February 12, 2004
Pics from northern Vietnam!
The following pics entail our shopping spree in Hoi An, our quick visit to Hanoi and our amazing trek up in Sapa and into the minority villages!
Ready for our entry back into the real world now that we have some more formal clothes to wear! Jill is modelling her tailor made shoes as I am trying my best at looking dapper in my new duds!
Some interesting sites in Hoi An! Biking around the town we never knew what we would run into.... a Japanese covered bridge, local fishermen, farmers, boats in the harbour and in the last pic, what do you think of that name for a restaurant?? haha
Scenes from Hanoi. The typical busy streets, Jilly and I on our cyclo ride and other typical views we saw while on our cyclo tour.
Shots from the water puppet show.
The town of Sapa.
These are some typical pics of what we saw along our trek. As you can see from some of the photos the weather didn't cooperate, but we still had a great time!
This was where we stopped for lunch. As you can see it was quite cold and the girls were all over Jilly. The last photo is Sins, our guide, smoking tobacco from their traditional pipe/bong.
Some pics from some of the local minority homes we visited. They hang corn from their rafters to dry, Jilly bought some pillow cases, Sins showing us the barrel of indigo they use to dye their materials, cute little boys playing, local woman working on her crafts, Jilly buying a little purse and girls from one of the poorer villages.
Our first experience with a "Homestay", meaning on one of our nights on our trek we stayed in the home of a local minority family. What an interesting experience as you will see from the photos below! As you can see, the little girl was full of energy! Not a bad spread considering they only had two small fires to cook all of those dishes! The women are making sticky rice while Jilly is warming her toes after she washed her feet, exactly what I am doing in the next pic! Sleeping arrangements were surprisingly warm and then Jilly sitting down to breakfast, fried rice and bananas.
Scenes from the market! Most of these people are the women that sold us things, but the beautiful little girl with Jill was a real help! Yes those are scorpions in the wine bottles! They also sell snake wine all over south east Asia and there is an actual snake in the bottle, yuck!
The many terraced rice fields that decorate the mountain sides of Sapa and the surrounding area!
Some wonderful scenes from the streets in Sapa.
Just before we left Sapa the sun decided to peak it's nose through... well it tried anyways, as you can see from the pics.
