Day 58 (21st July) Sapa to Dien Bien Phu

Day 58 (21st July) Sapa to Dien Bien Phu.

Sapa is a tourist town where practically every building is a hotel, restaurant or shop selling fruit, flowers or tourist tat. There are large numbers of young Europeans who go for the trekking in the beautiful mountains of north-west Vietnam. The only interesting thing to do in the town is to take a cable car to the top of Souh-East Asia’s highest mountain Fansipan but, although it was dry, thick cloud covered the mountain and there wouldn’t be much to see. So, after I booked tickets for the sleeper bus to Dien Bien Phu, we wandered round the town and were accosted by a brightly-dressed elderly lady who sold us some beautiful handmade purses for a very reasonable price. They are said to be handmade in a nearby village by the lady, her 6 children and numerous grandchildren. After climbing a steep hill, we came to a temple which had the date 2025 on it, so it wasn’t very old. While waiting for the bus at 7 pm, we ate dinner at a nearby kebab stall which served lamb kebabs in a toasted roll together with pickled cucumber and chilli sauce. Delicious. The bus arrived 40 minutes late and we couldn’t put our bags in the side of the bus because it was full of crates; we suspect the driver was making some money on the side. We were given a top bunk which Jennifer couldn’t get up to so the stewardess turfed some bloke out of his downstairs bunk. The ride was 11 hours and I’m regretting not going by plane from Hanoi because I didn’t see the landscape for a single second. There were two lovely young French people on the bus and we shared a taxi to the hotel which they had pre-booked, the delightful Frontier Hotel off the city’s main street, Phan Van Dong Road.