Sapa, Vietnam

After arriving back at our base in Hanoi, the 3B Hotel, we chilled out for the rest of the afternoon before catching an overnight train to Sapa. Sapa is a  town set in the mountains right up the top of the country, not too far from the Chinese border. We had booked a 2-day 1 night trekking trip through our Hanoi hotel. We arrived in Sapa early the next morning after a good night on the train. We were taken to a hotel where we had breakfast and were able to have a nice hot shower, before setting out on our walk.

There was quite a crowd setting out from Sapa, and to start with it was bit of a route-march. However, as we got going the crowds thinned a bit as the different tour guides took their groups off on different paths. The tourist companies use women from the local villages as guides

 One of the first stops was for some fresh sugarcane to chew on (and spit out) as we walked.

The scenery in this part of Vietnam was spectacular. The area is known for its picturesque terraced rice paddies, and I certainly got my fill of them during the 2 days!

 

Everybody kept telling us how cold it was going to be in Sapa, so we had packed our winter woollies! A couple of weeks earlier they had had snow up there, but we managed to strike some lovely mild weather and were walking in t-shirts both days.

It was interesting walking through the small villages as we came to them. We'd be inundated with locals wanting us to buy their handicrafts! Below is the area school that some students walk miles to and from each day.

 More scenic shots... I came to Sapa for the terraced hills, and I certainly got what I wanted!

 

 

 

 

We had signed up for the 'home-stay' option overnight, but it was actually quite disappointing. We would have been better off staying overnight in a hotel in Sapa. Nevertheless, we still had a nice evening meal and managed to get a decent nights sleep, ready for another day of walking the next day.

 

Looking back, it's a wonder I managed some of the trekking with my dodgy knee! Some of the tracks were quite steep and I had to suffer the indignity of the little old women helping me along! It also helped that Will carried all of our stuff and I just had a light day bag with a warm top and some water in it. A lot of the tracks were clay, so it would have been an absolute nightmare if there had been any rain. The guides did say that during the wet season they tend to use alternative tracks, as well as walking more along the main roads.

 

 

 

Lunch each day was in one of the small villages and the food was always plentiful and very very good (as it had been the whole time in Vietnam!).

 

 

At the end of our trek we had a couple of hours to chill out and explore Sapa town. It is an interesting little town, with every third store seeming to be a North Face outlet store! Some of it is apparently real, but a fair amount was also fake... We chilled out and rested our weary legs in a very good little cafe where I enjoyed the restorative powers of a decent Vietnamese coffee and will had his first hot chocolate for a few days. The family sitting behind us happened to engage with the locals trying to sell them handicrafts, and that group of women stayed and harassed them for about half an hour!

 

After we were nicely rested it was a case of catching an overnight train back to Hanoi, and back to our friends at the 3B hotel.