Going to Sapa

We decided to go to Sapa on Sunday's night, just after landing. We had to go downtown (the airport is 30kms away from Hanoi) and things started well... We took a cab that told us that he'll run the meter because it would make the fare cheaper than paying the usual fare (150,000d) from the aiport. The problem was after half of the way the fare was already more expensive than 150,000d...So we told him that we won't pay more, and after arguing 5minutes we decided to get off the cab. It was fun to do the "French tourists" very proud and arrogant but then we realized that we were in the middle of nowhere, that it was nighttime and that we had less than 1hour to reach the train station...

Finding the way to the railway station was fun. Nobody around us was able to speak either English or Chinese (Thomas speaks Chinese), so we used our guide to show people where we wanted to go. We finally understood that we had to take a bus (xe buyt in Vietnamese) and after half and hour on the bus (we paid 3,000d for it...) we arrived at the train station.

We booked tickets for the next train (leaving at 10pm), had diner and discovered what hard seats means in Vietnam trains... 340kms, 8 hours of train for 84,000d/pers (22,000=1euro). Ok it's cheap, but trying to sleep is a noisy (people have talking loud all night), dirty (they were spitting on the floor...) and not comfortable (our seats were hard like concrete) atmosphere is not that easy...