Translation of titilar

His name was Leo and he would become a good friend of mine during the next two weeks. He had a lovely girlfriend where he stayed during my visit. Basically, I slept in his place when he was away.
The intolerance between them rose. The Dutch population feared assaults by their neighbors and thus kept away from personal contact with anybody who was not Dutch. Clearly this issue disappeared.
We managed to get a few hours of bad sleep and arrived at the destination called Lao Cai, the capital of the province with the same name. It was only 370km from Hanoi, but the ride lasted nine hours.