Sapa is one of those places that genuinely takes your breath away. The scenery is simply out of this world- huge mountains covered in lush green fields, large valleys with flowing rivers and rows upon rows of rice terraces as far as the eye can see.
The one downside to a place of such beauty is its appeal to tourists, who (like us) come by the bus-load, collectively spoiling the very thing we’ve all made a pilgrimage to see.
Nevertheless, we booked a two day trekking tour and were lucky enough to get our own guide- not that it made much difference. Almost as soon we had walked out of the guest house we found ourselves in the middle of a long line of tourists all snaking their way down the mountain to the village of Loa Chai.
On either side of us we were also flanked by an entourage of hill tribe women, all decked out in their ‘traditional’ attire. Each one of them was clearly a graduate of the “where you from, what your name, you buy from me” school of English.
We totally understood that they were just trying to make a living and humoured them for as long as we could, but after a while the banter gets old and you just want them to leave you in peace.
In their defense, they probably think exactly the same of us westerners, who trample through their beautiful villages in our thousands, every day of the year!
Thankfully our guide ‘Mi’ was lovely - really chirpy, helpful and full of local knowledge. She explained to us that she was Black Hmong, a hill tribe in the Sapa region, which is also home to a wealth of other ethnic minorities. Each can be distinguished by the clothes they wear and also the language they speak- which will be one of the 54 regional dialects.
We photographed a lot of the tribal women and found that they had a very distinct beauty. Most were only in their 20s, but looked old before their time- the result of back breaking manual labour and the strain of raising large families from a young age.
After lunch we asked Mi if we could escape the maddening crowd - she totally understood why and excitedly said that we could take the ‘small road’ to the hamlet of Ta Van where our homestay was.
That’s when the fun started- she took us across rickety bridges, up muddy trails and along the edge of rice terraces, with 2ft of muddy water on one side and a 6ft drop on the other! There were a couple of close calls and I still can’t fathom out how we made it to the homestay without falling in!
After a good night’s sleep, we woke to the sound of torrential rain on the roof, peered out the window and finally appreciated why this area is often referred to as the City in the Clouds.
The whole valley (or what we could see of it) looked completely different, with everything shrouded in an eerie but spectacular mist.
We admired the views for a while, then I realised I hadn’t packed a jacket. Damn it. Suddenly Sapa wasn’t so picturesque!
For the majority of the 12km trek back to town we huddled under an umbrella cursing the rain, but refusing to let it put a dampener on our trip. That was until we got back to the guest house and someone told us the UK has just had the hottest April on record!!!
The following day the weather was pretty similar, but we made the most of our time by hiring a scooter and visiting another village called Cat Cat.
Despite the mist we managed to get some fantastic photos and have decided to make a Facebook gallery out of our favourites.
We’ll put them up as soon as we can, but it’s always a bit problematic in Vietnam where the site is officially banned!
In the meantime we’ll leave you with this… one of our favourite photos from Sapa.
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