Friday, a misty wet day in Sapa. What a touristy town!! Makes one think of Whistler, cool, foggy, rainy. Tourists wandering the streets , wannabe trekkers pacing the streets from hotel to backpacker store to street market to restaurant until finally giving in to foot fatigue and collapsing onto a couch at one of the many massage parlours. Tourists!
Our morning was mostly spent like most other tourists going down (We walked, many others took a tour bus.) to a traditional village called Cat Cat, pretending all the while we hadn't passed many similar villages while biking. There, as usual, more peddling of crafts. A good group of performers danced (More athletic then what we had seen in the past for they had a proper stage instead of a rough street.) and played instruments in an old building which was once a power generating station. One performer played a half of a bean pod to produce a sound not that much different then a harmonic. We heard that a number of our group decided to venture onto the back of motor bikes for the trip back up the hill.... wimps!!
Match maker Bernie encouraged Les to catch up to his sister who was headed for a coffee shop by herself. He commented afterwards that he couldn't remember having such a private chat with his sister for many years. Interesting how life passes without one "finding time" for those simple but valuable moments.
Ross and Dawn raided all the tourist convenience shops for some "Western goodies (chips)" for a happy hour in their room. Having learned their lesson about Vietnam moral codes Dawn and Ross had the ladies sit primly on one bed, the guys on another. They had received their warning about local standards a couple of days previously when Dawn, just sitting (So she says!!!) on Ross' lap at a dance performance, was given a stern finger waving lecture, "Vietnam NO!!, Vietnam No!!, Vietnam No!!. There was no mistaking that message!
Later, before debarking for a pizza joint (Yes... pizza... this is a touristy town!) a couple of brave souls decided they would entice Brendan to join the party. They came back.... "Brendan is in this white gown with knee length black stockings!!!" Gee.... a guy isn't safe in the privacy (so he thought) of his own room. The party finally swarmed into the pizza joint and proved, one can be sure, Vietnamese thoughts about their eating habits, clearing away a full regular sized pizza each and copulas quantities of beer and wine.
"What... we got to get up at five thirty, have breakfast, then brave the seven thirty cold for one hundred plus kilometres, the last twenty up a 12% grade. ALL WITH A POTENTIAL HANGOVER!!!"
Entered by Brendan and Les
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