Sa Pa

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We arrived in Sa pa by bus from Nihn Bin, however this time without a sleeping bus rather a sitting bus, surprisingly we accomplished some serious Z's. As we were leaving Nihn Bin the owner told us we would be traveling with a solo back packer. he was German, we dubbed him Chino.
He was very illusive as we only managed to capture one photo of him, but he proved a good traveling partner.


We had previously been told that Sa pa was the way to see the real Vietnam, so we had high expectations. To an extent we were let down as we found it very touristy, this was partly due to the fact we had just been on a three day tour where we had only seen three other westerners. We had a nice breakfast with Chino and arranged to hire some scooters and go riding for the day. After a really nice ride through the mountains we arrived at a waterfall. We held high expectations as we took a hefty stair climb to the summit....it was no mount franklin. Not to say it was terrible, it was a nice waterfall but from the reviews we had heard we had hoped for more.


We continued up the mountain to another peak were we took a 2 Km walk to another waterfall which was nice. it was more of the mount Franklin we had hoped for, although it would of been nicer had it been wet season.


We then took another short walk up to a bell towers which provided some really nice views of the landscape.


That night we had an expensive dinner with Chino at an Italian restaurant and then an even more expensive drinking session to follow.

The following day we took bikes down the mountains into the villages, this being one of the main attractions of Sa pa. Upon walking into one village we were dissapointed at how westernized it had become; watching TV, fondling with power lines and the absence of what we expected to be traditional culture.

We made our way to the next village and only made it down halfway before deciding to turn around due to be harassed and followed by over ten locals.
What we have written sounds to an extent selfish but in reality we only have the western influence to blame.













The town itself was really nice, they had a great market with lots of interesting produce.

Aswell as the Mong people being in the villages they also hung around town to try sell tourists various items. AKA the Mong Mafia, an example of their persistence was one little girl who was no more than 9 years old who spoke excellent English and also pretty funny. She targeted Stanway and wore him thin over three days using her humerous charm. By the end of it Stanway rewarded her comedy and persistance by purchasing an overpriced bangle he didn't want.















All in all Sa pa was a lot more touristy than we had thought however the beauty of the landscape can't be taken away form it.

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