El maravilloso viaje de Tobi a Vietnam

The last days I have been to the old french mountain resort of Sapa, another major tourist destination, because there you get in touch with lots of different minority cultures.
We took the night train from Hanoi (which was actually really comfortable, it had bed I nearly fit in) and arrived in the morning to Sapa. There we caught a bus and were despite of the misty weather able to enjoy some of the stunning views of the mountain, which look like huge stairways because of the rice terraces.

I expected it to be like Halong Bay, but it was actually pretty laid back.
Okay, there were packs of minority women patrolling the streets asking everyone passing "you buy from me?" showing their handicraft.
Once I saw a poor american couple who were surrounded by at least 15 women trying to sell them something.

But we just had breakfast and then left for trekking. The weather was still misty, but it was dry, so the conditions were nearly perfect.
Our group consisted fortunately mainly of young people, so we could mock about some other (less sporty) tourists. Particularly funny were the efforts of one husband trying to get his wife up the steep and rocky paths, it should be added that his wife had at least my weight, but was of course 20cm smaller :)
So their trek already ended after the lunch break, while we continued to our homestay in a traditional minority house.
The homestay was so great, because the people who stayed with us were nothing but awesome.
There were a group of Vietnamese girls, who are currently working as volonteers in an orphanage, accompanied by an austrian girl, who worked there as well. My group was made up by Sarah a girl from Cologne, who just finished university and is now travelling around Asia and Anne a french woman, who is already 45, but you won't notice it.
As well a scottish girl, who apparently attended a public school, as she had had never drunken alcohol before (a fact which had to be changed later that night)

But most important an elderly couple from New Zealand, I hope I could be like them when I am 61, because with dinner we also drank a considerable amount of rice wine and then he started to show us some tribal dances from the maori.
Later on, one of the guides had the idea that everyone should sing a song from his country or drink a "punishment" a glass of rice wine.
The poor scottish knew not many songs...
Sarah and I did well, starting with the national anthem and ending up with "komm mein lieschen, lieschen" and "Viva colonia".
But we couldn't compete with the Kiwis, who showed us some more tribal songs. Can you imagine someone at the age of your parents jumping around and shouting strange words in Maoi, I cannot. (sorry Mama and Papa, because I know you will read this blog). Sarah grabbed a video and wants to upload it on Youtube, I am really looked forward to see it.

Anyway, even the best night ends and we got to sleep on our matresses protected by something, which would have been a mosquito net, if it had not had so many holes in it, luckily we were all so drunk that it didn't matter.

The rest of the tour was unspectacular, because the weather got worse and we barely could see more than 100m. One thing that I still should mention that the french woman Anne is going to have a little problem on her flight back, as she bought nearly a whole suitcase of minority handcraft.
Oh I should also mention that the young scottish girl didn't look so well this morning, but she behaved really brave ;)

Now I am back in Hanoi, where I will do some shopping myself despite the fact that the space in my backpack is really limited.

I was so unbelivavle glad to be back in Ninh Binh after all the stress in Phong Nha. As I arrived at noon I decided to make a small detour to see Van Long, another of our project sites.
So it struck me even harder when we arrived in Van Long and they told us that we cannot proceed to Cuc Phuong as it was flooded.
I have never ever cursed to so badly in my life (and this means definitly something ;))
But fortunately I met our local program supervisor Catherine and her assistent Dong, who wanted to go back as well.
So we made a huge detour to and went to the other side of the mountain to approach the village from behind.
This worked well and it was even a kind of magical feeling to ride on the back of a motorbike on a deserted vietnamese country road into the sunset.
Okay, it was magical until this particular herd of cow appeared and Dong had to dogde hard with the motorbike...
Unfortunately we were way too fast and so fell down.
Now my left knee (yes, the one which always gets hurt ;)) looks like a battlefield, I as well managed to get burned by the exhaust pipe on my right leg, so at least the pain is more or less evenly distributed :)

But we were still quite lucky it could have been worse...

Today I said my final goodbye to Tilo and the rest of the center (monkeys included) and took the bus to Hanoi. Okay, it took me more than two hours, because everyone had still some incredibly urgent work for me to do before I leave :)
Now I am waiting for my train to Sapa, where I will do 3 days of trekking in the mountains till I head back to Hanoi to fly out on Saturday to Bangkok.