🇻🇳 Sapa, Vietnam 🇻🇳

We (sadly) said goodbye to Thailand, and jumped on a short 1 hour flight over to Hanoi, Vietnam. Then we immediately took a 6 hour bus ride to northern Vietnam to a beautiful mountain town called Sapa. We were happily surprised to find the bus was a “sleeper bus”, a double decker bus with your very own personal pod with a bed, TV, lights, pillow, blanket, etc. Even though it wasn’t through the night, it was super nice to travel like that and have some rest along the way! 

On this map, you can see how far north in the country Sapa is. We are very close to the border of China.  

Sapa is located right in the heart of Vietnam’s Tonkinese Alps, 1600m above sea level, which makes it a hub for mountain trekking. This is also the coldest weather we’ve experienced in 6 weeks! The daytime highs this time of year are in the low 20’s, and it dips down to 12-14 degrees Celsius overnight. It’s still a very humid climate. We can now actually wear the long sleeve shirts we previously cursed ourselves for bringing.

Sapa is home to many ethnic minorities, and has a very interesting history including:

- This area contains petroglyphs that date back to the 15th century.  

- French colonization on the early 1900’s. Between both the War for independence against the French, and border issues with China, most colonial buildings were destroyed. 

- Major wartime destruction in the 1940’s. Sapa was heavily bombed and left in ruins. 

- Tourism development in the 1990’s to attract trekkers, and become a mountain destination (though farming is still a major economic contributor).

We did things a little different and we are staying at a “Farmstay”, which is essentially a B&B on a lovely family’s farm near Sapa. There’s chickens, dogs and adorable little kids playing. They are wonderful hosts and cook us breakfast every morning, plus this is the view we wake up to:

We rented a motorbike and drove farther up into the mountains to check things out. There is lots of cabbage farms, rice fields, and water buffalo 🐃  We stopped at Silver Waterfall and did the hike up:

Then we drove a bit further to a scenic viewpoint and enjoyed the view from the top 🏔️ 

As always, we’ve done tons of walking around Sapa and loving this sweet little town. The yummy Pho 🍜 and Bahn Mi’s 🥪 aren’t too bad either 😉