Sapa in January = Maid in the Mist!

We arrived in Sapa after a fairly uneventful night on the sleeper train from Hanoi. Sapa is located at the northern part of Vietnam and is 1650m above sea level. At this time of the year, it is noted in several guide books that it is quite foggy. I guess my enthusiasm led me to overlook this minor detail. We arrived in Sapa after a bus schlepped us uphill for 1.5h in the dark (it was about 6 am) and foggy. And when I say foggy, I mean Maid of the Mist foggy!!! It was so bad that as we were searching for a hotel, we couldn't tell if it was a building that we were standing in front of or a hugh cathedral (yes, that actually happened).
It was so cold and foggy that we both had to buy new water/wind/cold proof jackets. It is beautiful there - we have the proof in the postcards that we purchased!
We did however manage to make the best of it. We met Ly, a 15 year old girl from the neighbouring village - a H'Mong girl. She stole my heart in the first three minutes of our conversation. In Sapa, the girls from the surrounding hilltribes come into town and try to sell their wares; it's a bit like being in the beach in Cancun- oh yeah, minus the sunshine.  Despite of these assertive learned behaviors these girls ( and women) are quite attractive (and I don't think it is just the curiosity of it all). So, Ly took us on a one day tour that began with a visit to the market to buy food for our lunch. It was quite a thrill to watch this 15 year old youngster bartering for the price of chicken on our behalf. At one point she told us to remain standing at the side- I think she was having troubles getting a good deal when she had four foreigners gawking and smiling at her every move. Oh yeah, snapping photos ever few minutes likely didn't help the situation either.
We walked for an hour or so until we reached her village and home. When we arrived her mom was busy getting the fire ready for lunch. We all (we were with another couple from Switzerland that we
met earlier in our travels) watched as our lunch was being prepared before our hungry eyes.
It's funny, all over the world it seems to be the same: the entertaining room is the kitchen.  Ly and her entire family prepared lunch. Their home, a humble, wood framed, cement floored large hut became our home for the afternoon. Like all families, they had pets, a cat and dog who remained snuggled around the fire the entire time - except of course when we ate. And like our pets, they were under the table waiting for juicy morsels of food to fall on the floor.
Our lunch date ended with a harrowing, nail biting motorcycle ride (sans helmets) through the villages back to Sapa. We were glad to be back "home" so that we could warm ourselves up in front of our portable heater.  In fact, the next days were spent trekking around villages in the fog followed by breaks at restaurants that had fireplaces. But don't get any ideas of romantic images, the fires were usually one or two damp pieces of wood spitting out water at it's ends as the centre bit released a measly few kilojoules of heat.
So, we've high tailed it out of Sapa and the Maid of the Mist and are now, still cold, in Ninh Binh.
Today we visited the karsts of Tam Coc and tomorrow we are going to a national park that has a primate rescue centre. Then we are off to south of the demilitarized zone, aka DMZ, to find the heat!! See you later fog!