Day 9 - 17/07/25

 Woke up groggily this morning with bad aches in both my head and my legs! Managed to hobble down the stairs to breakfast and awkwardly shuffle past the other guests who we kept up the previous night with our very loud drinking games. Now that the rain had cleared up you could really see how beautiful the view was from our hostel!


After a breakfast of omelette banh mi, which was surprisingly delicious, we put our soggy shoes back on ready for the second day of hiking. Thankfully it was very sunny today so we had no issues with injuring ourselves in mud. The beers from the previous night made us all very sweaty when walking up the hills, but it was all worth it for the astonishing views.




Poor resolution on the blog, but there were some adorable chicks swimming in a small waterfall here.





The entire hike consisted of climbing up and traversing down steep rice fields in 30 degree weather, so by the time we finally managed to reach the end we had all sweat through most of our clothes! Thankfully we had a chance to shower and have lunch at a hotel before we embarked on our 7 hour bus journey back to Hanoi. After being shouted at by a very angry bus driver for sitting in the wrong seats, we finally left Sapa for good. The sleeper bus was extremely fancy; there was a massage option for the bed (which basically just caused the whole thing to shake like an earthquake) and a TV (which didn’t work). I was also on the top bed which meant I caught some more brilliant views of Vietnam. I was almost disappointed when the bus pulled into Hanoi!



Once we checked in to our hostel, we left our damp clothes on the balcony and went out to meet Polly. She was feeling quite homesick with her broken wrist, so we decided to go to one of the only McDonalds in Vietnam to make her feel better. Vietnamese McDonalds is quite strange - they serve spaghetti and like to put sweetcorn on everything, but it was delicious nonetheless.

The ‘Gralic Chilli Sauce’ was tasty


Afterwards we said our goodbyes to Polly who we would not be seeing before she went home, then me and Jagan had a nice walk back past West Lake before arriving back at the hostel. As much as I’ve enjoyed this last week (illness aside), I was very grateful that this was to be the last hostel night of my Vietnam trip!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 8 - 16/07/25

Image
 Welcome back everyone! This day began bright and early at 7am as we began our hike of the Sapa mountains at 8. After a healthy breakfast of fried noodles, bread and a can of fanta I was all set to begin. We met our guide, Sung, who was a lovely woman but must’ve been about half the size of me. She entrusted me with a bamboo stick to walk with, and before long we were off. I thought we would begin slowly as we were still inside the city, but within 20 minutes we were climbing a hill that felt almost vertical! Since I was still recovering from the illness (and because I haven’t regularly exercised in 4 years), I was wheezing and panting by the time we got halfway to the top. (Sam after 15 minutes of exercise) I would have loved to have shown you the view from the top, but unfortunately there were none as we were inside of a cloud. At least the way down can’t be as bad as the way up, right? Wrong! As soon as we started our descent we immediately got hit with a huge shower of rain, wh...
Read more

Day 2 - 10/07/25

Image
 Day 2 of my Vietnam trip began bright and early at 11am. Although I slept on the sofa, it felt amazing to have my first proper sleep in over 24 hours. I never realised how much better sleep is when you aren’t 30,000 feet in the air and next to a crying baby. Anyway, we went for breakfast at the nearest place we could find. I was still pretty tired from the flights so I didn’t have breakfast, although Dan and Jagan had some Pho that was apparently brilliant. I went to the ATM to take out some money; I withdrew 4 million dong and it felt very good to become a millionaire at the age of 21. And my physics teacher told me I wouldn’t get anywhere with my work ethic! We took a cab to the B52 bomber museum soon afterwards. As interesting as the museum was, it was 38 degrees and had no air conditioning inside. By coincidence we were in Hanoi at the same time as our good friend Polly, who was there with 6 of her friends. It was a nice surprise that this trip that was meant to be just me and...
Read more