5.20am and we're faced with the prospect of sitting on a wooden bench with no A/C for 9 hours to Lao Cai, but a $60 bribe would ensure our comfort would be increased dramatically as we'd be in the soft sleeper. Done. No, not quite, the sleeper isn't soft. In fact, it has absolutely no cushioning at all, so it was a wooden plank to Lao Cai. The train departed and we weren't sure how well it would go, but a few hours sleep and it appeared that the 9 hours would rapidly countdown and we'd be in the mountains.
The scenery wasamazing, and we to this time cannot understand why not a single other western tourist wasn't on the train. We got to chat to locals the whole way, we crawled over sacks of rice and motos through the freight cart to get to the restaurant. We ate bowls of pho on the train, then jumped off at a stop and ran back up to our cart as it began moving again. The 9 hours quickly became 12 hours, and still I don't think we complained.
Simple message to anyone heading up to Sapa - give up your creature comforts for 1 day and see Vietnam in its majestic glory. Our only regret of the day was getting invloved with the rabble that is the mini-bus crowd from Lao Cai to Sapa. It's a total con, but after 12 hours on the train 100,00 dong doesn't seem like much to travel 38km in a van. After half an hour of waiting we got piled into another van, and we counted 21 people in a van with 9 seats, further, it should have cost no more than 25,000 dong. A great day though, and we weren't going to let a few greedy rip-off merchants cheat us out of remembering how fantastic the experience was.[gallery]
