Soc 101 Field Trip

Two ladies, a man and a motorbike
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Some overnight transportation to pack in more sights.  This time we did trains, lovely and aircon, and made it into the mountains by early morning - in order to catch a bus even further into the mountains.  We followed the (slightly) less beaten path, and went straight to Bac Ha village (instead of Sapa), where we would spend the night and wake up in time to see the famed Sunday market before all the tourists arrived from the next town over.

On our first day we enjoyed a walk through the sleepy village, and out to nearby Ban Pho village, where we ran into every other tourist in town (don't worry, there were only about 6 of us).  Not surprisingly, after a night sleeping on a train, we crashed early.  Which is fine, because we were able to wake up (naturally?  or maybe it was the roosters) at 4:45 am, just in time to see the market setting up.

Mousehead didn't want to get too close to water-buffalohead.
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At the market, we purchased several items that we did not necessarily want, but we could not resist bargaining with the 8 year old vendors.  After the market, we somehow managed to get ourselves on a local bus to Lao Cai, where we fought to purchase train tickets and spent a long, sweaty (no aircon this time) loud night on a train with a group of local men who never went to sleep.

With one more day in Hanoi, we stumbled off the train at 4 am and wandered right into an internet cafe, where we were able to kill some time until they kicked us out at 6 am when they closed.  Does that make any sense to you?  Anyway, we wandered past an elementary school where the kids were celebrating their last day by wearing adorable costumes and putting on performances, so we stood in the back like the creepiest white people you ever saw, and took photos.  After all (Jenny justifies her actions) I'm a teacher, and this is like research.  Yeah, right.

Pretty scenery
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So in a leap of faith, we spent our very last dong on snacks, and boarded the 20 hour bus that would hopefully take us into Lao.