NW Vietnam: Sapa

I boarded a train from Hanoi to Lao Cai, which is the border crossing into China. Lao Cai is nothing special, but less than an hour away are many hill tribe communities. These people live and work in the hills and now that tourists have come to see them, they sell their handcrafts. Also in the vicinity of Sapa is the tallest mountain in Vietnam. It is called Fansipan and is around 3500 meters high. The French call the mountain range in norhtern Vietnam the Tonkinese Alps, due to the close proximity of the Gulf of Tonkin.

I had a couple of options when I got to Sapa, scale the mountain, relax in an $6 hotel with mountain view, or trek into the local villages and stay at a locals house. All were great options, but I chose the trek. It was a 2 day trek through the area and was close to 20 kilometers total hiking distance. The hike was challenging at times as we scaled huge walls of mud and dealt with the high hummidity.

From Sapa, Vietnam

The views were breath taking and we were accompanied by a group of local hill tribes women who were trying to sell us their handicrafts. They were somewhat nice, although very persistent. Their selling techniques consisted of..."You buy from me? Maybe? You promise you buy from me later? Ok I come back." I ended up buying a couple of hand made bracelets from a young girl, which are really nice. Never maybe promise to buy later, or here it is a binding contract.

On the hike there were lots of animals. It is spring here, so there were new born chicks and ducklings. My favorites were the piglets.

They were really cute, but sad to know that in a year or so they would be bacon.

Another fun part of the hike was walking through villages and having the local kids come running and yelling "hello, bobot." I have yet to figure out what bobot means, but the looks on their faces were priceless.

From Sapa, Vietnam

We trekked up and down and ended up in a small village. This village had a muddy river flowing through it and we went to some hot springs. The hot springs were closer to warm and were in some concrete baths that received their water from the river. Nothing spectacular, but all part of the experience. One exciting thing did happen while were were in the hot springs. We were sitting there relaxing and noticed a man with a hard hat on who was whistling at us and waving. He kept on whistling but we just laughed at dismissed him, as this is a normal everyday occurence. The hard hat though was something you do not see everyday here. About 5 minutes passed and he came back. This time he was more persistent and we started to make our exit from the warm springs. In addition this area was under some heavy excavation with big machines and lots of workers. A couple of mintues later there was a large explosion. I ran for cover under a big machine in case of falling debris. Nothing happened to anyone, but a few racing hearts.

We went back and slept in a house on stilts, preceded by a huge home cooked feast. The next morning we walked through the local village and toured a school. The town had around 600 people living in it at most, so you can imagine what the school was like. We walked by all of the classrooms and waved at the children. They were wide eyed and giggly, but many tried to hide their excitement. There was one class with no teacher and they were out of control. It was very easy to tell the good teachers from the ones who did not care based on how the class appeared. A great teacher can have a profound influence on children and this was more apparent to me after this experience a world away.

From Sapa, Vietnam

Following the school visit we hiked a short ways to a small waterfall. The waterfall was not very impressive, but the swimming hole below it was amazing. The water was colder than Barton Springs by a few degrees, but was a welcome relief from the heat and humidity.

From Sapa, Vietnam

This ends my trip to Sapa. It was a nice change of pace from Hanoi. See the rest of the pictures here.