Almost at China and 12 jackets.

I am five km’s from China. Lao Cai train station on the way home from Sapa. 

Hot Pho Ga in the market

Sapa is a mountain town known for good trekking. However I was to be rather disappointed when we arrived and had three days of pure fog and a small amount of rain. It was freezing and you couldn’t see very far in front of you, so we just chilled out. This involved hanging around town, trips to the market to eat and shop and the same around the small town itself. 

The shopping was fantastic. Northface is made in Vietnam and there is an abundance of Northface gear in Sapa as it is one of very few places in Vietnam that experience any kind of cold (and to with the fact that it is the other end of the country from the factory so the stolen goods are harder for northface to trace). After a bit of hunting we had it down pat (or pretty close) as to what was the real deal and what was fake. This lead to a heck of a lot of shopping and purchasing 12 jackets between us (don’t worry, they weren’t all for us!!)... just four of them.

A northface jacket and a heap of fog

There was a one year old at the hostel. As soon as we came in he reached out for me (not common for me and little babies). He was a very clam child. Unlike most of the young kids in Asia he didn’t pull my hair or grab my glasses. His dad, who was running the hostel, said he really likes foreigners. Funny. It was also funny when they feed him rice and such with chop sticks, so used to seeing children feed with spoons.

While I am talking about the kids, there were children no more than three, sometimes four years old selling on the streets with little ones (aged about 2, sometimes much younger) attached to their backs.  Not something I have seen anywhere else we had been. It seems while their mothers are off selling they are off selling and babysitting. I need my moment of preaching here... if only tourists would stop buying off the young children then they would get the chance to be kids (I know, the flip side is they would possibly have less food and probably still wouldn’t be allowed to go to school, so it is not as simple as it seems on the surface).

Hotpot fun

We ate the Sapa speciality of ‘hot pot’ which was quite fun. It is basically a soup delivered to your table on a gas cooker and you just add veges (and of course for you carnivores you can do meat too), cook and enjoy. It was good fun. We are back in Hanoi now, and Spike ate frog today at our fave lunch spot (go new day!!). For anyone who is interested he said it tasted like alligator. 

The local beer, Lao Cai, in Sapa and the general far north has nothing on Bai Hoi though. In fact Lao Cai is actually pretty disgusting. But you have to try these things huh. It seems most time I go for a new option it is pretty rubbish, but worth the risks for when you find something amazing.

Anyway, so we are back in Hanoi now as I finally finish this blog. Must say, I am still really liking it here. We were going to stop in for one night, just to recover from the overnight train and head down to Hoi An. But this is the second night so far. We have named this phenomenon, getting ‘stuck’ in Hanoi , the Hanoi trap. Where before you realise it you are here for a length of time a LOT longer than planned (and of course you have no desire to leave either). My theory on why this happens is a combination of the hustle and crowdedness, the quiet and openness (yes, you can have both), the way you feel at home here instantly and some x-factor (of which I cannot for the life of me figure out). 

I know for me that it can’t be the fact that I know my way around. As I can really only find my way to and from Bai Hoi (as I went for a walk yesterday and ended up walking a lot further than planned as I got off the map by getting stuck on a road the BIGGEST ministry of defence ever... no jokes... this place just went on and on for a good kilometre). So I figure it has to be some x-factor that draws Spike and I and many other e-pats and tourists in the Hanoi trap. Not that we are complaining at all. It is a great feeling to go somewhere you really like (like Florianopolis, Brazil or Cordoba, Argentina), even more rare and neat to visit somewhere and get that feeling of “I could live here”. 

Hanoi

Hanoi also means we get to visit the most amazing Indian food ever and the fantastic and cheap new day cafe for lunch. Not only is the food amazing, but the jasmine, lime, and honey tea is DEVINE.  Can’t say I am missing Lao Cai that’s for sure. Although, this is the second night and two full days here so far since Sapa and I haven’t had a single glass of Bai Hoi (possible this is a waste of such an awesome invention?). 

And it also means an awesome hostel. Where we stayed before is under renovations, so we checked into one of their slightly more expensive but amazing hostels with the biggest bed in the world (two kind singles pushed together), free fruit in the room each day, breakfast etc... awesome. We have to change today to another hotel as we have a flight tomorrow morning (as it was cheaper to fly than to take a 17hr train ride!!).