This is the view from tne hotel window. I think it's looking Northwest but I could be totally wrong. Soon we will be on our way to the airport.

Back in Hanoi. Penultimate day.

Yes, I have now swum in the South China Sea.

Any tour of HaLong would not be complete without a visit to the impressive but garishly lit caves. It would have been neater to discover them ourselves. If nothing else they were a welcome respit from the heat.

Yes, there at the bottom. It's a boat.

We drove several hours from Hanoi to enjoy a boat ride around HaLong Bay.

How could I leave Hanoi without this picture? Taken from a rickshaw.
Actually, they're probably chickens.

We are out of the mountains now well on our way to Hanoi. Still several hours of driving to go though.

Really this is just the start. It extends for some way in more or less a single line.

This is a picture taken on our way to Coc Ly market. We left Bac Ha in the morning and this evening we will be back in Hanoi. We had to walk from about here because the road was too muddy from the rain.

After arriving in Bac Ha we went for a walk in the surrounding hills. They were growing lots of plums. They are not in this picture though.

It rained yesterday so for the first time we had clear views! Unfortunately this is also the day we left Sapa and started our way out of the mountains.

Walking back down through the garden. The rocks looked like good climbing but I didn't stop to try.

After the village outing I walked through Sapa's flower garden to a look-out atop one of the surrounding hills. This shot is looking down at the garden that I came through and Sapa off to the right.

We visited this village outside of Sapa. It looked like it was doing well, a lot of the houses looked new and well built. It seems that this is a stopping point for visitors from Sapa to go and see an authentic village and buy some nice needlework. From the moment we got there until we left we were circled by an entourage of chatting Red Zyao women eager to sell there goods. We promised we'd buy something but not until the end of the tour, a compromise that pleased everyone.

Turning my back on the waterfall affords this view.

One of the features that Sapa has to offer is a nearby Hmong village. The walk through it takes you past this waterfall.

We are enroute to Sapa, the main tourist destination of the area. For both foreign and Vietnamese tourists. Sapa is fairly high up and picturesque, and features a strong Black Hmong presence owing to the nearby village whose subsistance is now based on the tourism - like many of the villages around here.

A lot of this hike was through rice paddies.

Once we got past the dogs these two were happy enough to pose for a picture - Though the grandmother insisted on changing first.

This woman is harvesting some tea. No scones to be seen...

Taken on a hike originating from Phong Tho.
Boy did she jump when she heard the sound of the shutter.

Looking back at the way we came. All those curves are why it would take a full day to travel 200km.

We stopped along the way to Phong Tho to take some pictures.

If you look closely you can see a boy in the stream and a water buffalo hanging out.

This is a monument to the battle of Dien Bien Phu, this being the site of one of the Vietnamese artillery installments. The guy on the left, gregarious as he was, insisted that I take his picture. It was suggested later that he might be mafioso owing to the multiple tatoos along his arms, which you can't make out in this picture.

This was a small market we stopped at somewhere between Son La and Dien Bien Phu. All the tribes around here have different costumes - the most distinctive aspect is usually the colourful headpiece.

I may be mistaken about which river this was. I think it was the Black River or the Red River. (Though it looks like the Brown River).

Sadly I do not know to which tribe these girls belong. There house was surrounded by Jackfruit trees. Seeing these unlikely tree-borne fruit reminded me of a conversation about what if watermelon's grew on trees.

We arrived in Hanoi last night. Today we are enroute to Son La in the mountains to the West North West of Hanoi (if I remember correctly). The climate and relatively low altitude mean the mountains are covered in jungle where they are not farmed. Most of the jungles are dotted with bursts of bamboo, but here we found, overlooking a few small rice paddies, a bamboo forest.