Energy Sapa

"I'm not sure what I'm going to do, I can't put any weight on my feet."
"You're speaking as though I didn't break my toe yesterday."
"Touche"

I think it's fair to say that neither Goss nor I were especially well prepared for the two day treck in Sapa.

Really it all started when we decided to get the party boat tour of Ha Long Bay (I guess a purist might argue that it all started when I left Dan a few months back, he left with the words "it's a pity we won't meet Goss, weird things happen to Goss", so I had been warned) - incidentally that was the correct decision, most of the other boats we saw (and we got quite close to a few of them) were filled with somewhat older, more Russian couples.
Ha Long Bay is magical. I'd seen pictures before I went but in no way did they do the place justice (obviously I used this as the excuse for not taking my camera out of the bag).

Within the first few hours Goss and Kevin had managed to lose a sea kayak. Kayak's shouldn't sink, right? Fortunately they were within swimming distance of the cave / secret lagoon combo we were visiting.

We spent the first night on a junk on the bay; we tried to round up some of the people from the other boats to join our party but strangely none of the somewhat older, more Russian couples seemed that keen on joining us.

We spent the next day on the beach of a deserted island, which was fairly paradise-esque, or at least it would have been if the rocks and coral hadn't made toast of our feet.

Had a go at night time kayaking (which is obviously sensible), the bay was filled with phosphoresence. Mighty sparkly, I tell you.

From Ha Long Bay we went fairly much straight to Sapa where, dosed with painkillers, we spent two days hiking through the rice terraces. Now each individual rice terrace may be a heap younger and a heap less impressive than those at Batad, but the sheer number of them was incredible. A whole valley filled with big green steps. It must have taken ages.

There's six different hill tribes around these parts and members of each one follow you around trying to sell you pillowcases, which is a little annoying. We stayed in a homestay, allegedly with one of the tribes, but it was about the least homestay-y homestay I've stayed in (five "stay"s in one sentence; is that a record?).

After a few months of jaded cynicism where everything seems to be the same as something I've already seen, two bits of take-your-breath-away scenery in just a few days.

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Best new fact: the Dutch for snail is slugundhaus.