this is going to take forfrigginever...especially with almost a thousand photos. not going to bother running the photos through any post-processing. i would not know what to do anyway.
Here goes!
Perusing the airport bookstore and found this:
Vietnamese STUFF! Too bad it had a total of 4 photos of models.
Some bridge leading to some place in the middle of some lake.
Train station to Lao Cai (to SaPa)
My first ride on a train! Best night of sleep the whole trip; no lie!
We're herrrrrrrrre!!
Arrival to and first trek through SaPa: somewhere south.
View to the left of our telly...
and to the right.
"Hey, Tin, what does that say?" (Trying to spook them): "I have no idea. Probably a cemetery!"
Oh, I was right...
Roseryn!
Bhudsabourg!
Shade...sweet shade.
We arrived to a gate with a booth and a man asking for 50,000VND per person to continue into the village. We didn't feel like paying if we had to keep on walking, so we turned back.
Finished with our mini-trek south, we head back to town for lunch and then onto the next village.
Mmmm, fish & chip soup.
Trekking through Cat Cat Village.
Random BALLER house in Cat Cat Village.
Mr(s). Scarecrow
Piglets sniffin through the muddy mudsss lookin' for grubby grubsss.
Pigs & ducks know how to party. Recuperating after a rager, I'm sure.
Stairs to the waterfall? Don't mind if I do!
almost there...
lookin' left...
lookin' right...
Made it to Tien Sa Waterfall!
Tin, Jennifer, Rhona, Mike
Power up with some bird's nest?
Bia Ha Noi! That's more like it.
Bamboo bridge or bamboo wind instrument that a giant dropped?
Why not both?
After a long day of walking a bunch: mountain goat!
And a banana & chocolate crepe for dessert.
Beginning of our first full day hiking up the Roof of Indochina, the highest peak in Indochina.
Before the clouds roll through.
Our route:
Day 1: Nui Xe -> Rhodod endron forest -> Site 2,200m -> High bamboo forest -> Site 2,800m for the night
Day 2: Roof of Indochina! 3,143 m -> down to site 2,800m -> sleepover at camp 2,200m
Day 3: Tea forest -> Rhodod endron forest -> Sin Chai village -> DONE!
Our crew: Porters Bao & Su, beastin' it up the mountain in slippers!
Rhona & her sweat scarf from Paris.
Through the river or the mud? Decisions decisions...
Jennifer chooses rock. Clever girl!
Twix break!
I made my own multi-colored shirt. Just add sweat.
Crying from the grueling hike!
Bao trying to block out the crying.
Lunch break.
Cat and dog playing Cat & Dog.
Unknown critter #1
Onward we go.
The lovely view on the way up
Mike admiring the lovely view.
Ladder, fuck yes.
"How should we pose?"
"Roller coaster!"
"dead'
Spookiest portion of the hike. Chopped that sucka down for blockin' me. Delicious toothpick it was.
Home for the night.
Kitchen on the left!
Dinner was a feast. Garlic fries were unexpected but definitely welcomed.
Stretchin' dem muskulls.
Chillin' out by candlelight. Cutes.
Good night, moon.
Day 2: To the peak we go!
Steps, yes.
Above the clouds...
Almost there...
Success!
Tired, beat, pooped, etc etc.
I Shark<3 SJ! Reppin' it, yo!
I had fun figuring out ways to defile the peak.
Posing with our porter and his knife!
Most of the view, unfortunately.
Stupid people defiling the peak (carvings, scratches, stickers, gum... boooo)
Part-time peak model, dintchuknow?
Falling, but not really. Duh.
Our descent started with a staring contest.
Spoiler: no one wins. Staring contests are silly.
Back to camp for lunch & break before we continue our descent.
Road leading to Lai Chau province, into China!
Had our own version of Tough Mudder: VN!
Rhona trying to seduce me into carrying her pack or something.
Smoke break for Su. Makeshift water bong to smoke his "Thuốc là o", up to 9x more nicotine than regular tobacco.
Town of SaPa from near the peak of Fansipan.
Biggest smiles they could muster.
Too cute. What could this be an ad for?
Rhona doing a smell test. News flash, girl: 3 days without showering, you stink. Trust.
Random mountain water buffalos (oxen?). It and I were going back & forth with our mating calls.
Su, in his slippers, washing his legit water pipe/bong.
Final day: final trek down!
Just some wild horsies.
Buffalo/Oxen poop.
Unknown critter #2. Pretty.
I also created my own multi-colored pack. Add more sweat!
Butterfly. Duh.
Orphanage (or school?) growing veggies.
Rhona picked me some flowers to keep the horse (made by Bao) busy.
Someone likes corn!
Oh, of course.
Waking up everyday, steeping out to your front/back yard. Yeah, pretty much awesome.
Mountain goats!
I see potential pork!
Yum!
Suckling piglet.
I got 99 problems but this bridge ain't one!
Seriously, it was really safe. We crossed it successfully.
Left of bridge.
Right, down stream.
Lunch picnic on a bridge.
Unwrapping our rice!
After lunch, I wanted to get some work in to aide in my digestion, so I asked our porter to see if we could harvest some rice. That's right: we got knee-deep in the rice paddies and got to crack some skulls with a sickle!
Watch us in action!
Damn Westerner.
Black H'mong farmer for all of 2 minutes.
Harvest that rice, girl!
They enjoyed watching us doing it all wrong.
Our pile!
What it was supposed to look like...
My first mud bath pedi!
Shading the seat from the day's sun. Smort!
Looking back and saying good bye.
Horse & flowers wilting from the heat.
Finished! Picked up at Sin Chai village and vanned back to town :D
Armin van Buuren playing in the van. Srsly, haha.
Porter Tin!
Final day in SaPa: renting motorbikes and cruisin' through the wind-y mountains. Morning snack: Soft-Shell Crab Pringles!
There's a video recorded of our ride through the mountain. I'll add it in later.
After a drive through the mountains, we arrived at Silver Waterfall!
Showing off my farmer's tan.
Phu sisters.
Part-time rock model also.
Frogger impression.
The quickest (and deadliest) way down the watefall.
She really wanted a bath...
so in she went!
toocutes.
Normal photo turned into frightened photo as the person taking our photo was about to fall down the waterfall.
After cruising around for a few hours, we return to SaPa and treat ourselves to some delicious Indian food for lunch. I couldn't help noticing the hilarious descriptions for their wine. Not just at this restaurant, but for the most part, all wine descriptions. How pretentious can you get???
Yumm, essence of pencil lead and tobacco. Exactly what I thought my alcohol was missing.
Amalgam of fragrances...
Cat...pleasuring itself?
One last ride to the lower villages before we head back to Hanoi. It was extremely smokey due to the slash-and-burn agriculture.
In our cabin for the night ride back to Hanoi. Just messin' around a bit.
And there you have it! Part 1 complete. 2 or 3 more to go, so give me a few days. I've been doing this for the last 3 or 4 hours. It's 5:30 a.m. and I have to wake up for a bike ride in 2 hours.
Enjoy!
xoxo, tinothy
also, I just adjusted the blog design. I went back and increased the size of some photos. I always felt they were edited to small, but I'll make them larger from now on. Too lazy to do it one by one, so if anybody knows of a way to set them to a default size when uploaded, holler please.
That's our laundry rack out on the back porch. The wind is doing its job by blowing some air around to dry my things.
Except, there's something wrong. I washed my only bed sheet this morning before heading out for some football. When I got home, I went out to rearrange some things so the air circulation would be equal or whatever. Next thing I know, my bed sheet is gone! The wind blew it away. I believe that's my first casualty of doing laundry. I ran down to the street to look for it, but no luck. I'm sure some someone street vendor picked it up to bundle shirts and jeans in.
Oh, well! I hope someone puts it to good use. Still missing the good ol' days when I could throw all that junk into a drier and have it ready in under an hour.
I wish I paid more attention all those times my mama cut/peeled fruit for me to eat. Why is it always the little things you don't think matter much actually do?
I totally failed in trying to peel a pomelo yesterday. I usually buy them downstairs peeled & packaged neatly at the mart, but as I was driving back from somewhere over the weekend, I passed a huge open-air market and stocked up on some fruit. The result:
No idea why the uploader decided to flip my photo
I was tempted to just slice through everything like an orange and eat it, but I wanted to do it right. As soon as I flubbed on the first slice, I hopped onto the youchoobs and learned the proper way (also the way I learned how to roll a joint. Thanks Wiz!).
Or maybe I just got a defected pomelo? Taste-wise, definitely not. It was quite possibly the tastiest one I've had. Or maybe I'm saying that because of the effort I put into it. Either way, I have a new-found respect for the folks that not only hustle dey pomelo on the side of the streets, but will offer to carve it up for you and put it in a bag/on a tray.
One thing for sure though: by the time I'm done here, I plan to be a pro-carver like my mommy.
