Domestic Goddess Travels: Visiting Sapa

Picture: Local crafts products

Taking time out to see other parts of Vietnam is always worth a trip. When some of our family came to visit we took off for a couple of days to Sapa. John, Margie, Mark, Jacqui, Ben, Paige and I decided that to get there we would try the train as it is a six hour trip from Hanoi. "Why not?" we thought as we could sleep all the way and wake fresh. How wrong we were. The train was very clean but the beds where quite hard so most of us didn't get much sleep except Paige.

Sapa is an incredibly picturesque village that lies on the Hoang Lien Son mountain range near the Chinese border in NW Vietnam. It is called as "the Tonkinese Alps" many hill tribe people, their villages, rice terraces, lush vegetation, and has the highest peak in Vietnam. Tucked high in Vietnam's remote northern mountains, the former French military outpost of Sapa offers some of Vietnam's most colorful experiences. The views are breath taking. Vietnam's highest peak, the 3,143-metre Mount Fansipan, looms overhead, while the surrounding valleys feature terraced rice paddies and blazing green fields cut by fast-flowing streams. Layer upon layer of green ridges fade into the distance, edged by sharp, rocky peaks. Visitors to this isolated village can browse in the traditional market, then hike into the valleys and explore the surrounding ethnic minority villages. Here, people live as they have for centuries, raising water buffalo and pot-bellied pigs, cultivating paddy, corn and cassava, and weaving their colorful clothing. Come to these northern mountains and you'll feel the thrill of discovery. This is one of the rare corners of the world where people's traditions continue to flourish and nature reigns supreme. Walking through the area you become over welmed with local tribes people trying to sell you things and it becomes very hard to break free of them. The two days that we spent in Sapa we did a lot of walking and it was well worth it as we where able to take in the beauty of this place and the culture that we saw.