Sapa

Finally made it to Vietnam. We started our journey in Kunming, where we boarded a sleeper bus bound for Hekou, a town on the China-Vietnam border.  Sleeper bus sounds cute but as we quickly learned it is not a hygenic way to travel, and is it is far more popular with the locals than with tourists.  When we planned the trip we expected to be able to sleep on the bus, but after getting on, it looked unlikely. Not only were the beds built for people 5'3 or below and made of metal, but we were traveling on dirt/rock roads across mountain ranges with no guard rails, and the air was hard to breathe because people smoked throughout the night. 

Surprisingly, I think we both managed to get more sleep on this 12 hour bus ride than on our flight to Hong Kong. 

This is a picture of the border between Hekou and Lao Cai, Vietnam- we had to wait from 7-8AM in a very depressing chinese town for the crossing to open for the day. Although we did get a chance to have an interesting conversation about the price of Berkshire Hathaway stock with a local who knew more about it than us..??!!

After getting to Sapa, we spent our first full day doing a 'trek' of local terraced rice paddies, which are incredible.  I've seen other terraced rice paddies in China, but these are much more impressive because they are perfectly built, the hills are very high and are not too rocky so they are completely covered, and the constant fog makes everything look like a dream.