Sapa, Vietnam

In March, 2007, my family and I took a trip to northern Vietnam. (I'm Glenn - if you'd like more info click here.) When I asked a coworker of mine who has been to Vietnam several times "Where do you recommend?" he told me "Go to Sapa for the whole week and forget the rest." Having been there now, I can definitely recommend visiting Sapa, but the three days we spent there were probably long enough. There are other places well worth seeing in northern Vietnam, too.

I don't know how you found this page, but a Google search on Sapa turns up a lot of sites wanting to sell you tours or beautiful pictures of rice terraces indigenous women in tribal garb. The one at virtualtourist.com purports to do that, but again it is 90% women's faces. It's pretty hard just to find a page made by some regular Joe with a camera. However, that is what you've just bumbled into. If you want to see what actually awaits you when you book a tour to Sapa, read on.

And click here if you want to see all the pictures we took.

The third entry down after Googling "Sapa, Vietnam" was a page on trains to Sapa from Hanoi for me. However, we didn't "do it yourself" it on this trip. We were staying at the Camellia Hotel in Hanoi, and I just asked Ms. Hue of ODC tours, who was working at the ODC desk in the lobby of the Camellia 2 in March, 2007, to make the arrangements for me. I understand that if you just went to the train station, which was a USD$3 taxi ride from our hotel, and booked the train trip, as the Vietnamese themselves would do, the passage for the "soft sleeper" berth pictured here would set you back USD$17.

The "hard sleeper" cars, which our train also had, have three beds per side, and the mattress looked to be about an inch thick. The cars aren't disgusting or anything, but it wasn't spic and span, either.

I really wondered when the last time the pillow slips or blanket covers were changed or washed, and they didn't smell that good. The toilets, predictably, did get pretty disgusting by the time we got to the end of the line, Lao Cai. They say that Lao Cai is five minutes from the Chinese border, although we didn't have a chance to verify that.

I had heard that Sapa could be chilly, so before we got off the train I put on a bunch of clothes. What a mistake! Lao Cai was hot, so you can have your sweatshirt ready for when you get to Sapa, but don't put it on quite yet. The ride from Lao Cai to Sapa goes up, and up, and up.

Our tour included lodging at the Summit Hotel. A Google search had showed me that the hotel had gotten one bad review and one better one defending it. The link above may well be dead by the time you read this, but if you book into the Summit and wonder what you're getting yourself into, I'll include a few pictures here. Our package included both breakfast and lunch. The tour we took said that we would have a buffet breakfast. No surprise there, as most hotels handle it that way so they don't have to take orders. However, the breakfast at the Summit is not a buffet; you have a choice of one entrée and one drink. Available entrees: bread with butter and jam, omelet, 2 fried eggs, ramen noodles with chicken, beef, or pork. Beverages: tea of coffee. The rooms are clean and modern, but not very large. I took this picture with my back to the balcony doors, so that's all there is. Be aware that there are no refrigerators at the Summit Hotel. They put drinks in your room, but they're just sitting on the dresser and they're warm. Internet at the Summit - it said one hour free from our agent, and it says 20 minutes free on the monitors. However, they don't make any attempt to gauge how long you've been on it, so don't worry. Other parts of the world make money off tourists with Internet cafes or charge at hotels. We found in Vietnam that they just leave the computers on in the lobby and anybody, even people from the street, can use them. I checked my email while waiting for my meal at one restaurant. The rooms have satellite TV, and for me it was a first to see Aljazeera news. The service was so-so; it seemed to be run entirely by a bunch of twenty-something kids who were untrained but well-meaning enough.

The name "Summit Hotel" is not just a marketing ploy. As you can see, there is a lot that is down lower than the Summit, including the shops, market, and tourist hotels. The Summit is almost the last thing going up the hill, so you'll get a little extra exercise by trucking 10 minutes up the grade to your hotel if you stay there..

Somewhere on the Internet I read that the best thing to do in Sapa is to sit on your balcony and drink beer while watching the sun go down. Well, sounds great, but you can't really do it at the Summit, at least not in March. The sun sets at the end of the valley, so the people down there in the valley villages might get great sunsets every night, but I didn't up on the rim.

So now you know how some of this website got written...

Our package included three days of trekking, and you are advised to bring hiking boots. The tallest mountain in Vietnam is accessible from Sapa, and I hear that there is a 5-day trek you can do to it. Exactly what that experience is like, I don't know. However, what passed for a trek on our first day was walking down into the valley below on a paved road behind May Fam, a lovely young girl in traditional clothing and with flip-flops on her feet. Her English was passable and I loved the way she pronounced the word "village." This she said often, as our destination was "Cat-cat village." However, the first place that she took us was to the tourist market, pictured below. Could this be where that fellow that posted all the wizened faces of the local women on flickr.com found his subjects?

As we were walking down to Cat-cat village, May Fam walked off the road, picked a leaf from the low, green plants you see behind her, and asked us if we knew what it was (we didn't). It was indigo, the stuff that gave the clothes she was wearing their blue color. Although indigo leaves are green, if you soak them in water and add alcohol to it, you get the blue dye. She said the natives call it "happy water" and it's drinkable.

A little bit down the road we ran into these ladies sitting by the side of the road working on handicrafts. I'll leave it up to you to imagine what would possess them to leave the comfort of their homes and walk a mile up a mountain road to side on the side to do needlepoint. They are members of the Red Dao (also spelled Zao or Dzao - the "d" is pronounced as a "z") tribe, as evidenced by their red turbans. The ladies wearing the big hoop earrings are married. May Fam told us that they have to shave back their hairlines and wear scarves around their heads under their turbans to keep hair out of the food they prepare. As they don't cut their hair, it might actually be long enough to reach their ankles. Wasn't clear to me how those turbans stayed on.

Red Dao

Even though Cat-cat is called a village, I wasn't quite sure where it was. It was more a scattering of buildings than a formal village with a discernible center. At the bottom of the valley there was a waterfall with quite a bit of earthwork done so that tourists could have their pictures taken in front of it. After this, you walk along the river for another ten minutes and then cross a suspension bridge back over the river. That's the formal end of the day's trek.

You could just walk a mile or so back up the steep grade to Sapa, but they conveniently had some motor scooters there at the end to take you back to your hotel for 15,000 dong each (about USD$1). I wanted to ride one myself, not sit behind some guy, but that meant the guy was going to have to go, too, to ride the bike back down. OK, since there were three of us, it should be 45,000 dong. It was when we got to the hotel that I got my first taste of something that would happen enough times during our stay to establish a pattern: you settle on a price, and then, after services are rendered, they change demand more. You feel like you need to carry a tape recorder in your pocket. When we got back to the hotel, suddenly they insisted that the price was now 60,000. Since we were talking less than a dollar I just gave it to him, but I later had to ask myself who had the stronger bargaining position since we were already at the top of the hill. Of course, two can play this game, too, and I wondered why I wouldn't be the one to say that we had surely settled on a price of 30,000, right? Of course I wouldn't, but you start to feel like it after it happens a few times.

How did we get this shot? My wife pointed the camera back from the scooter she was on.

Our second day was the day that had the big trek scheduled, a 10K walk. Since the day before had been such smooth sailing, I didn't think it would be too difficult. But when May Fam showed up at our hotel lobby in blue jeans and tennis shoes that morning, I figured we were in for a little more action.

This time, we didn't walk through the market, but instead walked down the street from the Summit, down past the church, through the town, and out the other side. As the road curved around, we were able to look back and get some nice views of Sapa spilling down the valley slope.

The first couple of kilometers were on pavement again, but then we turned off the road and started down a rocky path through the rice terraces. As you will notice, we were being accompanied by indigenous ladies with children on their backs. May Fam told me that the ladies feel that they may be able to sell the tourists something in their villages, but they stand a better chance by walking with them and building up some kind of rapport along the way.

Even a cursory check around the Internet will tell you that Sapa has two seasons, wet and dry. March is the end of the dry season and April begins the rainy season. Actually, I would call March the foggy season, as we never got a good look at the valley. Oh sure, this picture doesn't look too, too bad, but you should have seen it before I turned the contrast way up on it. May Fam told me that the high seasons for tourism, not surprisingly, are July-August and around Christmas. The best time to get clear views of the valley is in the summer, but then you would have to dodge the rains. She said they had had some clear days in January, too. My coworker had been to Sapa in March, too, and had warned me that I probably wouldn't be able to get any really good views of the valley then. And now I'm warning you.

When we finally got down to the village, May Fam took us through a house, pictured here, with a vat of indigo "happy water" outside dyeing some cloth. Inside we were asked to buy all manner of things, but we bought a jew's harp for Kelly. Although the famous Love Market has fallen victim to tourism and no longer really exists, the jew's harps the 14 and 15 year old Black Hmong girls would play to attract potential husbands have become a favorite souvenir item. May Fam told us that the Red Dao, her people, choose partners for their children still. However, they don't usually do it until the kids are in their 20's, and the kids can say no to their parents' choices. May Fam said that she wasn't in a hurry, because the life of a young wife is hard - she has to get up a 4 AM to cook for the family and even for the pigs. All Black Hmong homes, like the one here, have 2 kitchens - one for the family's cooking and one for the heating and cooking for the pigs! Then she went on to say that if girls don't want to get married, there is a leaf that they can eat in the mountains and in a few hours they'll be dead. Hmm, seems like there should be a middle path, like, tour guide?

I'm going to leave out the creek-fording and other action shots from the trek and get right to lunch. Click the link to see all our pictures for the complete treatment. May Fam had a backpack on day two, and I correctly guessed that she was carrying our lunch in there (I suggested we each carry some of it, but she wasn't having it). Lunch was pretty simple, with scrambled eggs, cucumber and tomato slices, mandarin oranges, and French bread with Laughing Cow cheese. Although Ho Chi Minh City has baguettes, I didn't see any in the north. Instead, they have those smaller, softer loaves. The Black Hmong ladies hovered just outside, their mouths watering from the smell of Western tourist money wafting on the breeze. I was at first sitting in that empty chair to my wife's left, but the constant attention from the ladies outside and the lack of table in front of me prompted me to move. At times they bent the rules and decided to chance coming in to hawk bracelets, embroidered pillow cases, etc. before the proprietor reminded them to wait outside.

We really didn't see many cats at all, but there were dogs everywhere and water buffalo were in no short supply. Although this picture isn't from the trek at all but rather from a ride I took on a rented motor scooter, it was really picturesque having the water buffalo down in the rice paddies as we walked above on the trekking path. OK, so if the water buffalo were all down there, why was there a buffalo chip to dodge every 10 feet up here on the path? Did they really mosy up to the path every time it was time to do their business so as not to sully their rice paddies? Only a guess, but perhaps their owners keep them in barns at night and lead them down the path to graze in the fields in the morning, just about the time they're ready for that good old "morning constitutional." Anyway, there was a spigot and a sign "Clean your shoes after trekking" outside the Summit, and I don't think it was just dust they were worried about.

As we were getting near the end of our 10K trekking extravaganza, May Fam took us by some schools in session and invited us to look inside - the teachers wouldn't mind. The classes had about two boys in each. May Fam told us that the Black Hmong of the village didn't really put too much stock in education; it was only for boys and the girls had to hawk bracelets to the tourists. She took us into this building to show us the rig they had, powered by harnessing the river water, for pounding rice, and in the front, where they had all the traditional clothes for sale, was this group of little boys all lined up in their little chairs. Don't know what they were doing there, but it made for a cute picture.

A little down the road, just past the school the Japanese government had donated, we crossed the river one more time and there were vans waiting to take us back to town. This time the ride back was gratis, so no hocus pocus on the fare.

Our third day, May Fam was in her traditional garb again. It was super foggy, and I was just glad that it hadn't been like that the day before when we were in the valley. She said she was taking us to Dragon Mountain. If you would like to visit Dragon Mountain also, here's what you do. Go to the middle of town, and look for this sign that says Nui Ham Rong. Go through the souvenir shops, buy a ticket, and keep trucking, er, trekking up the mountain.

The tourist brochures will tell you that you will get fantastic views of the valley and surrounding area from the top of the mountain, and I'm sure that on clear days you can. We went up to a lookout point and we could barely see our hands in front or our faces, but suddenly the fog parted and we could plainly see the lake in the middle of town, as if as by magic. I had my video camera in my hand at that time, though, so I don't have a picture. At the top there is a culture hall that has traditional dancing for the tourists. It was near the end of the show when we got there so we got in free but didn't see much. What I saw was a bunch of kids who jumped around and displayed none of the artistry of the dancers at the kan toke dinner I'd seen in Chiang Mai six months earlier, and were far, far from the the level of the Balinese dancers we'd seen.

Our little walk around the top of the mountain didn't take very long at all, an hour or two maybe, and we didn't see any point in following May Fam back up to the Summit and then wondering what to do next. So we thanked her and went around to the shops pictured below. Although this is out of time order, we rented a motorscooter again, braved the fog, and went down to where the van had picked us up at the end of the trek the day before. The valley is so lovely we wanted to see it again, and we could once we got below the cloud line, visible here.

If there is a symbol of Sapa, I guess the church is it. I even saw it on some souvenir T-shirts.

I rented motorscooters on both days we had half-day treks, and on a scooter you can visit areas that are not just tourism-related businesses. However, in the hotel area, you'll almost certainly spend a good amount of time checking out some pretty bizarre stuff. I really don't know what is in those plastic bags, maybe Chinese herbal medicines? I do know that those are bamboo tree grubs in the green bottles, though, because May Fam told us about them. The snakes in booze would be quite a conversation piece back home in Cleveland, but someone told me that their guide book says you can't get them through customs, so I gave them a miss. Those wall hangings on the right kind of caught my eye, and I shopped around until I found one I liked.

The Black Hmong ladies, which their signature woven "backpacks," are ubiquitous. It seems they carry either baskets or children on their backs. Ethnic Vietnamese, with their conical hats, were selling sugar can on the sidewalk. At right, my wife was busily engaged in what she's been shown doing on so many pages of this website, buying fruit. Kelly is addicted to mangoes, and it looks like this local lady is going to a dollar apiece, judging by her extended digit.

About the sixth frame down on this page I showed you the clothing market; literally below it, on a slope off the main street on the valley side, is the vegetable market. Of course we weren't planning on cooking and don't eat any fruit we can't peel, but we love to visit food markets are they're always such colorful places.

OK, here goes. I read in an article about Vietnamese culinary habits that said they have a saying, "We can eat anything with four legs but the table, anything in the sea except submarines." We were warned by a Vietnamese lady before we left not to eat meat while there, as it would probably be dog. Well, we couldn't stay completely vegetarian for the whole week, so who knows? They could have slipped a little dog in on us. However, if it had looked like this, I'm sure we would have noticed.

And while we're on the subject of food, I've got to show you this sign I passed. The stich rices would probably be OK, the blood porridge or the bamboo tuberice I'm not too sure about, but I prefer to have my Chinees roasted, not grilled, thank you.

I'm not really sure if I've captured much of what it's like to visit Sapa on this page, but it should give you some idea. It's probably rather short on architecture, so let me include this picture of some of the tourist hotels. I just noticed that my wife took this picture when I was asking that guy in the blue shirt on the motorcycle where he'd gotten it and how much it was. It was a Russian motorcycle, can't remember the name. He said it wasn't easy to ride, but it was all covered with dirt so it looked like he'd had it out in the bush. You can rent a motorcycle like it for USD$4-5 a day.

I'll end with this picture, as you'll no doubt spend a lot of time in this situation if you go to Sapa. I'm surrounded by Black Hmong ladies, some with children who never seem to make a peep on their backs, as they try to put the hard-sell on me for one more "handmade" jew's harp or embroidered pillow case. You'd better give me two jew's harps - my daughter needs a real good husband. And how long did it take you to embroider that pillow case? One week? Wow, it sure looks perfect - almost looks like it was machine-made in China! I'll be back to buy it from you tomorrow! Do you take American Express?

1. Don't change too much money into Vietnamese dong when you arrive at the airport, as dollars are accepted anywhere. However, since there are almost no coins in the country, you need to have some dong just to be able to pay less than a dollar for things. Of course, if you tender a dollar for something, you will get your change in dong anyway.
2. Some places do take credit cards, but I don't think we used ours the whole week we were there. Vietnam still pretty much works in cash.
3. As with other Southeast Asian countries, all electrical wall sockets in Vietnam take either flat or round plugs. Unless you have British or Australian style plugs on your electrical goods, you won't need any adapters.
4. That said, the charger we took for our camera batteries was for 110V only, and Vietnam runs on 220V. I plugged it in and it burned out in like five minutes. I thought I wasn't going to be able to show you any pictures from the last days of the trip until I found that our video camera's charger would also work for the AA battery charger (my camera doesn't work on alkaline batteries).
5. I didn't see an ice cube the whole time I was in Vietnam. Don't expect to have an ice machine at the end of the hall in your hotel, etc.
6. I saw a LOT of minority women walking around town with large, red circles on their foreheads. What would it mean? Sign of marriage, like the hoop earrings? No, it means they had a headache! May Fam told me they burn a bamboo stalk stuck against their foreheads and it takes away their headaches. What I wondered was, what was giving them so many headaches?

Vietnam is somewhere we'd been wanting to go for a long time, and now that we've done it, it will be a good memory. Sapa probably hasn't been ruined by tourism yet, but it's well on its way, if you ask me. I recommend that if you want to see Sapa, see it sooner, not later.