For people who don’t know me I’ll let you in on a secret – I’ve got a lot of time for bakeries. So when looking for accommodation and found Baguette et Cocolat I was sold. The experience sleeping in one of the four guest rooms, and waking to the smell of pastries being baked in the basement was nothing short of sensational.
I had read plenty of reviews and travel reports about Sapa, and had heard that it can get pretty chilly and wet. I thought I was smarter than the …

Simple message to anyone heading up to Sapa – give up your creature comforts for 1 day and see Vietnam in its majestic glory. Get on the LC1 day train, I can guarantee no regrets.*

How does a traveller make the journey from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, around 300km north. Fly? Booked out. Boat? Dry season, lake too low. Bus? Forget about it, after the amount of travel we’d done already we were not spending six or seven hours on a bus, that and Steve was suffering from a vicious hangover (they get really bad over here!) Motorbike? Steve would probably fallen off from the aforementioned illness.
No, we splashed out and got driven up in a car to ourselves. A fairly interesting journey …

OK, awake now!
Apologies to all about the lack of post attached to the pictures, but I recall it had been a very long day.
We’re now in Sapa, in the North-West of Vietnam, and we’ll try to work our way back chronologically from the first post.
If I double up on anything I apologise, but whilst writing this is Sapa, I’m not sure when it will get posted as there isn’t any internet up here. (edit – now in Ninh Bin, south of Hanoi – still chasing an internet connection!)
We arrived in …