Hiking in Sa Pa

Sa Pa is a small mountain town in the North of Vietnam, near to the border with China.

We arrived early, about 6:15am and after waiting around in a car park for 15 minutes, someone eventually came to meet us to take us to a hotel down the road for breakfast. The hotel had a fantastic balcony looking down into the valley, where we could see a large number of terraces cut into the hill and some rising mist coming up the valley. The mist reminded me of the Alps when we’ve been skiing.

After breakfast, we were met by our guide, who explained she was from the H’Mong tribe and she would be taking us on a walk to her village. She and a few ladies who were with her were all dressed in traditional H’Mong clothing, which consists of cotton dyed with indigo and then an intricate, brightly coloured, woven section that makes up most of the sleeves. Apparently our guide has to make one each year for her and her husband, which she does in between guiding and looking after her two small children.

We started off walking through Sa Pa town and then down the road, where we had to constantly avoid the numerous trucks and scooters that were driving past. There is a lot of construction going on in Sa Pa, mainly to build guest houses for the growing number of tourists.

After an hour or so, we left the road and started walking through the terraces themselves. These are used to grow rice and corn. The scenery was stunning and the weather was a perfect temperature of about 25 degrees. Some of the paths were pretty steep but our guides helped us down. Two of the older ladies in particular got talking to us and made us little bamboo figures, a heart for me and a horse for James.

Just before our lunch stop, we were told that the ladies who had been walking with us were leaving to go home and that they wanted to sell us their wares. For me this put a bit of a dampener on the morning, as, somewhat naively, I had thought they were coming with us to simply act as our guides and take us to their village. However, what transpired was that each woman had singled out a member of our group and when we stopped they honed in on us to convince us to buy their products. If I’m honest, I felt a bit cheated and ended up buying two bags that, although lovely and hand stitched, I didn’t really want! I would have preferred it if they’d just been upfront from the beginning.

However, as the day went on and we were constantly hounded by random people trying to sell us things, even coming off the road to sell to us as we sat outside our bedroom, our thoughts towards the old ladies began to soften. At least we had engaged with them and learned a bit from them about their culture. And ultimately, it was only about £12 for two bags. I guess it just highlighted the reality of the situation, that you don’t get anything for free in Vietnam.

At lunch, we sat with a lovely Australian couple, who we tried to talk to over the constant pestering of a small child trying to sell a woven bracelet. The sad thing is that he was doing this instead of going to school, which is free for primary school children. Our guide advised us not to buy anything to hopefully discourage him (or others) from selling.

After lunch, we continued down the valley to Ta Van, the village where we would spend the night. We were staying in a homestay, which turned out to mean guest house rather than actually staying with a local family. Still, we had a nice room with a good view back up the valley.

That afternoon we had a lot of free time, which considering our broken night’s sleep on the bus, was quite welcomed and we chilled out in our room and outside playing Dobble. Our tour group, a mix of Malay and Czech people, got back together for dinner, where we were well fed by our homestay. However, as the sun had gone down, the temperature dropped significantly so we headed back to our room to warm up with our electric blanket!

The next day our guide met us to take us on a walk to a nearby waterfall. We were joined by some other people staying at the homestay, as well as a little puppy that followed us most of the way! We walked through a bamboo forest before emerging onto a big rock slab and the waterfall.

We headed back down into the valley to get picked up by the bus to take us back to Sa Pa. This was a little bit terrifying as we had to cross a rather rickety bridge over the river, which wobbled a lot and had very low sides. The funny thing was that this was actually the improved bridge and apparently safer than the bamboo bridge next to it!

Safely across the river, we got into our minibus to travel the 8km back to Sa Pa, along a very bumpy and dusty road. Back at the hotel, we had lunch and then had a couple of hours of free time to explore. Sa Pa town is very much a mountain town, full of cafes and outdoor shops. We headed to the Hill Station for some beer!

The bus back to Hanoi was a sleeper bus, even though we were travelling during the day. We managed to get two seats at the back which meant we were actually next to each other instead of having an aisle in between. This meant we could watch TV and easily speak to each other, which was nice considering the journey took over six hours. A couple of times we stopped randomly at the side of the road, for no apparent reason and by the end I was getting quite a bit of cabin fever. But we made it back eventually!

I’m glad we went to Sa Pa, as the scenery is completely different to anything else we’ve seen in Vietnam. However going with an organised tour meant it did lose some of its authenticity and felt a little touristy. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I’d realised we weren’t staying with a family and would be hounded constantly. In hindsight, we might have been better organising a trip ourselves.