Can't travel without being scammed...

So we had a bit of a lie in and then headed for our next destination. How typical, the weather couldn't have been nicer. You could see Fansipan in all its glory (see pic below)! Typical! We didn't realise that the last bus for the day was at 1pm from Lao Cai. After a bit of a panic we arrived in Lao Cai just in time! Then we jumped on the bus to Bắc Há and of course they took the opportunity to scam us. Luckily we had read an article about the scam price and it even had a price on the bus in Vietnamese!! He tried to charge us 200,000 đồng each when it was supposed to be 60,000 đồng. He was screaming at us telling us to pay and get off the bus. We stood our ground. He then went down to 200, 000 đồng for the two of us. Again we just sat and said no. Eventually he got bored of screaming and got off. He wasn't even the bus driver or bus conductor!! What really upset us is that no one on the bus helped us. They all just sat in silence. Normally in this situation someone on the bus has backed us up and told the scammer to go away. But they didn't. Its truly upsetting when these things happen and really makes us not like a country but we have to remind ourselves about the 90% of the people that we have met who have been so caring, friendly and hospitable. Anyway off the bus went.

Number 2 fiasco. So the homestay said they'd contacted the bus driver and asked him to drop us off at the homestay. The bus driver refused and refused to ring the homestay. So we were again stranded in the middle of nowhere. Luckily there was a nice bakery so I sent Will to get us something to eat while I watch the bags. He came back with two of the biggest chocolate covered doughnut with sprinkles. Haha well it did make me laugh! So we are just sitting in the bakery until we can get hold of the homestay 😊

So we decided to pay a tiny bit extra for our accomodation this time due to reviews that we read and it was definitely worth it. When waiting at the bakery we met up with Rob who we hadn't seen since chiang Mai it was so nice to see a familiar and smiley face after such a rotten bus experience. We then all headed to the homestay together and they were so happy to see us and offered us warm tea. Me and Rob then headed out for beer and snacks. We had such a great evening catching up on the last 3 months. We had dinner with Lan and her mum. Wow can her mum drink. She kept telling us to drink happy water and she just kept going too! The food was just amazing and it was so nice to have such a family vibe again! She even made fresh onion rings! It was a really lovely family feel to remind us that Vietnamese people are generous and caring.

The next day Lan, the owner, took us on a very fun hike the next day. To be honest we were still quite sore from Fansipan but it was fun and we kept getting so lost. She took us to a local Hmong family, we picked and ate orange raspberries, we walked down random rice terraces, down buffalo tracks and up corn fields. She then took us for lunch to her friends restaurant where we ate Phở Cháu Bac Ha, which is completely different to to the traditional Phở we know. It had less soup, thicker noodles, peanuts and lots of herbs cut in already. Really delicous! And she didn't let us paying anything towards it and said it was a gift!

In the afternoon we just chilled out and caught up on some Vietnamese (we keep skipping it!!). It's so peaceful and beautiful here. We could easily stay a week!Read more