An extremely noisy and chaotic city - almost everyone rides a scooter or motorbike while navigating the insanely busy roads in all directions. We learned that we could just cross the road casually and the bikes would avoid us! (hopefully)

Arrival at Lao Cai on our overnight train and shuttled directly to Bac Ha Market! It is a weekly Sunday market - the largest in the region and the villagers may travel up to 2 days just to peddle their wares and stock there. Most were from the Flower H'mong ethnic minority. On the way back, we stopped by the Vietnam-China border at Lao Cai before checking into our hotel at Sapa. Love the cool weather there!

A downslope trek down to Cat Cat Village, home of the Black H'mong. Most of the Black H'mong women at Sapa were from this village. Had a rest at the Cat Cat Waterfall, and it started to pour! The trip back was uphill all the way. Self reminder to exercise more...!

15km trek to Lao Chai San to visit the Black H'mong Villages at Lao Chai San. Our guide Viet prepared a picnic lunch for us (yummy!) and we headed down to visit the Giay Village at Ta Van.

Overnight stay in the Calypso Cruise! It was fun meeting the other tourists in the group with various stories to share. The staff even mistook us for a honeymoon couple and threw a mini celebration for us.. oops!

Tam Coc literally means "3 caves", which is what the place is really about. It does look like Halong Bay on land, but we realized that Halong Bay is unique and spectacular only because it is on water. Otherwise, it just looks like another rocky area, like Hoa Lu.

Located in Chua Huong, it is actually a vast complex of Buddhist temples and shrines. Right in the center, is the perfume temple which is located inside the Huong Tich Cave.