It was very beautiful and I had great weather on 2 out of 3 days. I did a few nice hikes, mainly with Eva and Volker, a German couple that I met at the hotel. On our first day while walking through a Hmongh Village we got invited by a local family and I had a long, interesting (but also a bit upsetting) conversation with one of the women named Pay (pronounced as Pie), who spoke good English without having ever seen a school from the inside and without knowing how to read or write. Many of the women from the ethnic minorities their taught themselves English just by talking to the tourists and by practicing with one another. The men usually just know two or three words. But the women do all the work anyhow and the men are mainly busy with bossing them around (reminded me a bit of the Balkans ;-)
Our host Pay got married at age 14 and being 26 now she had three children with the oldest one being nine. She really didn't like her husband and was dreaming of going to school to learn how to read and write ...
Yep, lucky us! But they were anyhow very friendly and smiling genuine smiles.
So, here the pictures now:
On my way to Sapa in a hard sleeper cabin with 5 funky Vietnamese retirees. They were nice but the people were smoking heavily in the hallway, so on my way back to Hanoi it was sooo soft sleeper, baby.
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