Sa Pa and Sunshine

Hello all and welcome to another peek into the various excursions I am having here in Vietnam.

Today's trip actually happened about a month ago, but for various reasons I have not updated this. As you all know, my position here in Vietnam is voluntary. I get paid nothing for the hours of work I put in every week other than gratitude and the occasional treat courtesy of The Gioi. They are under no obligation to do anything for me other than provide work. However, The Gioi is very generous in that they provide the SALTers who work there a free three day trip Sa Pa, which can be taken at any time. Being relatively unorganized fellows, Nathan and I procrastinated in setting a date and organizing the trip right from the start. We originally planned to go in March, but that never got settled and it wasn't until we did our Cao Bang trip that we began to get into gear and start to work on this trip. We decided to do it in the middle May as Nathan's parents are coming in June, and we had other trips planned before that. Sa Pa is in the North West of Vietnam and is famous for it's cool climate and having been a resort place for almost a century. It's deep in the mountains and the whole town is build on the side of a mountain. The French came here as occupiers to escape the brutal Hanoi summer and so we decided to follow suit. To get to Sa Pa, one must take the train. Having done the train before, I knew what I was getting myself into. It was a long 10 hours in the sleeper train, having left in the early evening and getting to the nearest station to Sa Pa around 4:30 in the morning. Getting off the train we found a minibus to take us to Sa Pa, which took another hour. We arrive at 5:30 to a rather ghost town Sa Pa. Nothing was open and we were told that we couldn't check in to our room until 6:30 at the earliest. We wandered around town a little, eventually found some tea, and just generally enjoyed the clean air. We eventually checked in and took a much needed shower. After that we walked to one of the minority villages nearby. Sa Pa was established by the French, but there are many small villages nearby with minority people. It was  a nice walk, but already we began to understand that we might be in for a couple exhausting days. Everything was on an incline and so everything we did was tiring. In the afternoon we went for a walk in a park/garden.

Plant pot holders

This was the best looking garden that I have seen in Vietnam

A view of Sa Pa

Nathan insisted on climbing that rock just to pose

The second day we rented some motor bikes and went up into the mountains to find the Silver Waterfall. After about 30 minutes of riding, we found it.

Convenient Internet access right at the top of the waterfall

Sa Pa is on the far side of this valley

After seeing the waterfall, we decided to go check out this national park that was a little ways further up the road. After paying half price to enter because we didn't want to do much there, we went in search of the "Golden Stream Love Waterfall."

The path was a under construction

I guess it's sort of golden

On our way to our bikes, we got waved over by a couple Vietnamese people to eat some delicious barbecued pork and drink tea. After we going back to Sa Pa for a proper lunch, we decided to drive off into the villages west of Sa Pa. We had met an interesting old guy from New Zealand the night before who lived in one of the villages and ran a cafe and so we decided to try to follow his convoluted directions and go there. We failed and never found it, but we did see some amazing scenery along the way.

Nearly every inch of land has been turned into a rice paddy

Sometimes they just let waterfalls drain right across the road

To this day Nathan and I are unsure of which was more beautiful scenery, Sa Pa or Cao Bang. Were it not for other factors, Sa Pa might just win it.

The third day we woke up to this:

No, there is no error with your picture. That is what we could see. Sa Pa is a notoriously cloudy and foggy place. We had been very lucky to enjoy two whole days of sunshine and only had to deal with this for one day. We spent the day while we waited to go to the trail wandering around the town. We must have done at least two laps around the whole place.

An amazingly decorated Vietnamese tomb

10 points to the people who can see the hidden image

To say that we were bored by the end of the day was an understatement. We couldn't really go anywhere, and there was nothing to see. Eventually we found a soccer field being grazed on by horses and the sheer novelty of it enraptured us for at least half an hour.

Around 4 pm we got on a minibus and went back to the train station and got on the train to back to Hanoi. All in all, the trip was a success and really fun.


Now that all that is said, we can talk about the worst part of the trip. As I mentioned earlier, Sa Pa has been used as a tourist place for almost 100 years, and that means that the locals are very much geared towards the tourist trade. I've been in places like this before, but this was my first experience with it here in Vietnam. It is terribly frustrating when you are expecting people who engage you in conversation to be wanting just that: conversation. However, the locals in Sa Pa are a bunch of incredibly pushy saleswomen who try to sell you something anytime they see you. While it didn't ruin the whole experience, it was the main difference between Cao Bang and Sa Pa. In Cao Bang, you were either treated normally, or as an anomaly as not foreigners go there. Sa Pa was very much a tourist trap, which made an otherwise amazing experience somewhat less than that.

Well that's all for tonight. Tune in next time as I regale you with tales of Saigon.