Day 4: Sapa (Monday, June 30)

We really saved the best for last with respect to Sapa. Our morning started with a trek from our hotel to the nearby village of Cat Cat. Dom, our trusty tour guide, told us that most of the tourists did the trek down the road for most of the way and then cut down to Cat Cat right at the village. We decided that the road didn't sound like the most fun, so we opted for the real trek - up and over several hills and through a lot of vegetable gardens and rice paddies. After some hard rain the night before, the path was a little muddy... and Dom had to think a couple of times to make sure we were going the right direction... but we made it without any real difficulties. It helped that the scenery was so great. We got to practice our balance walking across the rice fields… would not have wanted to fall in to one of those.




Eventually we made it to our destination, the village of Cat Cat. It wasn't much different from the other villages we visited around Sapa, but it is home to some nice waterfalls. We also saw an old school mortar and pestle which used the rivers power to drive the (giant) pestle and grind rice into flour.



After a quick break to take some pictures and rehydrate, we started our trek back up the hill to Sapa. We passed on the opportunity to hop on the back of a motorbike (have we mentioned how crazy the driving is yet?) and opted to hike it all the way, instead. As we were winding our way up the road, Dom challenged us to take the shortcut - essentially a trail that went straight up, instead of the road which winds up the mountain gradually. We did it (who doesn't like a shortcut, after all?), and at the top we ran into a group of Black Hmong girls... playing with Barbies. Seriously.


After lunch, we got back in the car and rode out to Silver Falls and some more great scenery. Here's a great picture of Matt with his eyes closed... Dom was great at capturing that look. And one of our favorite pictures showing just what the roads are like. It sure looked like it would be fun to take a nice sports car out there - but it wasn't much fun riding in the back of the bug SUV passing everything in sight blindly around curves!

The falls themselves were quite tall and long - and it was hard to really see and appreciate the entire waterfall except from a distance. Up close, it had many different personalities depending on how high up you were - really good times. And Dom managed to get a great shot of the two of us, so that's nice too!





That's it for us in Sapa. We had a ton of fun, and we definitely recommend Sapa (and Handspan) to anyone headed to Northern Vietnam. Depending on your interest in hiking and staying overnight in the villages, you could spend some serious time up there exploring and enjoying the scenery. Our three days were enough for us, though. The only downside to our experience was that the food was really just average. We suspect that there was probably some better food out there, but we never managed to escape the standard tourist fare.

We went back to town to grab our stuff before making our way back down the mountain to Lao Cai and the overnight train back to Hanoi (and the heat). As much as we aren't looking forward to the train ride, it is exciting to be going back to Hanoi because Amanda is arriving in the afternoon. Here's a picture of our train car (Viv got the top bunk) for the ride back to Hanoi.