The night train to Sapa, Vietnam - May 7, 2005

May 7th

Natalya

We had a great day in Hanoi spending some time looking around and shopping to get ready for Sapa. We were booked on the evening train to Loi Cai, a small town of the Chinese border. Our travel agent picked us up in a taxi and we met another couple from Ottawa. They did not book the entire Sapa package, but just the train, we had seriously considered doing just that, especially after the package we booked to get to Siem Riep from Ko Chang with a Thai travel agent. There negotiating everything separately was definitely the way to go. The package we booked included transportation to the train station, train ride to Loi Cai, transportation from Loi Cai to Sapa, guide and all meals for 3 days in Sapa, one night accommodations at the village, one night accommodations at the hotel in Sapa, transportation to Loi Cai and train back to Hanoi all for $85. We upgraded our train ride and purchased all 4 seats in the train cabin, and as we later discovered, it made a huge difference and made the train ride there and back quite comfortable.

To prepare for our trip to Sapa we purchased silk "sleep sheets", which is basically a silk sleeping bag liner. I got a pink one and Dave got a blue one. We look like the easter bunny team. Sleep sheets worked really well, although most of the bedding we encountered on our Sapa trip including the sheets on the train was relatively clean.

The train ride was uneventful and went by very fast as we both slept for the entire ride, which was about 9 or 10 hours.