Things to pack for a weekend in SaPa: sunscreen, rain coat,hat, thick jumper, waterproof shoes, thongs. At last we have found somewhere that changes its weather faster than Melbourne! Words like amazing, breathtaking, dramatic and relaxing do not even begin to describe where we went over the weekend. After an overnight 10hour train trip from Hanoi to Lao Cai (5mins from the Chinese border) we went on a hair-raising 2 hour bus ride up, up and up to the mountain village of Sa Pa. Its the central place of trade for the Vietnamese minority ethnic groups, that still live in very traditional ways in the tiered rice paddies. We stayed at Cat Cat Hotel (which had two hungry cats, ironically), and were treated to 3 days and 2 nights of clear blue skies (with clouds every
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