'SA PArt of Vietnam

Hooray we finally got to go on a train! We took an overnight train from Hanoi to the far north reaches of Vietnam to visit picturesque Sapa.

1st stop on the sightseeing tour.

Sapa was a lot cooler than Hanoi - a bit like Britain in the summer, when it's warm. I guess we'll just have to let the pictures speak for themselves here...

View from our balcony

We climbed up through some pretty gardens to the top of a hill to get some views of Sapa from above.

Sapa at night from our balcony

One night we wandered up to the town square to investigate the Autumn Lunar festival. There were loads of glowing models of dragons, horses, mice, stars, Winnie the Pooh and even a knight on a fire breathing horse!

We went up to a local weekend market at Bac Ha which was full of the colourful Flower Hmong coming to buy and sell their wares. It was manic there - full of raucous music, pigs in sacks, smoke and ladies in the Flower Hmong garb.

We hired a motor bike once more to explore the outer reaches of Sapa - visiting Fansipan (the highest mountain in Vietnam) waterfalls (big surprise) and the expansive tiered rice paddies for which Sapa is famous. We were lucky to get there when we did, as all the fields were being harvested and burned, so we got to see them at their most interesting.

Stopping for a brief picnic - i think a creepy stalker must have stolen our camera and taken a picture when we weren't looking... either that or Matt used the timer...