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Published: September 28th 2008
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Sapa was our second favourite place in Vietnam (after Halong Bay). It was pretty easy to get there as we took the overnight train and arrived around 7:30 in the morning. It is a beautiful little town set in a valley and surrounded by mountains. It is quite small with a population of about 40,000 and most of those people are the local tribe people which you see all over town in their traditional clothing. Our plan was to spend one day in Sapa before climbing Fansipan Mountain over three days before heading to china.
The town was pretty small so we were able to walk around it in a few hours and look around the town. We attempted to find a gym as we had not been since Saigon but were not successful. Now that we have our marathon places we must make sure we do not get too out of shape! We stayed in a hotel called CAT CAT view which had really good views. In the early evening we sat on our balcony and drank tea while reading --very relaxing. We both were pretty much over our colds but still a little tired and appreciated taking it
easy. That evening we went out for a nice meal in town and had a few drinks on our balcony beforehand. Then we packed up for the hiking the next day.
The trek was to be a 3 day/2 night trek and we were to get to the highest point in SE Asia at an elevation of 3,100 meters. It is not nearly as impressive as the highest point in Africa but still a good hike. We were very pleased to discover that we were on a private tour with just the two of us a guide and a porter to carry the food. We were a little worried that it was going to be very muddy as the whole area was flooded about a month ago but the walk was not too bad with only a few muddy spots. However, the first day was rather disappointing. We were told we were going to have a 6-7 hour hike and after 3 hours (including an hour lunch break) we were at our destination. While the scenery was very nice we were expecting quite a bit more walking and were pretty annoyed with the company we booked up with (VEGA!!—they
do not give very accurate information!) The rest of the afternoon we took it easy at the campsite and had dinner with our guide and porter before going to bed. The guide was a really nice guy who spoke limited english. We could not always understand him, and he usually had to ask us to repeat things but he was really keen to learn more English.
The next day was a million times better than the first and probably one of our best days in Asia so far. We started walking around 8:20 in the morning and decided to take it really slowly. We were both worried that we were going to have another really short walk like the day before and decided to prolong it as much as possible. Lucky for us, we were wrong and it was a very long walk. Instead of going straight up to the peak we went uphill and then back downhill through a forest before climbing to the peak. We really enjoyed it. We reached the peak around 12:30 and had a well deserved lunch. The view was partially in cloud but you could still see quite a bit. The walk down
took us another 4 hours and we had really fantastic views while heading back to camp. Once back at our campsite we met a group of older travelers from York who were good fun to talk to. It was impressive that they were going to the top the next day as a few of them were in their early 70's. Then we had a really nice dinner and had a long chat with our guide. He was asking all kinds of questions about our countries and what kind of food we ate and what we did back home. We told him a lot about our trip to Africa which he seemed really interested in. We went to bed in good time and found it hilarious that the older group were still up getting in the beers while we were in bed!
The next day we knew to expect a short walk and were down the mountain by 11:00. Overall we really enjoyed the walk but did think that the people we booked with were misleading in telling us we had three days of walking. We were told the third day would be a long one also. If we were
to do it over again we would def only do the walk in 2 day and 1 night. Also, I would not have booked with Vega travel in Hanoi!!!
We drove back into town and went back to the CAT CAT View hotel. We both had not slept that well the night before so got some fruit and bread rolls for lunch and took it easy for the afternoon reading and enjoying our view. We had a nice dinner at our hotel before going to sleep.
Our last day in Sapa was spent walking for a couple hours down to the local CAT CAT village nearby. It was very nice scenery but not too strenuous of a walk. The rest of the day was spent getting into China!
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