gray plastic slippers, Sapa, unfinished business in Hanoi and hell ride to Hue

The black Hmong tour guide stepped nimblely on the rocks that dotted the path to our homestay house with her dainty feet. Her feet was covered with a pair of gray plastic slippers, which all the hill tribe women spotted too on their feet. The slippers looked particularly incongruous with their woven, traditional garb and the elaborate decorations on the garb and I could not make out why they chose to wear such slippers.

pork floss buns and scheming bus drivers

SInce the past few days were spent without internet access, I have an excess of handwritten posts to transcribe on this blog. I will split the posts into pre-Sapa and Sapa sections. This post will reflect my expriences before arriving at Sapa; the next one will for my stay in Sapa and beyond.

On snails, showers, sticky situations, Sapa’s spectacular sights, and then some.

I cannot immediately recall how long it has been since we set off for Sapa. Being ensconsed in the mountains away from the urban life has been a largely magical experience. Here are snippets of our Sapa getaway, from our departure to our return to Hanoi.

Thrills & Spills

As a first-timer, i find kayaking damn fun (though chunwee might beg to differ… then again maybe he’s ok with ‘kayaking’ and not ‘kayaking with zihao’). once we stepped off the main boat onto our kayak and started paddling, we headed off in the entire opposite direction, and the boat crew were shouting/gesticulating wildly at us, while chunwee was virtually screaming ‘right’ or something like that.