Finally, potbelly piggies!

Piggies!!!! Looks a little like Pearl?

Rice terraces on our hike the 1st day in Sapa. We hiked to a H'mong village.

These girls were very happy to pose

Cute girls. Notice the H'mong girl has black hands all of the H'mong had black hands from the dye used on their clothes.

Christina bought earrings from this H'mong lady. She had a baby on her back and one on the way. Gold teeth were quite popular with both the Dao and H'mong.

We had a fireplace to keep us warm (kind of) in our hotel room. The fog was so thick by the evening that at times, you couldn't see the street from the 5th floor. That is the fog outside the window. Isn't that fireplace just a little close to the bed and the curtains?

Christina after we arrived in Ta Phien by motorbike. We has to wear rain gear because the fog is thick enough that you get wet on the bikes. It was about 14km from Sapa.

The first Dao lady who invited us in her house.

This is inside the 1st house we visited in the hills near Ta Phien. Completely dark except light through the walls. Just a crude fire place in that big rock on the dirt floor. All the kids were snotty but cute. We gave this little guy the Dragon fruit we brought for our snack. Nice pork over the fire.

This wasa the 2nd house we were invited to in Ta Phien. The 15 year old on the left spoke good english. This house was pretty nice. You can see light through the wall in the back, but they had electricity.

These ladies invited us into their house mainly because they could see we were cold as we waited for a ride back to Sapa from Ta Phien.

Behold, the magical white buffalo

Nice buffalo bell. They are wooden so it is easy on the ears.

Chicken to go

Time to go

One last picture from the train station in Lao Cai before heading back to Hanoi for our last day in Vietnam. Not much to see in Lao Cai, it is on the Chinese border. Much of it was leveled when the Vietnamese fought the Chinese in 1979.

Bangkok:

We had almost three days in Bangkok. It was pretty hot but mostly sunny so that we could get a last tan.
We decided to stay in the more backpacker oriented area and enjoyed our last days of vacation feeling. We limited our sight-seeing tour to the two major temple sights, which were very impressive. The rest of our time we spent exploring the shopping opportunities. And there are tons! Chatuchak weekend Market, selling everything from clothes to furniture and pets, Pat Pong Night Market in the “dirty district”, mainly selling knock-off purses, watches etc., four major shopping malls and the backpacker street Khao San Road with all its street vendors. We had very good and spicy Thai food, tried the local beer (which is pretty good) and toured around the city on skytrain, taxi and water taxi. We had a pretty good time here as well.