Trekking Through the Mountains of SaPa

Words, pictures, and even videos cannot capture the immense beauty of the mountain region of SaPa, but that won't stop us from trying!

Southeast Asia

We arrived in SaPa on a 10 hour overnight train from Hanoi at 6am two days ago. Despite the twists and turns of the train, we managed to get some good sleep in our cozy little bunk beds alongside a Vietnamese couple that was on their honeymoon. We knew that we had a big hike for the next two days, so we got to the hotel and had ourselves a delicious monstrous breakfast of Beef and Chicken Pho, banana crepe, an omelet and some watermelon to wash it all down, and it was a good thing, because we reallly had no clue how long the day would be!

Now that we were prepared for the day, we met up with our tour guide Mao, who is from the Black Monge people and has been a tour guide for 8 years. We started the hike with a casual walk through SaPa town before entering the mountains. At first, there was a lot of fog in the air and we were worried that we would not be able to see any of the good views along the hike, boy were we wrong!

Within a minute of entering the hike we came upon our first of many large buffalo. While it was a bit unnerving at first we learned that they are very calm animals that the local people (even children!) have mastered controlling these beasts(except for their steaming, giant poops, which are everywhere).

 Along the hike, Mao pointed out many things and shared why they were important to the local people. For instance, this massive field of marijuana....

Mao explained that nobody in SaPa smokes marijuana, but it is grown everywhere, because the hemp from the stem of the plant is used to make all of the clothes that the local people wear. Leaves from a different plant that we saw are then soaked in cold water, which produces a blue dye. The clothes are then dipped in the blue dye for 30 minutes every day for 6 months to produce a strong and permanent blue color.

Soon after this, we came upon a man carrying a large piece of wood. The piece of wood was about 6 inches deep, 12 inches wide, and 8 to 10 feet long. Carrying this piece of wood seemed like quite a feat on it's own, however what Mao explained to us next brought a new meaning to the words determination and hard work.

Mao explained that there was no wood like this anywhere near where we were hiking today. This man had walked from the bamboo forest, which was about 4 hours away with this large piece of lumber on his shoulder. She went on to explain that this man was building a house, in a way that is similar to many local people. Since they do not have the money to simply pay someone to build a house for them, or even to purchase the materials to build a house, these men go to the forest, cut down trees and carry pieces of wood like this in order to build their home...which takes about a year! So every day for a year, these men wake up at 1am to do a 40km roundtrip to bring home only a single piece of wood. Amazing.

Shortly after hearing this man's story, our luck began to change, the weather started to clear, and the mountains of SaPa revealed a beauty that we could hardly understand. Around each corner, we found ourselves looking at each other dumbfounded by the mountains beauty. Imagine the brightest, most vivid green you have ever seen... and multiply it by ten. Imagine the most elaborate, elegant landscaping that you have ever seen... and multiply it by one hundred. Combine this with six to ten thousand foot peaks with rapid declines flowing into a beautifully simple river valley lined with rice fields and now you might be getting close to SaPa. Literally every turn was more beautiful than the last.

After 16km and over 3000 feet of vertical climb and descent, and a visit to Hau Thao village, we arrived at our homestay in the village of Giang Ta Chai village with the Red Dzao people. We stayed in the home of an amazing woman named Chio, who taught us the local way of cooking in her humble kitchen, prepared a phenomenal dinner, shared some nearly toxic rice wine (basically moonshine) and provided us with a truly unique experience. We learned later that our experience was vastly different than any other tourists that had taken a different tour and stayed with nearly 20 people in a more commercialized version of a homestay a few villages over.

Meanwhile, Mao taught us two Vietnamese card games and proceeded to whip our butts in each of them. At the beginning of each game, Sammar and I felt like we were in a scene from the movie Big Daddy playing the game "I win!". No matter what we did, we'd learn of a new rule and Mao would win the game. Eventually we got the hang of the game and did some winning of our own, and in the meantime learned how to count to ten in Vietnamese since we were stuck dealing so often after we lost. Ma, Hai, Bah, Bon, Nam, Sao, Baii, Tam, Chin, Muoy! All in all, it was a day that we will never forget.

When morning came, we enjoyed another amazing meal, including some Fried Pork inside of Lime Leaves that was to die for, and had to say goodbye to our amazing host Choi. A short 5km hike through the river valley and the village of Ta Van revealed so many more amazing views that we can't fit them all here, so you'll have to check out our photo albums to see the rest!

We ended our 2nd day in SaPa with the most amazing Vietnamese coffee while overlooking a lake in SaPa town and enjoying even more delicious food (are you noticing a theme here?!). Off to bed now, tomorrow brings another 12km hike and 16km more the next day, gotta keep going to burn off all this food!