Sapa Hill Trekking and Home Stay - North Vietnam

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Hey there!

On our return from Halong Bay we jumped on a night sleeper train and took a trip to the Sapa mountains to do some trekking and stay overnight in one of the villages, the journey by train was very comfortable but quite noisy so sleep was sporadic. We arrived in Sapa early morning and transferred to the town by mini bus, we were allocated a hotel so we could shower and change before the trek began. Our guide was called Dumz and he was very knowledgeable and very funny, his spoken English was broken but his understanding of the language was excellent, it was only the three of us plus some of the hill tribe woman on the first leg of the trek which was cool!

The weather was quite misty and rainy on the morning of the first day but this didn’t matter as it was so great to be in the mountains and vallies at a high altitude, on our way to the villages we met a local man, he was fishing spiders out of the trees and had about 20 in a dish, they were very colourful and he was going to fry them up and eat them, yummy lol! The villages we stopped at were great and the locals very friendly, they made beautiful hand made scarfs and bags plus some amazing sculptures, Dumz picked one up and dropped it whilst showing it to me, luckily he knew the boy who made it well so it was okay!

The weather started to clear in the afternoon and the views were spectacular, the most beautiful lush green hills and big mountains, we trekked 12 kilometers until we reached our home stay in the late afternoon. We met our host family who were lovely and then slept for a few hours until dinner, their house was basic but great with warm covers and cosy aymosphere.

Before dinner Dumz arrived at the house very excited with a jar of jumping green grasshoppers, he said that I had to eat them, I felt quite apprehensive but Dumz said I would offend the hosts if I didn’t eat them (wind up) anyway when in Rome I thought and waited for dinner ha ha!

Dinner was lovely with various dishes and rice plus a whole plate of deep fried grasshoppers! They were now smaller and crispy brown, I tried one and really like it, it had a smokey taste and quite crunchy, before I knew it myself and Craig were eating them with chopsticks along with the rest of the meal lol! During dinner we drank shots of home made rice wine and toasted each of us resulting in all of us feeling quite pissed rather quickly, we then played cards for a few hours which was very funny!

The next day we had a good breakfast and hangovers and started trekking uphill for the next 6 kilometers, this was harder than the day before as the rain had made the trails really muddy and slippy, I slipped over 3 times which was funny! The views again were beautiful and breathtaking we were join by local children and hill tribe woman, we stopped at various villages on route and got a real feel of local customs and lifestyle.


Our next destination is the country of Laos on the 29th October

With love, Caz and Craig xxx

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Comments

[louise]

Spiders
They look yummy, Iam going to ask Lee if we can have them added to the Christmas menu, it already includes Sprouts so i am sure he will not mind.