Day 5 - Sapa Day 2

Our Guide Ku

Day 5 started out with much clearer weather, but the same grueling up and down the rice paddies, and this time through a bamboo forest.  Today was significantly muddier; in some spots up to our knees.  I don't know how the locals manage to stay so clean, because our boots and knees were caked with mud!  We hiked to a waterfall, and then crossed a crazy bridge to have lunch before we headed up another super steep hill to the road.  It was about 15 minutes of straight up, very few turns and really hard- espeically after the 2 days we'd had!
We got back to Sapa and had a couple of hours to check out the town, but were too tired to do anything but sit and wait for the van to take us back to the train station.  The hotel there did give us a room to shower in, but it was ghetto and disgusting.  I was grateful to have my mom's Crocs to wear in the shower, because there was NO WAY I would have stood in that otherwise, and the shower did feel wonderful.  After a couple of hours the crazy van driver came to take us back to Loi Cai to the train station.  The people here drive crazy!!!  If you've been on the Alpine Loop, the road is alot like that, only not as well kept, and people drive it so fast, and they pass everyone all the time.  It was nuts!  Back to the train, and a good snooze.  Tomorrow morning we will arrive about 5 am. in Hanoi.

Mud, mud, mud!  This was so slippery, Macy had to have her hand held most of the time. 

 A view from above.  We started the day below most of what is in this picture.  LONG way up!

 Scary bridge that moved all over the place when you walked.  This lady is laughing at Macy's hesitance to cross :)

Lunch!

Brent got face to face and sniffed by the water buffalo.

Thomas & Anne from Denmark, our guide, Ku, and Julian from Germany.  

Oh, and us too! (and a little vietnamese hill girl peeking out on the lower left behind Thomas).