Day 287 - Bus from Hanoi to Sa Pa
Saturday, April 20th, 2019.
Today we woke up at 6:30 am because we are taking a bus to Sa Pa. I was actually relieved that Gregory paid for the tour to save the hassle of making our way on our own, plus we were advised by friends to buy directly from the hotel because there are a lot of fake travel agencies. [Gregory's note: actually, people warned us that if you don't buy a tour from the hotel, they will steal things from you and that the prices are about the same as what you would find on your own.]
The manager had told us that they would have breakfast ready for us, but when we went downstairs, they were actually making us breakfast. We ate quickly and packed half of the breakfast because a guy came to pick us up at 6:45am. We followed him as he rode on his motorcycle (it crossed my mind that it was a scam) and he stopped in front of a minivan that made stops to pick up other guests. We arrived at a bus stop and we saw our bus there.
Our English friends that we met on the beach in Myanmar had told us about these buses but I had not imagined that they were going to be that cool. The bus had two levels and we were asked to take off our shoes before entering. The reason you do that is because you lie down the whole trip. It is a reclined seat and you lie with your legs completely stretched out. See the pictures. The bus made two stops and the driver was going slowly up the mountain, so the drive was longer than we expected. We finally made it around 2:30pm. There was a man from the hotel waiting for us at the bus stop who walked us to our hotel.
The nice thing about having someone waiting for you is that they know where they are going. The bummer was that we didn’t know that you could actually stay with locals that have home stay. When we got off the bus, many indigenous women approached us and asked us if we had accommodations. We said yes and walked with the man from the hotel. Our hotel was very close to the bus stop. When we arrived, I was expecting to go to our rooms but the man who picked us up seated us in the lobby and asked us what kind of food we liked. I was happily surprised when he brought good food from the resturaunt next door. Our local guide was waiting to take us to the village. We still didn’t get to put our backpacks in our room. I wanted to use the bathroom and put in my contacts.
From the beginning, I got a weird feeling about the hotel. Anyway, we left immediately after lunch and walked around 3 km to a small village called Cat Cat which means very little. Our guide was a young local girl who was 20 yrs old and married. She was proud to say that she had finished High School and didn’t have kids yet, like most of the girls from her village do, many of them don’t get the chance to go to High School and they marry younger.
Before entering the village, there were many stands with people renting the colorful traditional dresses from the village. It was interesting to see that most of the tourists were people from Vietnam, probably bigger cities like Hanoi, the Vietnamese girls were renting the dresses and then taking pictures in the cute village with the majestic mountains in the background. This village was so different from the big noisy city of Hanoi. I was fascinated to see how different the people and their customs were, and their clothes, so colorful and full of beads and fringes! We took a lot of pictures.
The village had been rebuilt mostly for tourists to imagine how it might have been in the old days without electricity and modern machinery. There were huts and a playground with a big bamboo swing where you stand instead of sitting down. The kids, including Gregorio, had a blast, and lots of Vietnamese tourists wanted to take their pictures with us!
We made a few stops to rest, especially when going up the hill. We stopped for some hot delicious tea. We bought a bag of herbs to make some tea in our next home! We hiked more to who knows where, but I was happy to see a taxi waiting for us to take us back to our hotel. This is another advantage of buying a tour that includes all the transportation because otherwise, we would be trying to figure out how to go back to our hotel after hiking for hours. Plus, it was nice to not have to deal with all the effort and stress of negotiating with taxi drivers who don’t speak English.
Today we woke up at 6:30 am because we are taking a bus to Sa Pa. I was actually relieved that Gregory paid for the tour to save the hassle of making our way on our own, plus we were advised by friends to buy directly from the hotel because there are a lot of fake travel agencies. [Gregory's note: actually, people warned us that if you don't buy a tour from the hotel, they will steal things from you and that the prices are about the same as what you would find on your own.]
The manager had told us that they would have breakfast ready for us, but when we went downstairs, they were actually making us breakfast. We ate quickly and packed half of the breakfast because a guy came to pick us up at 6:45am. We followed him as he rode on his motorcycle (it crossed my mind that it was a scam) and he stopped in front of a minivan that made stops to pick up other guests. We arrived at a bus stop and we saw our bus there.
Our English friends that we met on the beach in Myanmar had told us about these buses but I had not imagined that they were going to be that cool. The bus had two levels and we were asked to take off our shoes before entering. The reason you do that is because you lie down the whole trip. It is a reclined seat and you lie with your legs completely stretched out. See the pictures. The bus made two stops and the driver was going slowly up the mountain, so the drive was longer than we expected. We finally made it around 2:30pm. There was a man from the hotel waiting for us at the bus stop who walked us to our hotel.
The nice thing about having someone waiting for you is that they know where they are going. The bummer was that we didn’t know that you could actually stay with locals that have home stay. When we got off the bus, many indigenous women approached us and asked us if we had accommodations. We said yes and walked with the man from the hotel. Our hotel was very close to the bus stop. When we arrived, I was expecting to go to our rooms but the man who picked us up seated us in the lobby and asked us what kind of food we liked. I was happily surprised when he brought good food from the resturaunt next door. Our local guide was waiting to take us to the village. We still didn’t get to put our backpacks in our room. I wanted to use the bathroom and put in my contacts.
From the beginning, I got a weird feeling about the hotel. Anyway, we left immediately after lunch and walked around 3 km to a small village called Cat Cat which means very little. Our guide was a young local girl who was 20 yrs old and married. She was proud to say that she had finished High School and didn’t have kids yet, like most of the girls from her village do, many of them don’t get the chance to go to High School and they marry younger.
Before entering the village, there were many stands with people renting the colorful traditional dresses from the village. It was interesting to see that most of the tourists were people from Vietnam, probably bigger cities like Hanoi, the Vietnamese girls were renting the dresses and then taking pictures in the cute village with the majestic mountains in the background. This village was so different from the big noisy city of Hanoi. I was fascinated to see how different the people and their customs were, and their clothes, so colorful and full of beads and fringes! We took a lot of pictures.
The village had been rebuilt mostly for tourists to imagine how it might have been in the old days without electricity and modern machinery. There were huts and a playground with a big bamboo swing where you stand instead of sitting down. The kids, including Gregorio, had a blast, and lots of Vietnamese tourists wanted to take their pictures with us!
We made a few stops to rest, especially when going up the hill. We stopped for some hot delicious tea. We bought a bag of herbs to make some tea in our next home! We hiked more to who knows where, but I was happy to see a taxi waiting for us to take us back to our hotel. This is another advantage of buying a tour that includes all the transportation because otherwise, we would be trying to figure out how to go back to our hotel after hiking for hours. Plus, it was nice to not have to deal with all the effort and stress of negotiating with taxi drivers who don’t speak English.
At our hotel, we thanked Chu and she told us that she would pick us up next morning to visit two other villages. I think she said that we had a 12 km walk coming up, but I chose to think that I misunderstood her, we will see tomorrow!
For pictures please click here
https://photos.app.goo.gl/AA51sHLDkBbSLvFi7
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