Jarrod and Sara’s Site

Back again… so after our Halong Bay trip, we headed directly to Sapa, a small town high in the mountains of Northwestern Vietnam near the Chinese border. To get there we took our first night train. It was much, much better than I had anticipated. We chose to do this because it saved time and money as we slept and traveled on the train which means we don’t lose a day of our trip and don’t have to pay for a guesthouse, and for the experience of a sleeper train. As I mentioned it was much nicer than I thought. We had a small room with two bunk style beds on each side of the room with a decent mattress and pillow and a decent amount of room, though someone much bigger than me may have had a tough time getting comfortable. The room has a locking door, so the only x-factor is who your bunkmates will be. Luckily, we shared the room with a retired Canadian who has been spending his retirement taking the coolest trips (safari in Africa, boat down the Amazon, Antarctica, Southeast Asia, etc.) and his guide. It was about a nine hour trip and after reading for a while we were actually able to sleep relatively well before arriving in a small town an hour outside of Sapa at 5:30 am. From here we jumped on the pre-arranged mini-bus for the final leg of the journey. This was intense. We were driving on incredibly winding mountain roads and the driver, for some unknown reason, was in a rush… he was driving how I would imagine a taxi driving when they have a woman in back about to give birth. Besides the winding roads, we were constantly passing other cars, which is very common and we’ve sort of become accustomed to but this was crazy passing, along with some motorbikes, pedestrians, and the occasional herd of water buffalo. We had to clutch the seat in front of us to keep from slamming back and forth into the people sitting next to us. We made it to Sapa though around 6:30 a.m. and decided that Lonely Planet’s recommendation to “avoid travel by night on the nation’s kamikazee bus fleet” was probably a good idea.

So, Sapa, situated on top of a mountain, high up in a huge mountain range, was absolutely gorgeous. Sara and I were dropped off at our hotel and walked to the outside porch/deck area to have breakfast and saw the view for the first time and it was just ridiculous. As you’ve probably noticed we’ve mentioned a lot about how much amazing scenery we’ve been seeing, and this was instantly our favorite. This is the worst time of year to be here (we’ve heard and read), as its usually cold (30-60 degrees), foggy, and occasionally rainy. We got so unbelievably lucky that we received the two most perfect days when we were there. 75 degrees with bright sun during the day, the bluest sky you can imagine, strong mountain breezes, just perfect, I can’t believe we got so lucky. We had breakfast overlooking this view and immediately hired a guide to go hiking…

This was one of, if not The best, hike we’ve ever been on. After a van drove us around to a lookout or two, it dropped off Sara and I, and our guide (Hie), at the side of the road, where we started our hike by crossing through a really cool farm built in to the side of the mountain that had terraced rice fields, a huge rose garden, and lots of various crops, spread over about three acres on the side of the mountain.

After descending the trail, we arrived in a Black Hmong village that was located in the valley, well off the main road and the easier hiking trails that many tourists path through. This was a highlight of our whole trip. We’ve been in a lot of villages so far and each are really different. We both agreed that this was the ”idealistic vision” that we had in our head before coming here of what a minority, mountain hilltribe village might look like. It was in an impossibly beautiful setting, with moutains surrounding it on all sides, and various parts of the village scattered among the small hills in the valley. The buildings and gardens were incredibly well cared for and clean, and you could just tell that they took great pride in where they lived. The people here all wore traditional clothes that were really unique and they all just seemed so happy. The village was similar to others we’d seen with basic huts (though more enclosed as it gets cold here), lots of animals roaming around (buffalo, cows, chickens, pigs, goats, and dogs), and various gardens everywhere on the hillside (rice fields and other vegetables that they ate and sold the surplus to buy things that they don’t produce themselves). While we were there, a wedding was just finishing and all the villagers were gathered near an open area where they had just finished feasting and were still partying. It was pretty hilarious because there were numerous men passed out all over the lawn area around where the rest of the people were hanging out and talking and laughing. Our guide laughed and said, “Look at all the happy men!” Which he meant were happy and real drunk from celebrating by drinking “happy water” (rice whiskey, i.e. moonshine) all day. Its really tough to describe the feeling of the place, but if you just think of a small, happy, healthy group of farmers living high in the mountains in an amazing setting, you probably can get the idea.

The next day we took a more common hike that is easy to start directly from town and it was a different type of experience. Basically there were a bunch of groups walking through the same three villages that had people coming through everyday, but they were actually still very chill, laid-back villages, that didn’t seem too affected by the traffic. The main difference on this trip was that we walked the entire time with a group of village kids who were walking home to their villages after spending the night in Sapa for schooling. They spoke English remarkably well, and though they definitely were young entrpreneurs, we were still able to just talk to them a lot while we were walking and it was a real nice addition to the hike.

That’s it for now, we hope everyone is doing well and we look forward to seeing everyone when we get home. Keep in touch.

 Jarrod and Sara