Day 57 - The tourist trap of Lao Cai Village and Lao Chai train station

I had a good nights rest and felt completely lazy. Ended up negotiating a motorcycle ride to Lao Chai village for 40000D and paid 15000D to enter it. When I started the hike down, I was followed by a Hmong villager the entire way down. The trek was steep and all downhilll. I felt that this was a possible tourist trap but there was no going back up as it was too steep. I wanted to walk down alone and was quite annoyed to be quite honest. I enjoyed the lone wandering yesterday. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get the the "village" which ended up being store that sold food. I'm quite sure we by-passed it on the way down. At this point I was pretty pissed. All the tourists were congregated in this small area and they try and guilt you into buying things from them because you
"followed" them. When in fact they follow you. I took motorbike back to Sapa which was all uphill for 40000D and it was totally worth it since it would have taken 3 hours to walk back up after being dissappointed by the village.

The Black Hmong villagers are very aggresive at selling their wares and always ask the same questions: "Where you from?", "What you name?", "How old are you?" and of course, "You buy from me? Why you no buy from me?". It was getting reallly old really fast.

The minibus ride was absolutely horrible. The bus left driving around town trying to fill it up. We went around town 3 times. They then proceeded to fill the bus with soaking wet roses. When we finally arrived at Lao Chai station my bag was soaking wet.

Upon arrival at the Lao Chai train station, we were approached by a guy who took the train ticket and told us to leave our bags at the restaurant across the street. It was really weird but turned out to be okay. I ended up eating pork pho and banana juice. It was the best pho I've had so far in Vietnam and the banana juice was a fabulous banana milkshake. After dinner I found a massage place where no one spoke english and got a massage for 60000D ($4). My experience wasn't the best as the girl giving the massage had really sweaty hands and I kept getting friction burns. The girl who cracked me at the end was fabulous. She knew what she was doiing.

The train leaves at 9 pm back to Hanoi. I really hope that I'm able to get some rest.