A last minute journey to the mountains

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As we traveled back to Hanoi, we were trying to figure out what to do next (since nothing was set in stone for our travels). We decided to take the night train to Sapa. We spent the afternoon before leaving figuring out the process of buying train tickets in Hanoi and then watched the water puppet show. It is a thousand year old traditional folk story telling at its best. After the show we filled our bellies with more rice noodles and headed on the night train to Sapa.

We arrived 30 km down the mountain to Sapa at 6am on Wednesday. Quickly the locals were escorting us to buses to take up to Sapa. With a little bit of confusion, we finally found a minibus to Sapa. The views were spectacular, however, one of the passengers had a bad case of motion sickness and was hurling into a little plastic bag all the way up. We finally made it and it was well worth it. Sapa is a magical place.

The town of Sapa is a picturesque village set up in the mountains. The French had it as a summer retreat. And with the heat of Hanoi, Sapa is a great summer get away. The temperatures were refreshing. We decided to rent a scooter to zoom around the town and maybe make it up to the major pass over the mountains (20 km away from Sapa). We made it for about 5-8 km, but the road was extremely muddy and a lot of construction to improve the road made it even more unstable. And to add to the troubles of the road, the little scooter was struggling with the weight of us both going up a 7-10 percent grade roads. So we zoomed back down the mountain and enjoyed the amazing landscapes.

After lunch we hiked down (4km) to the Cat Cat village. The roads were steep, but seeing wet rice irrigation first hand was an experience. The ethnic minority, the Black H'mong, have practiced wet rice irrigation in this area for thousands of years. We made our way down to an amazing valley floor (traversing some 45-55 percent slopes) to see the convergence of two major streams. We started to make our way back up and made it (even though we were offered countless scooter rides back to the top).

The next day we did an 7km trek down even stepper slopes with a guide that traversed us through the mountains amongst the terraced rice fields, over streams, and through the villages of the H'mong, Dao and Tay ethnic minorities. We were joined by two Hmong women who assisted us up and down the mountains. One was carrying a baby on her back, the other was pregnant, and the both were 5 feet tall and wore plastic jelly shoes, but were surprisingly strong and agile. It was quite the site to see this little pregnant women help Rich down the mountain! This experience was amazing. The weather was cool, sunny and the views were perfect. It was a hard day of trekking, but worth ever view.

After the hike, we made it back to Sapa and toured the market some more, in search of the head of a cow in the butcher district. However, we did not find such, but did see dog meat for sale.

We enjoyed some bia hoi (fresh beer) on the streets of sapa, enjoying the mountain view, waiting for our minibus ride back down the mountain to catch the night train to hanoi. It was neat that in the 30 km we went from conifer trees to banana trees!

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