Kunming-Dali-Kunming-Sapa-Hanoi

Hey everybody!

Met de snelheid van het licht: the next travel story! We are trying to keep the blog more up to date, so you guys really know what we are doing and not reading an archive. Here we go again! 

We arrived in Kunming in the Upland IYH, we booked the 'Mountain Dorm'. Very mysterious, but the room kind of fitted the description haha. The next few days we arranged a lot of stuff, chilled a lot (playing pool, eating, reading, playing Boonanza and so on) and took care of the visa for Vietnam. Yes, that's right Janneke and Fleur, you need to bring a picture if you apply for your visa. Oh, you will look the other way if we pay a few Yuan extra? ....Oke.... Well, that's sorted then. Vietnamese bureaucracy. Unfortunately I got kind of sick while staying in Kunming, so when we had to take the night train to Dali because we'd already booked it, I couldn't have been happier. But, I really have to say that you can be surprised by your body, sometimes you can handle more than you think.

After a nightmare finding the hostel in Dali (We got there eventually with the help of a shy Chinese man in a very pretty car, we sort of begged him to take us, we didn't know what else to do..) we arrived at the Jade Emu, a nice quiet hostel. We ate some extraordinary pumpkin soup, met Emily and Norman (an English girl and a French guy, both great people) and did movienight with 'Face Off' and 'Seven'. The next day, we wanted to see something of the surroundings, but I still resembled a dishcloth. Janneke had the solution, Norman and herself would go on mountainbikes and I got an electric scooter. It was a blast! They even lifted a bit with the scooter and got to 45 km/hour. The surroundings were nice, pretty little Chinese villages alongside a big lake. We also tried A LOT of streetfood in the small streets of Dali, I dare to say it was a culinary experience. It was a bit of a shame it was so cloudy during the time we were there; Dali is a small town surrounded by mountains, they were covered in mists and not really good for hiking.

After Dali, we went back to Kunming, picked up our visa, chilled a bit again and got on the bus to Vietnam. The busride was amazing. The landscape changed, there were a lot of hills covered in green with rivers flowing besides them. And palmtrees! I think you have to see it for yourself to grasp how special it was. Anyway, we arrived at the Chinese bordertown Hekou. We walked on the bridge into Vietnam, it felt kind of special. We arrainged a bus to Sapa and arrived at the hotel. 

Sapa was completely covered in a cloud, you could feel the mist slowly coming through your clothes. The hotelroom was quite big, but it had two downsides. There was no heating (and it was COLD) and we had some cockroaches that held us company. So, thermal underwear on and we put upside down cups on the cockroaches. (Well, actually I did, Janneke was too busy screaming "Ieieiehlll". Haha, I am exaggerating a bit, but it was funny though.) Oke, we're clear. Don't get me wrong, we had a good time watching some movies and enjoying our magnifiscent view from our balcony. The next day we booked some tours and we walked around the town. Sapa was originally French, you could still see the influences. But it was actually a pretty nice mixture with the Vietnamese style.

The tours that we booked were amazing. With the first one, we went to local villages. We were accompanied by an army of women from the villages, who helped us not to die on the extremely slippery paths. Our guide for the day was a girl named Mao. She is also 25 years old, has a son of three years old and lives in the village of her husbands tribe in a small bamboo house. So interesting how your live can differ when you are of the same age and gender but live in another country with another culture. At first we couldn't see a lot of the surroundings, because of the cloud that covers Sapa most of the time. But when we descended, the views were amazing. Rice fields everywhere, small rivers, bridges, animals, little wooden houses and so on. We walked past some green plants and Moa asked who wanted to rub the leaves between their hands. I voltuneered, I had to keep doing it for a few minutes. Then my hands suddenly turned blue, at first a really bright blue and after that it became darker every minute. It turned out it was the Indigo plant, the people from the tribes use it to colour their fabrics. We saw a whole barrel of the indigo mixture, extremely pretty. Moa told us a lot about the culture of the local villages, it was very informative and interesting. The second tour we did with a private guide, a calm boy that was very patient with us while we made pictures all day. We walked through small villages, beautiful valleys and nice forests. 

After Sapa we left to Hanoi in a sleeper bus. The bus has a lot of bunkbeds, discolights and sometimes rodents. But again, it was a good trip. In the Street Backpackers Hostel in Hanoi, whitch is run by a really sweet family, we met Sebastien again. (Short reminder, he is the guy we met on the Trans Mongolia Express, went to Olkhon Island with and met up with in Beijing. He flew over from Cambodia to travel with us through Vietnam for a month.) He was extremely happy to see us at 4 o'clock in the morning, so enthousiastic haha. The next days we walked around the old part of Hanoi, ate some lychees (very delicious) and booked a tour to Halong Bay. The weather was going to turn in a few days, so Janneke suggested to just leave immediately to Halong Bay to still be able to catch some sunlight while staying on a boat.

Abrubt ending, but the story is getting quite long (again), so Janneke will continue telling you about Vietnam!

Hope you enjoyed it (again) and we love to hear about your stories too!

Kisses and hugs to all of you, Fleur