This morning has been a chill out day. The boys have basically been backpacking with us all this time and I think they have needed some playtime and interaction with other children. They played darts and snooker with Conner (a 12 year old boy from Hong Kong, originally from Africa) who was also staying at the same hotel with his parents. The rest of the morning was spent letting them run around the main square and play ball with some local children – particularly a little boy and his older sister. We let them run around and kept our distance from them, as I think they are also sick of hearing us tell them “don’t do that, don’t touch that, be quiet”. I also enjoyed playing ball with the cute little boy who would have only been 2 years old. I had some random guy come up to me and steal a selfie photo with him. It was totally weird as he slobbered me with a kiss as took the photo! š± Ā I guess people do things differently here šĀ
The morning went so quickly after a lot of fun playing around.
It was time for lunch so we decided to find a place on our way to Cat Cat. It turned out that we each had a Pho at a place around the corner from our hotel. The food was great. We still need to convince the boys that the mint and greens are what make the Pho tasty – we’ll get there.
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking down to Cat Cat village and the boys had more of a chance to play on the sea-saw and swings. It was a pleasant walk with lots of different animals and the typical housing of Mong people.
We came across a few children playing in mud or playing on hand made rafts and the boys wanted to get in there and play them too, but unfortunately I didn’t bring any spare warm clothes on this trip.
One of the most exciting parts of the day was catching a motorbike from Cat Cat villlage back to Sapa. I’m glad we did, as I envisioned we would have to carry the boys all the way back – and that would not have been great up hill!
Unfortunately Sapa is not quite what I expected. I was hoping for tranquility and fresh air. Instead the centre is a big construction site, with diggers, cranes and dust everywhere! At least the boys enjoyed watching their favourite trucks. And IĀ let them enjoy watching the construction site once we returned from Cat Cat, while I went and got my hair washed and blow dried. Cheap cheap for $80,000VND ($4USD).
Dinner was great. Sebastian chose the restaurant. We would pass this place everyday when we walked around and he was attracted to the “meat on sticks” bbq. We chose to eat there and were not disappointed. The food was different and very delicious. Jason got the better end of the bargain as he got talking to a lovely couple on the table next to us and because his wife was pregnant and wasn’t drinking, he offered Jason a shot of the “rice wine”. One turned into two, and I lost count how many they had together. It seems the men are not very interested in whether women want to try it, as every time Jason would want to let me have the shot instead, the guy would say “no… you only”.
Family Excursions Abroad 