No. 7 : Part 1 : Journey

DAY SEVEN: FIRST HALF: Journey to Tavan Homestay

The morning began with a delightful breakfast of fried eggs, bread and coffee.  We met our tour guide My and we semi promptly began our journey.  We were joined with a group of three women and one man from Indonesia.  They were very nice.  About ten minutes into the trek, the man realized he had forgotten to check out and Ryan and I realized we really needed to buy ponchos.  That held things up for a bit but after that we were good to go.  We were followed by a group of Hmong women who walked with us for the next couple hours until we got to Tavan.  They crowded around and started to sell things.  I bought a bracelet and a ring from my two favorite girls then sat down for a big bowl of noodles, a banana, and a slice of apple.

As we were slurping up the last of our noodles, My announced that she was in a pickle.  The Indonesians were only doing the one day trek and needed to return to Sapa but didn't want to walk back so they were going to take motorbikes.  My didn't want to leave us alone.  We said we didn't mind at all (in fact it was preferable) and that we would meet her in the next town in about an hour and a half.  

We really wanted to check out the river so we took a small path towards it.  When we arrived there were a group of girls swimming and we went in.  They were building a dam to make a swimming hole.  These girls couldn't have been older than six and they were so much fun.  We got into helping them with the dam project.  One boy named Joe came down from upstream and motioned to us that there was a bigger swimming hole up ahead.  He worked on the damn with us then we went upstream and went swimming for awhile.  It was truly one of the best afternoons I have ever had.  When we left, we shook hands with Joe and he walked with us up the path until he saw a flock of birds, ran and grabbed a stone to slingshot them with and ran down a side path.  He turned back and we waved to each other.  It was so amazing.

A few minutes later we saw My on a motorbike frantically looking for us.  I have no idea how long we were at the river but we were really late to meet My.  This is part one.