Trekkk to Sapa

Hi all,

Last Sunday night Ari and I boarded the sleeper train to Sapa in Northern Vietnam with three of our new friends: Orin, Gil, and Joe

Orin - A goofy Israeli with a PHD in mathematics. Everyday, he tells us four or five "riddles" from his infinate riddle database. We even caught him reading a riddle book last night before bed. He is known to say very politically incorrect comments (a lot like Borat), that often recieve a lot of grief from locals. My favorite "approprioate" riddle Orin told is as follows: There are 100 buttons in a line. Every button is turned off to start. There are 100 dwarfs lined up to jump on the buttons. The first dwarf jumps on every button. The second dward jumps on every other button. The third dwarf jumps on every third button. And so on... all the way to the hundredth dwarf. Which buttons are turned on after all 100 of the dwarfs jump? There is a very simple answer if you approach the problem in the right way!

Gil - Another Israeli who we met at Yom Kippur services, is a computer programmer. He is a super intelligent guy currently working on the software patches for the iPhone.

Joe - He grew up as a othodox Yeshiva boy in Brooklyn. Now he is no longer religious. Jo graduated from Law school, and will be working in the New York DA office when he returns to the states.

As the five of us were dropped in Sapa, we were bombarded by a pack of 15-20 locals trying to take us to their hotel. The pushing and yelling caused me to grab my shoes hanging from my backpack. Unfortunantly, I didn't think to put my hands in my pocket. After the commontion settled down, I reached in my pocket grab my camera, but it was GONE... Lesson learned, don't leave the hand string dangling out of your pocket. Totally my fault. I lost my Halong bay and rock climbing pictures, but have replaced the camera, so more pictures to come soon!

The day after we arrived we rented motorcycles for the day to ride through the hills. I was very apprehensive about the whole motorcycle process, but am glad I overcame my fear to aquire a new skill. Ari took pictures of the beautiful hills, so I'll borrow those to upload.

Sapa was very relaxing relative to the big city of Hanoi. During the day we would play card games, read, play chess, play GO (A traditional Vietnamese game like Connect Four), and eat delicous food. The food in Sapa was the best yet. I almost always get a bowl of Pho with my meal which is good everywhere and about $1. Every night we would play pool and darts. Within minutes of arrival to the bar, the Sapa tribal girls (not Vietnames) would waddle in the door and challenge us to a game of pool. No big deal, we told ourselves the first time. Our confidence deteriated within minutes as Ko-Pih-Pih sunk the eight ball in one-handed and giggled at our 5 balls on the table. The first night with these girls was quite the sureal experience. Not only was their English flawless, but they picked up bits and pieces of every language from tourists. She knew some of our crew was Israeli so whenver we would take too long to shoot she would shout "Yala" (casual Hebrew for hurry up.) That really took my Israeli friends off guard. The tribal girls hate Orin because he tells them, "Why do you girls not go to school... Stop playing pool, and go to school..." They're response is as follows with a witty smirk, "Talk to the hand, cause the face don't listen." Very strange...

We took another sleeper train back to Hanoi this morning which arrived at 4:30am. We had to say goodbye to Orin and Gil this morning as they headed separate ways. Ari, Joe, and I just bought a 4 stop open bus ticket down South. Us three take off at 6:30pm tonight. First stop Hue!

Best,
Sam