From Hanoi we went to the northwestern part of Vietnam - Sa Pa is the Lao Cai Province in the far north near the Chinese border. At 1600 meters, this small town of only 40,000 people is notorious for great hiking. After yet another overnight train we arrived early and made our way to Pinocchio hotel as per Hari's recommendation. The hotel was family run and we were lucky to get a room on the top floor with an excellent view of the entire town.
We arrived early and got started with a hike. For our first day we decided to head down to the villages just south of Sa Pa and ended up in Tan Van. It was a beautiful day, being in the mountains it was brisk but sunny and clear. As we left the hotel and started walking to the trail we had an entourage of little girls and women following us to try to get us to buy clothes and jewelry from them. We politely declined but they were persistent and walked with us for a solid 15 minutes. A couple from New Zealand informed us that the day before they made the mistake of saying "maybe later" and surely enough when they returned to the hotel later the girls were there waiting for them. When they said "no" again, one of the little girls got really nasty and actually cursed them out, claiming that they promised to buy something from her. We took their advice and luckily did not get yelled at by little Vietnamese girls during our stay.
The hike was incredible, the trail was so quiet and peaceful. We walked for 4 hours and were surrounded by amazing views - it was green as far as the eye could see, there were trees and rice paddies growing everywhere. We got to walk through the villages and see how the families lived. As expected, they were poor and lived basic lives - men worked in the fields, women wove scarves to sell to tourists, and children helped when they were not in school. But despite the simplicity of their lives compared to ours, they were all happy and they all enthusiastically said "sin jow" as we walked through their homes. There were tons of cows, pigs, chickens, and puppies all over, the villagers share them as community pets. There were more puppies than I have ever seen in my life. For a second I wondered why there were so many puppies but not so many full grown dogs...and then I realized, the dogs are dinner. (No, we did not eat dog. We're into trying the local cuisine but we have to draw the line somewhere)
Later in the afternoon when our hike was finished, Sarah and I decided to do some trekking on our own. We hiked to the top of one of the smaller mountains in town and got in the standard birds-eye view of the city that we both love so much. Once the sun went down the town almost completely shut down and got really quiet. We got our favorite pho noodles for dinner and went to a bar to have a few Tiger beers. We were 2 of the 6 total people in the bar that had the most interesting selection of music - when we arrived the bartender/DJ played not one, but two different versions of "What a Wonderful World", followed by some old-school Bon Jovi, followed by the loudest techno music I've ever heard. After some minor hearing loss we decided to turn in early so we could get in some more hikes in the morning.
As I said earlier, the hotel we stayed at owned by a young husband and wife and they were so sweet. They had a 15-month old son who was the happiest baby I've ever seen. He was always running around and was so social with all the tourists. When we came back from our hike the mother was holding him and when he made eye contact with me his face lit up and he immediately held out his arms for me to pick him up. This was a first for me. I am not really sure about babies...I guess the maternal instinct that I was not so sure I had kicked in and I picked him up. He was all smiles, laughing, poking my nose, and I loved him. After a few minutes of playing I went to hand him back to his mom and he started to cry! The kid loved me, too. The next morning when Sarah and I went down to the lobby area he ran right up to me and continued the love-fest. We played and ran around a bit (I patrolled him while he was near the stairs) and luckily he did not cry this time when we headed out.
For our second day of hiking we went north to the Matra Village and Ta Phin. We had a great trekking leader - a woman in her mid-30s who has lived in the village her entire life (a local villager must escort you through the villages, tourists cannot walk through on their own) . She spoke excellent English and told us all about everyday life. She even brought us to one of the schools that all the kids from the village attend. Again the views were picturesque and we took a million pictures of the beautiful scenery. We would have loved to do a home stay and sleep in one of the villages (highly recommended, everyone we met who did it said it was an incredible experience). We wished we had planned on spending more time in Sa Pa, but we had to leave after 2 days so we could spend some time on Halong Bay. We loved Sa Pa, it's a must go if you are in Vietnam. Definitely worth the hike to get there.
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