Wednesday, September 10, 2008

day 24 - second day in sapa - 09.09

For today we arranged ourselves a half day private tour with a jeep :) Yeah, check the pics for the jeep - you'll get a good laugh ;) As the tour started at 1:30 in the afternoon then we got to sleep in, we slept till 10:30 - oh that was heavenly. Ate late breakfast at 11:30 and then to the tour. Breakfast by the way consisted of white bread loaf that you would cut in half in the middle and fill with an omelet and sauteed mushroom-onion-tomato mixture, it was very delicious.

About our tour - we got a jeep with the driver and we had planned to visit Tram Ton pass and the Silver Waterfall. We were taken to the pass first, is 15km from Sapa and at an altitude of 1900 meter this is the highest mountain pass in Vietnam. There was quite heavy tourist traffic, but we got to enjoy our 5 minutes of peace in there - it was fabulous, we just stared at the view without speaking for a while.

On the way back we stopped at the waterfall named Thac Bac or Silver Waterfall, it is 5km from Sapa. Travel guide knows to say the waterfall is 100m in height. There was an admission fee to make it up at the bridge - we did not even hesitate, it looked too good to miss this one. We took about 100 too many pictures there :) despite the drizzling rain that haunted us throughout our way up and also on coming down. At the bridge we met a Polish guy who was very happy about meeting people close to where he is from :D Then we were taken back to town - end of our fancy private tour :)

Hostel we are staying at has also a laundry service. So we gave some of our clothes in to be washed last night, they promised to get them back to us in the morning. When I went to get it this morning they said that half an hour more and then it will be ready - of course half an hour later there was no laundry. Then they promised in the afternoon. Once we got back from the tour I asked again if our laundry was ready - another "in half an hour" came :) Finally in the evening we got our laundry back. We were already certain that they must have lost it or something.

In the evening we enjoyed some shopping in downtown of Sapa and chose a nice restaurant for dinner. As the restaurant had nice and fast wireless that was also free then we took our time there. First we ordered two appetisers - spring rolls and tofu in tomato sauce. Spring rolls are one of the most popular dishes in Vietnam, they are made of very thin rice paper and filled with various meat or vegetable fillings and fried to be crisp and delicious. Tofu is another speciality around here. After uploading and managing the piled up hundreds of photos we ordered our main meal - tuna salad and grilled beef marinated in herbs, that came with steamed white rice. I have to say that they definitely know how to cook here - it was very good. By that time we had ordered a bottle of local wine as well. After another half an hour or so we each got a desert and then some cocktails :D Our bill ended up being 655 000 Vietnamese dong :) Either way it was all delicious and we enjoyed the nice dinner.

Before going to the room we explored the upper deck of our hostel - nice view indeed :) We even saw couple of stars and the moon was out. Life is beautiful, almost perfect ;)

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