Nose pickers?

Everyone picks their nose..it is a rare culture that openly advertises this universal truth with a pinky fingernail half an inch long. I respect it, and also find it creepy. If anyone reading this has definitive evidence that nose picking is not the reason for a long pinky nail, please share.
We decided to take the Northern route via Sapa to Hanoi. Once again we are freezing our tails off a mile high. We split the trip from Dien Bien Phu into two days. Our first six hour puke fest bus ride left us in Lai Chau for an evening of delicious local food and a couple of bottles of vodka shared with our friends from B.C. (I assured them we weren't stalking them when we showed up at the same hotel as them after bidding them farewell the day before, but may not have been convincing due to my wild eyes and giggling)...the wild eyes were a result of my trip from the bus station to the hotel on the back of a motor bike taxi while carrying my full pack, holding on for dear life while a man clearly inexperienced at navigating dirt roads with unsteady passengers also panicked at the idea of a skirt wearing lady tourist straddling his bike. Nathan's ride was apparently smoother than mine.
We got up early yesterday to find some fresh avocados for our baguette lunches in the local market. Before boarding the bus to Sapa we snuck into a hilltop tea plantation for a picnic. On the bus we were two of six Farangs (foreigners) who had each been told a different price for the ride. Mind you, the differences were all less than one US dollar. We all argued for about thirty minutes while the bus rolled along, but when the conductor woman finally got angry enough to grab Nathan's arm and threatened to throw him off the bus ( she was feisty.. I don't doubt she could have managed it) we paid the four dollar fare. Two of the others also paid at that time but the last couple played hard to get. It was a man and a woman from Holland, dead set on paying three dollars. They were harassed the entire three hour bus ride, which was fairly irritating to listen to, and then as the man got off the bus triumphantly at our stop his girlfriend covertly paid the extra two dollars when his back was turned. Thanks to their antics the bus dropped us off outside of town so we'd all have to walk a kilometer or two with our packs.
Our first encounter with a Mong woman went horribly. There are hundreds of village women who trek into Sapa to sell their bags and clothes. I mistakenly entered into what I later learned was a binding verbal contract to buy some things I didn't want by telling one woman my name and 'pinky shaking' with her. Note to travelers.. don't let your pinky out of your pocket. The result was having this same woman follow us for almost two hours, waiting around corners, jumping out at us when we exited restaurants. Finally we told her that she could stop following us in a more direct and unfriendly manner because being nice had no effect. We got the worst tongue lashing imaginable. For a Mong woman she sure had a good command of English expletives.
Sapa is overcast and cold. We're trying to enjoy good food and time to read and write but I have a feeling we'll be on the overnight train to Hanoi tomorrow.