Sapa Day 1

From the train station at Lao Cai it was about an hour bus ride to Sapa, a mountain resort town. Like most of Vietnam so far it is a hubbub of activity with lots of new construction. The Sapa Legend Hotel is beautiful. Immaculate with lots of marble and brass. Rooms are not ready yet so we dropour bags grab breakfast and head on The Trek. Oh, the trek!We were told in the previous emails that comfortable walking shoes were all that was required. Wrongo! It had rained recently and the rutted trail was slicker than greased owl shit! One guy turned back claiming a recent foot injury, but being the intrepid traveler that I am I kept on with the assistance of our guide at times. Mostly though everyone was assisted by members of our entourage, a group of Hmong women from one of the hill tribes. My particular "assistant", Moo, was 50 years old and looked 90. She hovers over me like a mother hen, which I find annoying. I can handle this. Don't bug me.

It's slow going through the heavy, clay mud which is adding about 5 pound to each shoe! Slipping and sliding I make my way until, "oh shit", down I go. As one of my fellow travelers says, it was slow motion. We had been stopping and photographing so I had one camera in my right hand and my sling bag with another camera and associated gear on my back. Fortunately only a little mud on the camera and backpack. Jeans were not too bad either. Where the hell is Moo!

Moo

Ok, so now I grudgingly accept her help and we continue along through the muck to one of their villages, where I get a couple of pics of some cute kids. These folks are a lot more bashful about having their picture taken than the people in Myanmar last year.

Later along the path we encounter someone driving a few water buffalo along.

The mountain scenery is beautiful and we get a lot of photos of that as well.
We are out of the muck at this point and Moo leaves. She wanted me to buy some trinkets from her but I declined and just gave her some money for helping me.

Then we run across some school children on the, now, concrete pathway.

Finally at the end of the trek we come across the ruins of an old French nunnery. The masonry of the structure seems to have been attacked by some bright orange fungus.