Hanoi to Sapa

We are constantly on the move! We have been traveling at night so we don't waste full days and have spent the last week sleeping on buses, trains, and boats... an adventure indeed! We took the night bus from Hue to Hanoi and arrived early in the am on March 7th.
When we got to the hotel in the morning we started looking at tours and luckily since we left Hue a day early we were able to schedule a tour up north to visit the town of Sapa and do a two day Ha Long Bay tour. We were stoked, but that meant we had to leave that night on the over night train to Sapa. Sapa is a small town in the north located in the middle of mountains covered with terraces of rice paddies. We came here to do some trekking to a few of the minority villages.
Since we arrived in Hanoi at the crack of dawn and our train to Sapa was a night train we had the entire day to explore Hanoi. We walked around a beautiful lake in the middle of the city and just strolled aimlessly through the streets. We were exhausted from walking all day and passed a cinema so decided we deserved to see a movie. The only English speaking movie was Safehouse and get this... it was only $2.50! It was really good and it was nice to escape the heat. That night we took the train to Sapa.. Mark's first train ride!! We shared our bunk room with two locals who had us turning off the lights at 8:30 for bed... a quick end to our card game! A fun experience all the while!
We arrived in Lao Cia early the next morning and took a mini van into the mountains to Sapa. We then started a 6km trek in the terraced rice paddy mountains which was AMAZING! We walked to Cat Cat village which consisted of small wooden houses surrounded by bamboo and fruit trees. We then walked to the Cat Cat waterfall and watched a traditional performance put on by the village teens. The rest of the afternoon and night we were given time to explore Sapa.
The second day we got up early to start a 12km trek around the mountains and visit several villages. Our group was only six of us and our guide was a young girl from the near by village. She was educating us on their culture, it was incredibly interesting. She was only 19 and she was pregnant with her second child. She got married at 16 and had her first kid at 17. Many of the women with babies were just teens, they get married very young and move into their husband's families home and start having kids. The houses are very small and normally house several generations. They all sleep in a loft area together. It's an incredibly different culture, in the US kids complain if they have to share a room.... imagine if they were told mom and dad are sleeping in the same room now too and dont't forget about grandma and grandpa! crazy!
The trek was wonderful. We visited the Ta Van village, Dao village (Giay community), and Lao Chai village (Hmong village). We got to go inside a village home as well as a school which was awesome to see. The trek was wide open, we had such phenomenal scenery of the rice paddies, villages, valleys, and mountains. We arrived back at the hotel, which was situated on the side of the mountain (again, amazing views!), had some dinner and headed back to Lao Cia. We hopped on our night train from there and began our journey towards Hanoi. That's all I got for now.. thanks for reading!