Day 88 Bus Boat Bus Taxi Feet Train 3 May 2012

Today we started our travels from Ha Long Bay to Sapa and it was a typical day in Vietnam in terms of the people we have encountered along the way. The receptionist at the hotel when we were checking out – rude. The receptionist at the bus ticket office – very nice and helpful. The bus drivers – very excited about Dutch soccer and very helpful with crossing the busy street to get to the second bus. The taxi driver en route to the train station – rude and tried to rip us off with a false meter that would increase the fare with every pothole we encountered. The three subsequent taxi drivers we flagged down to take us to the train station – denied us the ride because it was too close -ugh. So we walked with our heavy backpacks to the train station ticket office for 20min in the heat. We picked up our tickets and headed out to Highland’s Coffee to wait for the night train. We settled in with all our bags in a big comfy chair to have some comfy food. We boarded the sleeper train for our eight hour ride to Sapa.