As I mentioned in my last note, a day of traveling was ahead of us, and it took quite a while for Laura and me to get here... We took the sleeper train from Huể to Hà Nội, which was an exciting 17 hours for Laura, and a sleepless and cool experience for me. Over night, I had time to catch up with drafts and see some of the Bullfrog hunters in the dead of the night. We arrived in Hà Nội just after sunrise, and from the train station transfered to the bus station where we took the sleeper bus to Sa Pa, spending the next few nights in and around Lao Cai. After a full day of traveling, we were happy to arrive in the early afternoon at our Homestay and get on our bike to explore some of the town. We decided that even though the evening was slowly catching up to us, we had to do something today (and not just sit in transportation) and so we drove down to the valley and hiked around Bản Cát Cát and met some of the H'Mông people. We had no idea how extremely touristy and over packed with domestic (and some international) tourists the place would be; it's like the pandemic didn't happen here! A six kilometer hike later, we climbed back up towards home where we could finally get some much needed shut eye.
Today we woke up and with a full day of exploring ahead of us, decided for a rather long (and twisty, turny, climby, descendy) trip ahead of us. It was time for waterfalls! We've visited quite a few already while on our trips, but Laura was excited to add a few here in the north. And so we headed out on our 105 kilometer long drive through the hairpin turns and beautiful jungles around us, transversing an impressive 2702 vertical meters. During our trip out, we spent nearly seven hours on our scooter, and visited four beautiful waterfalls, as well as a deserted town (guess Saturdays in the countryside are at a different pace!).
First of all, we came to this location to visit one of the many waterfalls in the area with this TB. While I don't have a photo of us here together, it was a nice climb with this TB in our backpack. I'm also including two pictures of us on the sleeper train here. While not the best image, I'm sure that another nice picture to the gallery of this TB will be appreciated!
From here, it's on to another waterfall!