Crazy Bac Ha

After a sleepless night in the hotel with paper-thin walls, I woke up at 5:45 (ugh, AM!) to catch the local bus to Bac Ha at 6:30. Asking for directions to the local bus station was of no use, because private taxi touts were everywhere!! There was no straight answer from anyone. Ugh! Turns out that the bus station was seriously 300m from our guesthouse, just around the corner. Ha ha, we made it there by 7am and bartered with the unyielding minibus driver for the fare. The final price was 30.000 dong per person, with the posted price being 23.000...I am sick of the foreigner surcharge! Haha, on our way back...the bus was packed to the brim with many people sitting in the aisles and standing... it makes PERFECT sense that we had to pay 40.000 pp... somehow, getting more people on the bus doesn't make it cheaper. The ride there was a bumpy 2 hours...but coming back, was 4 hours in total!! Ahhh...Vietnam.

Even though the road to Bac Ha was the worst I have encountered in Vietnam (waterfalls...running right across the road! and lots of mudslides), the Sunday market was worth the trip. People from all the neighbouring hill tribes descend en mass and buy everything from livestock to earrings.

The train ride back to Hanoi on the hard sleeper was tough (hard means HARD! Straw mats...the gorgeous embroidered blanket I bought at the market came in handy..lol), and we arrived at 4:15am. And believe it or not, we ran out of gas for the THIRD time. Ya, I'm serious! But this time...it wasn't entirely our fault. The people steal the petrol from your bike when it is in the cargo compartment. SOP. So we thought about putting some gas in a bottle in Lao Cai, but it was raining, and we were lazy. Thankfully, there is always someone to help out when a profit is involved; we paid a guy 10.000 dong to bring us some gas... WOO! What an end to the motorbiking adventure. I am still in one piece, but SO grotty from wearing the same 2 sets of clothes for a week. But that's why I checked into a very pricey US$16 dollar room with ooh, A/C and hot shower!! Living like a queen now! :)