We left town towards Ta Phin. This is the location where the caves are supposed to be. We were told it only be 7 kilometres or so out of town. So once we had done about 9 or 10 kilometres we decided to turn back and look at where we may have missed a turn off junction.
It turned out that we missed the turn off quite early on ... the sign-age is poor to non existent.. The directions from the local people was even worse. The would give false directions to lure you into their villages.
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We keep getting told was down this road ... "only 1 kilometre or 3 min" and it just went on and on and on. The tracks were mostly just trails of mud and broken brick - not unlike the rutted trails the cows would
We made it all the way to the old abandoned Ta Phin Monastery and a little further into the actual town of Ta Phin. However at this point we had had enough of people trying to mislead us and sell stuff.
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Early on in this whole sage we had comes across a ticket booth selling Cave tickets for 30000 vnd - which we had to buy to pass through. However it was huge distance and a lot of directions later that we decided to turn back rather than waste our day looking for something that was as hard to find as a unicorn with a built in laser pointer.
From there we headed back to town and through and then out the other side of town and up the mountain looking for Silver falls (also called Thac Bac falls). These waterfalls are only about 10 kilometres up the mountain out of Sa Pa town and we soon found them (gladly!). They are quite spectacular and well worth the visit. When we were there, there was not much water, but it still looks pretty good so we got lots of photographs.
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Next on the list was the task of seeking out a local village to check out. They are mainly along another road again just down the same road the same road as my hotel (The Bamboo Hotel)
You simply continue on down toward the bottom of the hill were there are some of the minority villages we were told. After riding about 10 mins, we come across a ticket checkpoint there and while a car in front got pulled over and the girls bike got trapped in behind it I whizzed past and managed to get through for free (there is a criminal tenancy appearing in my personality I think!)
I waited around a few corners for the girls to catch me up but they had opted not to pay that charge (15000 vnd I think) we have all got to the point where we are tired of having to pay for stupid little scams.
There are enough minority village people in the town selling crap, and knowing you that kind of makes you not want to go to the villages anyway - god only knows how bad the sell pressure is in the actual villages themselves.
I returned to the checkpoint but the girls had returned to town so I rode back into town guessing that the most likely place I was going to find them was at the towns bakery or chocolate shop .... and sure enough there they were lol
It had been a very long day so we each stocked up on "comfort food" and decided to return the bikes. The girls headed back to their place to have a snooze and I headed back to mine and had a bubble bath (slumming it lol).
I'm not sure what the girls have planned tomorrow but if they are up to something else, then I may hire a motorbike and see if I can ride all the way to the Chinese border.
