Sapa, Viet Nam

Took a night trin wit my friend Mix up to a town close to the border, there we said our good byes as he heads to China and i continue my adventures in Viet Nam. How strange to be totally by myself! Another 10 hour train ride, no big deal. the beds were a piece of wood with a inch of padding, i didnt get much sleep. Took a mini bus up the mountain to Sapa, which is a gorgeous town in beautiful mountains. The rice fields are carved into impossible mountian sides and colorful tribe women acost you to buy shit. They speak very good english and are very friendly until you refuse to buy anything. i got suckered into getting 4 shitty braclets for a dollar just to make her go away, which is most of there stratgies. they have some pretty cool earings though and im thinking of you Kilani, you still have your ears gagded? Arrived and passed out for a few hours (5) and then had a relaxing day reading some Jane Austin in the park. Finished Pride and Prjudice, one of my all time favorites, oh Mr Darcy! and headed to trade the book, got the alcamist instead and it looks like it will last my a few hours at most.. then sought food. i was a little hungry for company as well so i sat down next to this nice Austrailian and we had a cup of coffee. The place was pricey for food so we headed to the more local outdoor dining area. There was a big table of Vietnamese men beside us and since Tin was born in Vietnam and moved to Austraila when he was 5 he still speaks a little and was able to translate for me. They immediately started demanding we chug our beers and take shots of the rice whisky they were pouring out of a water bottle. they also do this thing here of taking tabacco out of a bong and i was super down and they all had a great laugh as i got a huge headrush and smiled huge for the next ten min. they have some pretty cool bongs here and i wish i could take one back with me. pretty easy to make though just need a fat bamboo stem. We then got this thing called a Hot Pot, which is boiling broth on a burned that comes witha huge platter of veggies and greens and meat all raw. you put what ever you want into it and wait for it to cook. It was all very good but my stomech hasn't entirely recoved and im afraid i wasnt able to keep any of it down. Then we went to the disco tech! which basically was a huge room with no one there except us and a stage. I as the only female so they insisted i dance pretty much the whole time which was fine with me, man they could boogie. there was this adorable child of nine who had some great moves and knew a little break dance (sort of) he was real shy of me but i charmed him in the end. Then the karoke started... oh god asians fucking love karoke. No english songs of course but they got me up on stage and made me interprative dance while they took turns singing to me. one of the older ones was a great dancer and we were twirling around to applause. basically i should have had the whole event recorded and watched daily, deff would have got a million hits on youtube.. oh they also had me sing in Vietnamese, you can imagine how that sounded..I had to get the fuck out of there eventually so we headed to the only open bar in thsi sleep town where we met some americans, or one was a french american canidian or something silly.