Oh man i hate when i get behind like this, my memory is awful trying to think back to anything that i`ve done.
It`s been a miserable day in `Hue` weather wise, typhoon Mirinae hit the central coast a day before yesterday and the area`s experiencing pretty bad tropical storms, and doesn`t look like letting up anytime soon either.
Anyway i thought i`d take the opportunity to have an epic catch up of the last 8 or so days.
Sapa seems ages ago now :S the bus wasn`t that eventful to be honest, we did pass two lorries that had melded into one in what must of been an almighty crash, but ours was the usual uncomfortable, slow, depressing journey that i was expecting.
I kept away from the tour options for Sapa, i`ve been trying to do more and more on my own recently, so there was only me and one south Korean guy on the bus that where actually backpacking, the rest where locals returning home. I got chatting to him (he`d only started learning English 12 months prior) but we decided we`d save some money and share a room. We ended up with a hotel, free wi-fi, towels, 2 double beds, all for $4 so 2 dollars each. He was a dead nice guy, i can`t remember his name as usual, but he`d spent 21 years learning different forms of martial arts and then the last 6 in the Korean military, so yeah he was hard as nails as well.
We did a bit of lax walking on the first day, neither of us had slept well and didn`t fancy anything to extreme, we thought we`d save that for the next day. The plan was to go to Cat Cat village, meet the locals, stroll around the rice paddies and then loop back on ourselves and then back to the hotel, and to be fair for the most part we stuck to it. The village was awesome, a few too many tourists which killed it a bit but it was nice to see people getting on with their lives, the rice paddies again were really cool, exactly how you`d imagine them but on a much vaster scale, so It was only on the loop back that things started to go a little off track.
You see we`d seen village folk crossing this river on this bamboo bridge/ balancing pole and disappearing over the hill. We thought we`d go explore and then just come back at the next turning point. So we went over this one river, then another, then up a small-ish rock face. "Bruce lee" in front of me was springing all over the show over rocks under tree roots, i was just scrambling behind trying to keep up.
It was nice to feel like i was properly trekking at this point, no paths or signposts... at one point we got to this dried up mudslide which was honestly nearly vertical. He pointed to the top, so i just sorted suggested "sure, lead the way then" It was so slippery trying to get up, by the end i was covered in mud, i`d been using anything for levitation, so my knees elbows and head were caked.
Eventually we made it though, the view was pretty spectacular and we thought we`d go a little further and try and get right to the very top of this hill.
The trail of the villagers had gone by this point and we found ourselves climbing round the outside of this tree, until the floor, which looked like it was made up of twigs and branches partly fell through (it`d looked pretty steady before hand) and as we clinged onto the biggest tree branch we could find you could see from the partly broken floor that it was a vertical drop to the bottom of the hill. I was scared s**tless at that and for the first time wondered at what exactly i was covered for on my travel insurance. We slowly creeped back round to were we started and found a different route down, i slid and tumbled the entire length but after hitting the river again we both let out a sigh of relief at what was easily the stupidest thing i`ve done since setting off. Still fun though
At the night we went out to celebrate not dying with a bottle of herbal wine which was served in a gasoline tank (nice) and just before leaving this little fella in the picture above came over looking a bit lost, i think he was just intrigued by everything, he didn`t ask for any money or beg, he just played hide and seek and laughed at us acting stupid. *I only mention this as i like the picture so much :D
*Back to Hanoi, wash, shower, drink, drink, err drink, sleep, wake up, off to Ha long bay
I was quite lucky with our group, i coaxed everyone from our room to join on the same tour.. we`d all had drinks the other night so knew it`d be a good laugh. On the bus alone we went through 2 litres of vodka while meeting the rest of our group and playing card games (ashamedly the drinking seems to of increased considerably since leaving China) Thankfully by the time they let us loose in the kayaks though we`d mostly sobered up (you`ve gotta love their attitude to health and safety over here)
The bays amazing by the way, in the same way as i was stunned by the great wall, the experience of Ha Long was similar. I could easily of stayed there weeks rather than the few days we did.
I mean the first morning on the beach at half 5 and that was our view, definitely beats driving in the rain to work (sorry guys) This day we again got in Kayaks, just the two of us this time, and headed off in the direction of these far off islands with the intention to only come back once we`d found something cool. After four hours in pretty much one direction we arrived on this unmanned beach and after a little exploration found this fairly large home and introduced ourselves to the residents. It`s quality when you stumble on things like this, they invited us in and gave us tea and wine, they showed us to the top of this hill on their island and had a little game of football, they even had a go in our kayaks while we swam alongside.
Even the ride back served to the adventure as after an hour of rowing against the current we were beat and couldn`t continue for another 3 hours. We changed our direction and headed towards this little fishing boat and haggled for a lift, the guy was pretty apprehensive at the first, i think he thought we were kayak pirates and after his belongings, but after alot of pointing and smiling he let us on and before long we where sharing a can of beer and he was letting us steer his boat towards our island, kayaks being towed along behind, it was an awesome end to and awesome day.
Back to Hanoi!
