Arrival to Sapa

Day 113

Sapa

The bus was pretty uncomfortable and full of people sleeping on the floor, but somehow I managed to sleep couple of hours. In the morning, we stopped at Lao Cai and after 1,5 hours driving finally arrived to Sapa. Sapa was freezing cold and misty. First time during all our trip in Vietnam, the bus actually dropped us at bus station. Probably the town was too small anyway :-))

We went inside one of the hotels close to the bus station, to get some coffee and wait until Juli and Alex look for the place to stay. We had a coffee but it was still freezing cold, even inside...Thanks God, I have bought this jacket in Halong Bay :-D

After almost 2 hours looking for the hotel, we finally picket one, which was not the nicest one, but it had electrical blankets on each bed, so at least we were not going to die from the cold. The hotels in Sapa somehow are the most expensive in the whole Vietnam, the room was 250,000 (10 euros) for double room and we even did not have hot water.

What is special about Sapa? No doubt its ethnic minorities, so colourful and so different from everything we saw in Vietnam. There are couple of them:

- Tay (pronounce ‘Zay’): pretty integrated in Vietnamese society
- Dzao (‘Zao’): you can meet them everywhere in Sapa selling souvenirs and all kind of handicraft stuff
- Hmong (pronounce ‘Mong’): the most annoying ones, who bother you every 5 minutes, asking: " you buy from me? you buy from me?", but still not agressive, more funny I would say :-D

Sapa streets are full of Dzao and Hmong people selling everything you can imagine.

Dzao woman in Sapa:


Hmong kids going to school:



And misty cold Sapa :-)




Local market




And of course local beer, which is pretty bad by the way :-D


We went to couple of tourist agencies and asked about the tours to local villages. Finally we decided to pick one of them, it was a one day trip, in a jeep till the village and then 4 hours treck with lunch included - the trip costed us 440,000 (around 18 euros) for both of us.

Next thing was to buy some warm leggins to wear under the jeans, to survive the cold. We did find some, of this nice romantic colour...especially for Juli!! :-D


A walk around misty Sapa at night...


And some dinner at one of the restaurants on the main street...