwiches or noodle soup.
Cartoon boots which really works. And luckily we did rent the boots instead of wearing our own shoes. Look at the mud!
And the rocky road!
whhoo... And luckily we went back to town via a mini bus. We were lazy haha.
