Staf & Desh travel the world: Smoking Sapa

The great thing about Vietnam is the diversity of it's climate. If you're feeling a little hot in Ha Noi, you only have to book yourself a first class sleeper train ticket to Sapa for some fresh mountain air 1600metres in the clouds... and clouds you do get!

This place is incredible - the village of Sapa is based in a valley on the hillside, and within 5 minutes you can watch the nice mild day wash over with a thick cloud of mist, emanating from below like billowing smoke blowing up from the crevasse of the valley. The result is a total white out. The air is crisp and reminded us straight away of the days living on the mountain in Canada. . all the same smells from the fresh air and pine, but without the snow.

These pictures show the view from our hotel room. . then the pictures below is what happened 15 minutes later.. very mystical, but alas, no werewolves or vampires howled through the white blanket.

Ok - and below is the mist rolling in and then taking over.

This next shot is some evening mist - sorry for being such a mist 'Junkie' but it really was incredible like some kind of apparition flying through to let the people know they are not alone.

This town belongs to the hill tribes. . so far these people have been so lovely and smiley - something you don't see too often from the Vietnamese. They all know perfect English and are very quick witted to make a sale - especially the little girls, who twist your words and squeeze promises out of you.. and then wait until you finish eating in the restaurant to hit you up again. you can only laugh at it though. After a few days, you get used to the phrase "You buy from me", and a gentle head shake lets em know you ain't no sucker.
The teenagers love the Western guys, and my friend Jay and I got totally pool sharked by a couple of sharp shooting hill tribe hussies.. it was a little embarrassing as one girl played with one arm most of the time as she was too short to reach.

Here's Desh doing some hard haggling on the mean streets of Sapa;

Along with the markets and street deals, this town has fantastic villages and towns to visit by trekking.. or in our case, a rented trail bike.

This was a really really cool way to travel, as we ended up doing a mission to a place called Silver waterfall which is a 32 km round trip on dirt roads and mud.
After the journey we were cruising about town with our backfiring beast when I noticed that the ignition barrel no longer contained the key .. that had somehow fallen out while driving. This situation was a little odd, as the bike was switched to 'on' and running, but no key to switch her back off. Then it all came back to me;
*Renting the bike
* The lady saying that the key was tied to a red rope, and that rope had to be tied to the handle bar
* Me stopping the bike at the waterfall and removing the key
* Starting the bike again and forgetting to tie the key back on.

Christ - this is my fault. So I went to a local mechanic to get some more dodgy backyard gasoline.. and then with a thick language barrier in place we played charades with the bike to show him the key was gone and I needed another. Well - what followed was a true test to how nice these people are. He went through maybe 15 barrel kits until he found a key that he could jam in and turn the bike on and off - 'sometimes'... yep - she worked, but it wasn't ideal at all. Then when I went to pay he gestured to bugger off with a smile.. so we did - what a fella!

So what did we do? We jumped back on the bike with the cold mist blowing in and stormed the 32 km trail again sweeping the roads for the key and the red rope. Our journey was fun storming the mud, but with minimal results. We were ready to give the hire place loads of money, knowing they were going to work us over.. and yes the owner was pissed off. . "where's my key, where" - I told her that it vibrated off and it was kinda her fault.. and that I had paid a mechanic to make her this one that barely worked.. my magic wasn't going very far, but my rental agent smoothed her over and said not to worry about it.
I was pretty happy with that result and we tip toed away from the muddy mess of a bike.
Some pics of the bike and the waterfall;

The shot below is what you see all over Sapa and the hills - this is their terraced plantations for rice and other produce - really really incredible from a distance.