Long time since another update.
Finally arriving in Central Vietnam, sadly the time had come to send back the bikes to HCM. Wedidn't spend a lot of time inthis region, but instead opted for animmediate night train to Hanoi. This city was actually quite disappointing compared to Ho Chi Minh. Far too much tourism. Probably our hostel wasn't in the ideal location either.The famous lakewas quite beautiful and we found some relaxing places to hang out.

Nevertheless, after a few days we were happy to leave Hanoi. In our hostel Haas had met a polish girl Ewa, who decided to accompany us on the nightbus to Sapa. This small village is located in a beautiful mountaineous regionin Northern Vietnam. A lot of ethnic minorities still live here. In Sapa they spend their time by walking next to foreigners, making some polite conversation and eventually asking to buy something from them. 'Make me happy?' They range from young to very old. It's funny how they keep walking hundreds of meters next to you, but in arather nice way. Once their salespitch comes, it's short and not all too persistent and bothersome. They don't look really poor either, all wearing really nice traditional clothes.

The second day we were there, we went on a biking trip through the mountains. Finally the skies had cleared up again, driving through truly beautiful scenery. At one point however, 2 wild dogs appeared on the road. They were barking really agressively and started to run along us. Quite scary actually. One of the dogs finallymanagedto biteme right above my left foot. It wasn't very deep, but enough for it to bleed. We continued the trip, although I was worrying a bit about Rabies. We went on a little further, to a waterfall with barely any water in it. When we drove back, another accident happened. When passing some cars driving in typical crazy Vietnamese style, Ewa slipped while trying to avoid them and fell down. She ended up with a really nasty cut in her elbow. We stopped someone to take her to the hospital, while Haas and I drove back with the bikes. Arriving at the village, we went to meet her, since I also wanted to getmy wound checked out. However, the only hospital in this neighborhood looked really poor, quite dirty, rooms filled with people and the doctor herself couldn't speak any english. After some phonecalls with a doctor at home, it turned out Sapa lays in a highrisk zone for rabies. Interestingly, the time you have after a bite from an infected animal depends on the distance from the wound to your brain. Slowly it goes through your body and when finally arriving it is almost always lethal. However, since the dog ( luckily ) had bitten me so low, I had some time left, treatment within 10days was advisable. I decided to wait for China to get treated, in a cleaner hospital where someone might even speak some english.

Next day we were planning to leave,after a great last night in Sapa. Walking through the streets, some small local girls came up to us trying to sell somestuff. One of these was a a bit older, 14y old andeasily one of the brightest girls I ever met. Just from contact with tourists, she had build up an impossible english vocabulary. When I told her I wasn't interested in buying anything, this girl happily stayed with us, to talk and joke around. Before I knew it,me and this girlwere joking about the afterlife, imagining how next time it might be me trying to sell her something on the streets. We were talking for 20 minutes at least, having lots of fun, laughing out loud,really teasing each other. How creative, smart and cool this girl was, incredible.
After 1 month not being a single timetempted to buy some crappy, overpriced touristic souvenir, I felt the time had come. When I took my wallet, she started going through her stuff and gave me 2 bracelets. I wanted to pay her, but she didnt accept it. It was a present. I couldnt believe this girl. I said it was too much, and after repeatedly trying to pay her, I told her I'dgladly accept the one silk bracelet as a present,but give herthe other 'silver' one back. This she didn't accept either, I couldn't give it back since it wasn't mine, it was a present from her to the girl at home I would decide to give it to..
Obviously I left her mynumber to callme when she's 18. (ahum, this is a joke)

Early next morning, off to China then! We had no problems passing the border, arriving at the small border town Heiku. We immediately took a bus to Kunming, the province capital. At this town Haas and I would spend our (for now) last days travelling together. While he'd like to keep up the current pace of travelling around, I'm keener on settling for a while,getting to know some locals andlearn chinese.
We stayedata very nice hostel at the center of the city, The Hump. One of the better places we slept during our travelling. Nice andspacious rooms/dorms, a very friendly staff, a pool table and a bigbalcony with a great view over the skyline.We spent our days discoveringKunming, a very enjoyablecity to walkand bike around.It's a rich city, even to european standards. You can find here every single western clothes shop, Carrefour (with Duvel and Leffe), Walmart, Apple stores, Imax 3D cinema, ... Other than that beautiful parks,filled withpeople dancing in various styles as a way of sport,lakes, big car-free lanes andall that surrounded by skyscrapers home to this city's 6 million residents. There are both a lot of students and artists in this town. One day we visited a conservatory and luckily stumbled upona pair of chinese students doing their final repetition for a concert planned a few days later.A trip to the Yunnan History Museum was much less remarkable.

One surpriseafterarriving in China is the absolute lack of English speaking skills. Words liketelephone, water, bus,left & right, where?/when?,...are completely alien to them. The most basic task of ordering or askinganything is almost impossible without using chinese words. However, and this is the surreal part, there's not a lack of english. On the contrary, english is everywhere. Every store, restaurant, hotel, library etchas its name translated inenglish up front.Streetsigns, toilet- andexitsigns, .. all inchineseand english. Yet ask a random person forthe toilet, he won't understand you. Use any of these english translatednames to anyone, noresponse. The immensely annoying thing is that you'restuck with using these translations, since chinese signs give no indication whatsoever on how to say a wordout loud(forget about Pinyin, absolutely nowhere to be seen). The only option left is showing a paper with chinese signs to people, which is exactly how I got sent around finding a Rabies treatment. Person after person scribbling down some more signs, while pointing me somewhere else.
The people themselvesare friendly enough, and any chinese effort is answerred by enthusiastic smiling. While losingyourway, friendly people automatically pop up and guide you. This however didn't relieve me from literally having to act out a dog.

The last night beforeour goodbye's, Haasand Ihad atruly great evening. We played a drinking game witha chineseboy and girl. The girl was a pole dancer, while the guy was an aspiring rapper, whose english wasweak at best, except for a thorough knowledge of hip-hop slang. A really nice and good boy, but then he used these insaneexpressions, hilarious. We connected our ipods to play our own music and got really really drunk.
A great reminder of some of the other great evenings we had together.

On to the next part of our journey then, best of luck Haas!