Vietnam - Sapa

The second part of Vietnam holiday was to visit Sapa, up in the mountains near the Chinese border.  This area is renowned for its lush green rice field terraces that are absolutely everywhere.  Unfortunately the weather while we were in Sapa was not favourable and the fog and rain made it difficult to see very far and made for some muddy hiking.

Our first day we visited Tram Ton Pass (Heavens Gate), which is Vietnams highest mountain pass along the Fansipan mountain.  Apparently the views are amazing to see, however, we didn’t see anything….. just fog (see the photo below).

We then completed two small hikes to visit two different waterfalls.  The Love Waterfall which was very quiet, serene and beautiful.  The second waterfall was the Silver Waterfall, which sadly we couldn't see much of due to the fog.  Both were well worth the visit.

Back in Sapa town and we wandered around the town market.  It wasn’t a great market to visit due to many of the items being sold having been imported from China, and really not worth buying.  I did pick up a locally made, fabric, embroidered rooster named Sapa…….. we saw many a rooster around town !!  The fresh food market was interesting and the lovely fresh vegetables were great to see.  However, as we left we saw that the dog meat market is still very common in Vietnam - NOT a good way to end the morning.

In hindsight I wish we had stayed at a guesthouse rather than a hotel and had a more ‘local’ experience.  Our hotel was new and clean but was a bit soulless.  We did manage to do a bit of karaoke - even if I had issues dealing with the Vietnamese machine…… a little hard to navigate around the computer and choose songs in a different language.

Our final day in Sapa involved us going on a 15km hike through the terraced rice fields visiting 3 different villages.  The first village was very rural, Suoi Ho, where we saw lots of animals, fields and  is one of the many Black Hmong ethnic villages near Sapa. The Black Hmong are identified by wearing black hats and live very simple lives in the mountains.  They make their clothes from locally grown hemp and often die it with local indigo. The children are married off in agreed marriages at a very young age and are usually done to ‘join’ families.  Our second village was Ma Tra, which was similar to the first village but larger and had a mix of ethnic tribes.

Our guide, May, was from the ethnic tribe called Red Dzao and they live a similar life in the final village called, Ta Phin.  She took us to her family village and we got to meet her mother, sisters and nieces and nephews.  They live in a very basic, but large house where we got to sit and chat.  They women all work in the fields during the day and then they make clothes, bags and other items for personal use or for selling to tourists.

One of the horrible sad things we discovered along our hike was that the poor local villages were being sold asbestos sheets very cheaply as an alternative to more expensive building materials. Coming from China, it is cheap and the local people do not understand the dangers associated with it.  We discussed this with May, and she had heard of the dangers but she told us that the villagers had no other choice.  terrifying !!

Throughout our trip, we tried very hard to learn a few Vietnamese words but had been warned by Sylvana and Alex, that the ‘tones’ in the Vietnamese language make it very difficult to learn.  The boys have a much better understanding of this, as they are learning Mandarin at school.  By the middle of our trip, I was fed up with Max’s constant disgust and laughing at my accent and inability to learn another language.  We had many a discussion over phở and how this is pronounced.  There are 2 very close pronunciations for phở ba, one is for the noodle soup and one is for father….. quite an issue if you’re ordering dinner !! Max thinks he knows it all…….. I hold judgement.

Sapa town was not somewhere we would go back to but the surrounding mountains and villages were well worth the hike.  The drive back from Sapa to Hanoi is long and boring and really didn’t have anything to visit or see. Next stop, Halong Bay.

What a view of some of the rice terraces

our view...... yep it was very very foggy.

these little fellas escorted us up the hill

This lady from the Red Dao walked with us for 12km

yep, thats sheets and sheets of asbestos !!!

Karaoke fun - a bit of Bon Jovi to keep us entertained

more rice terraces

Max loved this piece of driftwood

Max at the Love Waterfall

The Silver Waterfall just outside of Sapa

it was a steep climb !!

Jack making friends with the locals

this was just some of our path....

This is May (our guide) giving Max some local insight

yep, that was after about 15minutes of a 15km hike !! you can only imagine what
he looked like at the end.

the ladies carrying the asbestos sheets

this little one in the mud was too cute

oh, to be that relaxed to just 'sleep'

now that is a PIG.... and some pending babies

this little girl was walking home from school to have lunch and collected
her ducklings along the way.  Jack helped her out as some of the group were
a bit uncooperative.

this little boy was making pots for the orchid gardens

CUTE !!

This was inside the house of May's family