On top of Vietnam

We found that more often than not in Vietnam, you are promised something that doesn't deliver. We bought some expensive train tickets and were shown pictures of a few luxurious coaches, complete with down comforters and flat screen TVs, but that wasn't our train - although it was comfortable enough and we shared our little cabin with some nice Australian women.

We arrived in Sapa really early on a Saturday morning, realizing that it truly is a town in the clouds, and with the dense fog came a bone chilling temperature. On the weekends the small town of Sapa is filled with Vietnamese tourists, so finding a place to stay wasn't very easy, even at 7AM. As a last resort, we booked the cheapest place we could find, which wasn't going to be ready until 6PM, left our bags and dragged our tired bodies around the town.

Sapa overlooks an expansive valley of rice terraces and the tallest mountain in Vietnam, Fansipan, some of the most impressive views we have seen yet (that is when the fog was light enough to see it). The surrounding mountains are home to several minority hill tribes, a lot of them H'mong people. Many village women and children, dressed in traditional embroidered dresses and hats and heavy silver jewelry, come into Sapa to sell their embroidered fabrics and to find foreigners that will pay them as a tour guide to their village. Although most are very friendly, their constant selling spiel got tiresome. Maddie ended up buying a few pillowcases because she promised she would in order for the woman to leave us alone.

We never hired a guide, but we did plenty of hiking through the valley. The most interesting was a small path that wound its way through some villages where we were able to get a closer look at the terraced hillside. Some of the levels were the brilliant green rice paddies of the southern fields we saw near the Mekong, others were muddy and being plowed by water buffalo and a few men. Above the terraces were fields of corn, almost vertical on the sides of the mountains. The villages were comprised of timber framed wooden homes, lots of chickens, roosters, pigs, and little children running around.

We hiked by day and relaxed by night - there wasn't much to do after 8PM once Sunday rolled around and the tourists all left. The bia hoi in Sapa was always filled with village people in traditional dress, which was a funny sight. Even the women drank beer, a rarity in Asia, and it was fun to sit and try to talk with them, although communication was difficult and mostly unsuccessful, but they were all very friendly.

Sapa also had an intense meat market, whole pigs, de-feathered, chickens, and the occasional quartered dog, which is a big part of the local diet (although we never tried it). The streets were lined with not only local handicrafts, but booths of fake North Face coats, backpacks, and gear. We broke down and bought a coat, considering everything in our backpacks was meant for 100 degree weather.