Sapa - an unforgettable experience

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After Ha Long Bay and one more day in Hanoi, we continued our journey up north. From Hanoi we took a train to Sapa, a mountain village 350 kms north of Hanoi. The train took 11 hours and definitely was an experience!! We were sat on wooden benches, with people sat on plastic stools in the aisle and the smell of urine coming from a nearby toilet... Quite uncomfortable so upon arriving we were exhausted. But Sapa made up for it...

Sapa, situated in the North-West of Vietnam was discovered in the beginning of the 20th century by the French. This hill station, at an altitude of 1500m, is endowed with a cool climate year-round. Sapa is the home of numerous hill-tribes, under which the Zao, Niang, Sa pho, and H’Mong people. Their villages are covered by the shadow of the Fan Xi Pan Mount, the Roof on Indochina(3,143m above sea level). The environment is stunning with its breathtaking beauty of mountain ranges and terraced rice fields.

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We were welcomed by the cutest Black H'Mong tribe girls and we ended up spending most of our time there with three of them: Khu, Mo and La. Tal has been thinking about them a lot and still does almost every day.

We checked into the Queen Hotel and had a room with an amazing view onto the mountains and rice fields - room 503.

We booked a trekking for the next day and explored the small town of Sapa for the remainder of the day.

The next day we happened to run into Khu, Mo and La and they spent the rest of the day with us. The trek was not difficult, but it did get tricky every now and then as the paths were slippery. Amazing to see at what pace the girls would walk with their tiny feet and plastis sandals! The weather was great and made everything look even more colourful. We made a stop at the river and saw three naked boys playing with their water buffalos inside the river, a very funny sight.

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After 3 hrs we had lunch in a simple hut along the river with a whole audience of hill tribe women staring at us, waiting for us to finish so they could sell their goods. We had a look inside a hill tribe family's home on the way (chicken, pigs and dogs running around everywhere).

On our way through the villages we saw different hilltribes, all dressed up differently but all equally colourful.

About 6 hours later we got to the end of the trek and were transported back home with a jeep.

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The next morning we got up early and visited the Saturday market of Sapa and had lunch among the locals, when we met the 3 girls again. They are starting to feel like family! The weather turned bad towards the afternoon so we spent some time taking shelter from the rain and having expensive and horrible coffees at a nearby hotel. At the end we had to say goodbye to the girls, which was hard. James was right in saying that they will meet many more nice couples like us, but it did not make it any easier to say goodbye to them !

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We decided to leave that night as there are so many places to visit still!! Most definitely, Sapa will always stay on top of our list!