Lisa and Harper went off to the Hmong Village Moutain Retreat cooking school for the day. They started out by going to the meat, fish and poultry sections of the Sapa market. Harper bumped into an unlikely character along the way - a buffalo leg protruding from a stall. All in a day's excitement! Also saw some carp fish, frogs in a cage, black chickens and pig's intestines.
Their guide/cook then took them off to the mountain retreat where Lisa and Harper learnt how to cook Chicken and prawn rice noodle rolls, Green papaya salad, Chillies chicken lemongrass and a dessert style Sweet potato soup. Harper showed great skill (to mum's relief) in wielding a very substantial knife.
It was a great experience, including getting to eat the final product. The only dampener was the coldish, wet day and the fact the kitchen was located in an outdoor, albeit covered setting.
Mid-morning Phil set off for a solo 40 km ride up to Tram Tom Pass at 1900 metres. It was pea soup conditions and drizzling, which made for some eerie and treacherous riding. Couldn't see more than 50 m ahead at any point in time, so wasn't much of a visual spectacle. The traffic kept looming up suddenly out of the fog at the last second. I took four wrong turns which added a good 10 kms to my ride and a lot of extra climbing. But I wasn't the least concerned as it was all an adventure and chance to get some serious climbing back in my legs. My only worry was getting lost somewhere.
The descent from the pass was pretty exhilarating in the conditions - wet roads, over 10 degrees slopes in part and next to no visibility. Had to keep trimming off speed to ensure I could react to where the road was going. Only fell off once - damn cheap Chinese road bikes, heavy as buggery and not well balanced.
Got back into Sapa after 3.5 hrs pretty well non-stop riding, happy as Larry but starting to suffer from first symptoms of exposure. Nothing that a warm shower, bit of food and a quick jump into bed couldn't sort.
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