Indochina Express - Day 6 (Ha Long Bay to Lao Cai)

March 8

Today is moving day again. Breakfast is at 6:45 AM so that we can go on the final excursion to the Bright and Dark cave. I'm feeling a little better but decide not to go on this excursion just to be cautious. 

I pack while Beth, Chris and Mark head off. They come back about an hour later. Beth said that they transferred to a shallow draft boat rowed by native people. They were very particular where everyone sat in order to keep the boat balanced in the water. Here are a couple of pictures:

After they returned to the ship, we pack and leave our bags in the hallway where they will be taken back to the port ahead of us. We have a light brunch, check out and wait for our boat to take us back to the port.

At the port, we are reunited with our bags and find our new guide, Luke, who will take us back to Hanoi and then on to Sa Pa and is for some reason wearing a Boston University ice hockey sweatshirt! The ride back is uneventful except that my nose starts running like a sieve. It appears I've picked up a cold or some other virus to go with my diarrhea. I joke with Beth that at the rate that I'm going, she'll be a merry widow soon.

We are staying at a different hotel because a) it is right across the street from the train station and b) because they have hourly rates, so we check in at 1 PM and will be leaving at 9 PM. This gives me some time to lay down and hopefully feel better. But before we do this, we decide to go out for a cup of caffeine. The hotel recommends a place called Cong Coffee about 2.5 blocks away. We successfully cross a street without becoming an ornament on the front of a scooter, find the place and more importantly make it back to the hotel.

I'm not feeling like dinner so everyone else heads off while I take a shower and for a while feel somewhat more human. 

At 9 PM, Luke picks us up, we get in the van, the driver makes a left turn, goes half a block and pulls into the train station. Since it is so close, Luke asks us whether when we come back from Sa Pa to Hanoi, if we are okay with navigating back to the hotel without a driver. We tell him that is fine with us.

Luke says that taking the night train to Sa Pa used to be very popular but fewer people take it now because a new highway has been built which cuts the drive from Hanoi down to 4.5 hours compared to the 8 hours for the train. But this should be an experience.

Luke gets us to our car which has two beds side-by-side perpendicular to the train's main hallway:

I'm eyeballing the distance from my pillow to the wall and thinking no way I'm going to be able to lay flat. It is fetal position left or right for me although I do find that if I bend one leg 90 degrees and point the other foot at the door, I'm able to lay flat for a few minutes at a time. Beth and I were able to sleep a little before we arrive in Lao Cai City at 6am, but it was probably only for perhaps 3 hr out of our 8 hr trip. Tomorrow is going to be a long day!