Day 142 – Tam Coc to Sapa

Another day, another sleeper bus

Today we woke up early and enjoyed breakfast at 7am. After breakfast we continued to pack and then went downstairs to wait. At 8:30am the male owner of Phi Hung’s Unique Homestay put our bags on his electric scooter and rode to the Long Hotel’s travel agency, while we walked behind him. We had arranged our tickets yesterday from the homestay and it cost us 400,000 VND / $24.22 per person.

The owner waited with us until the van came to pick us up, which was nice. We got on the van with one other tourist. The van then took us down the highway towards Ninh Binh city. We then had to wait for around 20 minutes inside the van until the actual bus arrived. Once it arrived there was only 5 other people plus 3 staff. The bus was surprisingly in excellent condition on the inside. The bus left and a few hours later we stopped on the outskirts of Hanoi, in a dodgy factory for the bus to get washed, while we had to stay inside.

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Then the bus drove for another 10 minutes before stopping to load up more people. We were once again left on the bus. The bus stopped at least 10 times in Hanoi and along the way to pick up more people and goods. After a while, there were locals sitting on the floor between the beds.

We stopped at 2:30pm for a lunch break. Around 6pm we heard an small explosion from the front of the bus. Turns out the bus had driven over a bag of rice, which then exploded. This was as the bus was stopping at the bus station in Loa Cai. Here we had to wait for another 40 minutes for a different bus to Sapa. We finally got to Sapa at 8pm, almost 12 hours after the journey started.

From the bus stop (Bến xe khách Sa Pa) it was a 10 minute walk to our hotel, Sapa Romance Hotel. The lovely owner Anna (or Emma) upgraded our room due to our long bus travel and because there was a wedding happening on the road…in the middle of the road.

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We had dinner at Đỗ Quyên Restaurant as the food options in Sapa are a little limited in the vicinity of the hotel. As we were exhausted we had an early night.