I checked into my "luxury" train to Sa Pa at 9:00 last night.
And found out that "luxury" meant sharing a four person cabin.
I guess the non-luxury is regular train seats? As I waited for my other three bunk mates, I wondered who I'd be sleeping with :-).
It ended up being a delightful family from Korea, who are now living in Hanoi...a couple and their son. They also had a daughter on board, but the travel company had put her in a different berth. They were very interested in the fact that I had no husband and no kids and was traveling on my own. (then when the husband went to the restroom, the woman told me that she envied me :-). That she hopes her daughters will enjoy that kind of independence--she has another daughter who is studying in Quebec (by the way, she was 10 years younger than me).
Once the train left the station at 9:50pm, on the dot, it was curtains drawn and lights out. I slept ok...for some reason the train kept stopping (cows on the track?:-), and that kept waking me up. The Korean gentleman, who knew trains (his dad had worked for the railroad, which was something we had in common), said that the tracks were so narrow, that the train had to go very slow.
We arrived in Lao Cai at 6:30am, and drove to Sa Pa to have breakfast and a rest at my hotel. Unfortunately, it was foggy, and so only got brief glimpses of a beautiful valley as we proceeded along the winding road. It was only about 30km from the train station, but took us about an hour because of the narrow road and fog.
After my rest, we headed to Cat Cat Village, which is inhabited by the black h'mong hill tribe people. They are mostly decendants of Chinese who migrated across the Chinese border, which is very close to Sa Pa. It is hard to pick which photos to share with you. Many had their handmade items displayed for sale along the way...
It was still foggy, so couldn't get a clear, crisp photo of the hillside village...
This was a typical house, with a stairway carved out of a log...
There were people working...
Planting seeds along the hillside...
....and children playing...
And the beautiful Silver Falls, feeding fresh water to the village...
When I returned to my hotel, there were people in the hotel in colorful dress...
And weaving ...
Then time for a Vietnamese dinner at the hotel....not quite as inexpensive as the meal i had a couple of nights ago in Saigon.
Tomorrow I will have the opportunity to visit the marketplace where they all congregate in their colorful tribal attire.
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Location:Sa Pa, Vietnam
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