Nothing exciting happened on our last day in Sapa (well except the ride back to the train station in Lao Cai, but I'll get to that a bit later). In the morning we tried to sleep in as much as possible, but that did not work due to the heavy traffic in front of the hotel that always comes with lots of honking and also the construction across the road started at 8 in the morning :( But either way we needed to pack yet again so we just started with that. The usual routine of last sweet shower, left the bags at the hotel and then to the town. Breakfast was nice again - food is really good here in Vietnam.
Sapa is quite small so it took only a bit of time to make a trip around the town. The local seller ladies were driving us absolutely crazy with their high voices screaming from across the street already "buy from meee". We did everything to ignore them and to get away from them as early as possible and they still managed to get to us, at some point we basically yelled like a choir "NO" - I felt a bit guilty after that, but they were really pushing our limits.
About the city - well, here are lots of buildings that resemble Russian times with big yellow stars on a red background and the star figures. Apparently every town in Vietnam has a Lenin street or square :) I took some pictures of the houses and signs as well :) And oh it was a warm day - it was warm even in Sapa :(
Our minivan to the train station left at 5, it was about an hour ride to Lao Cai where the train would depart from. As Sapa is up in the mountains then the ride was mostly downwards - after about 20 minutes of driving the van was roasting, or I should say the brakes were. Considering the driving that took place and the condition of the van, I was surprised that it lasted even that long without catching fire or something :) Then the driver was breaking with the gear for a bit, but after 2 minutes was hitting the gas again like everything is fine - and we were on windy mountain roads heading down on more than 10% hills! I'd say it was a bit scary, but we made it just fine. And of course it got warmer every minute we got lower :(, the heat really hit us once in Lao Cai, even though it was evening already.
Once at the train station we noticed that the hostel had charged us 30% more for the tickets than the real price was :( Oh well, they need to earn their living some way as well I guess. We got hard sleeper tickets. Train ride was ok, but neither of us got much sleep for some reason.
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