Day 52 - The People You Meet

I know, I probably said this before but travel is as much about seeing a place as it is about the people you meet along the way, I would probably say it is mainly bout the people you meet.

Sometimes you meet people, have a chat and then go separate ways, other times you spend a lot more time with people and they become part of your journey. This is what happened with two fellow travellers from Germany, I met on the shuttle bus to the hotel.

When I decided to come to Sapa, I just booked a train ticket and hotel without anything else planned or booked.
Over a drink, they invited me to join them for their day and a half guided tour to Lao Chai, including an overnight stay in a traditional homestay.

We set out reasonably early in the morning an as soon as we left the hotel, we already had an entourage of Hmong ladies joining us for the trek to their village. We were not alone as every other tourist group we met along the way had their own entourage following them along.

After a foggy morning the sky cleared up just enough for the remaining cloud to provide a great contrast against the mountain backdrop. The views were fantastic and I ended up taking way too many photos of the landscape an rice fields.

We arrived at the very basic homestay just after lunch and initially planned to go out and explore the town a bit.
This did not quite happen once we started talking with the other people staying at the homestay, a very nice Australian family and a Thai couple. We all had so much fun chatting that it was time for dinner before we knew it and with that also time for some rice wine.

This was a great evening with a lot of chatting, drinking and having fun till late at night.
Not sure how the morning will be after all this entertainment but at least we have a later start to the day.