Blogs from Sapa, Lao Cai, Northwest, Vietnam, Asia - page 4

Like the Chinese, the Vietnamese have a history of burying their dead twice - at least for those in rural areas where they have the land to do so. On the drive back from Halong Bay to Hanoi we stopped to see some first graves, often very simple ones with a rough plaque. After three years or so, the bones are dug up before sunrise, usually by the children of the deceased and with some ceremony, washed, and placed into a more permanent and ornate grave. Although it was now early afternoon and almost 40 degrees, we were also able to watch a man and his wife harvesting a rice patch for another family. Apparently they paid him $10 U.S. for the work that took about 1 1/2 hours. The rice fields in the delta are ... read more

I don’t like the cold. I really don’t like the cold. Anybody who knows me well enough knows that I really don’t! But I do really, really, really like Sapa. This place is beautiful and mystical. This morning the alarm woke us as 7.15am to start our last day in Sapa. We had chosen today to do our trek and it really was not the best day to choose. We should have gone yesterday but today is our last day and we have our trek booked in already. We chose to do our trek with Sapa Sisters after much researching before we left home. They are a business that is run by women for women. We had our breakfast and said goodbye to the lovely staff of Sapa Elite Hotel. Frankie’s friend didn’t want him to ... read more

We got up this morning and had brekkie that was included with our accommodation. Great brekkie of banana pancakes, – not as good as Cactus pancakes on Langkawi though! Toast, croque monsieur, fruit – local mandarins and bananas and fruit juices. After brekkie we headed out and were immediately joined by 3 local women, once again wanting to sell us their wares. They followed us for about 20mins. We walked upon some local fresh produce markets where we saw locals purchasing their fresh fruit, vegetables and meat – including dog. The produce all looks so fresh. We continued on through more streets of Sapa just wandering and taking looks at all the shops, eateries and hotels. There are loads of hotels/hostels to choose from in Sapa. A lot of choice, that is for sure. We headed ... read more

I've been in Sapa in the far north west of Vietnam for nearly a week now ... it's so nice to leave my stuff unpacked in my very comfy hotel room ... it's begun to feel like home after moving every few days before this. As I've posted on Facebook, the place has been in cloud the majority of the time, but I did fortunately get some nicer weather for a two day homestay trek I did. We could actually see the surrounding mountains and rice fields! My companions on the trek were three friendly Germans - Serena, Bjorn and Jan. And 3 others who did the first day as a day walk. The seven of us had about 8 local ladies following us nearly the whole first day. As anyone has been to this part ... read more

After a few hectic days in Hanoi we decided to go for something a bit different and go to a bit more of a quitter place and do some hiking which we hadn't done for a little while. We had been recommended a place called Sapa in the north west of the country in the mountains not far from the border with China, here there are a number of tribes which have kept their traditional ways and still live in small villages and wear their traditional clothing, so we thought this would be pretty cool thing to do as we hadn't yet seen any of the tribes in Asia. With trying to save a bit of money where ever we go we decided to get the night time sleeper train from Hanoi to Lao Cai which ... read more