Category Archives: Culture

Hill Tribes

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In addition to the enjoying the scenery around the mountainous region, visitors are drawn to Sapa because of the unique cultural setup of the area. The villages around Sapa are home to several local tribes, each occupying certain villages in the area, and they still keep a lot of traditions handed down from their previous generations. What makes this especially unique is that there are several distinct tribes represented in the area, and each tribe could be identified from the clothes and head bands that the villagers wear. Even the tribe’s names as known to the visitors were indicative of what they wear, like the Black H’mong people wearing black outfit, and the Red Dzao people wearing red hats.

One popular activity is to hike/trek to the village to see and meet these hill tribes and see what life is like in the village. Some more adventurous visitors who want to get closer to the action can also opt to arrange a homestay with a local family. Some of the villagers learned that many visitors would like to experience first hand what it’s like to live in their village, so this created somewhat an industry where they would open up their home as a local ‘bed and breakfast’ and provide experience to foreigners to live like they do for a short period of time. Another activity that was also interesting to many visitors was to go to a weekend market in the area that was typically attended by many of these local tribesmen. During the week, each tribe stays in their own village without much interaction with others. But during the weekend market, people from different tribes would come to meet and exchange goods with each other. For tourists, this is a great time to see many of these tribesmen wearing their colorful outfit at the same time in one place.

Since we were in Sapa only for a couple of days during the weekdays, we didn’t get a chance to observe the weekend market. However, it’s pretty easy to spot the folks from the area’s hill tribes in downtown Sapa. There were many ladies from the Black H’mong and the Red Dzao tribes who walked around the town with some handicrafts that they made and tried to sell those to the foreigners they met in town. We saw them from the moment we arrived in town, and continued on to the time when we started our hike to a couple of the villages.

The photo below was one of the Black H’mong ladies we encountered during our hike. You could see in this case her colorful headband along witht the black garment she wore.

Black H'mong lady

Hiking in Sapa

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When you visit the mountain resort town of Sapa, Vietnam, one of the activities you can do is hiking. For the serious hikers, you can hike the trail to the peak of Mount Fansipan, the highest peak in Indochina region (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). For most people, the more popular hike is to visit the nearby villages where the local tribes live. Typically the hike is anywhere between 3 to 15 km in distance, and in most cases you can do the hike as a half to full day activity.

In planning to do the hike, you can also decide whether you want to go by yourself, or hire a guide. Going by yourself is obviously cheaper, and you can go at your own pace, but you need to make sure you have a good map or know the route, and you are adventurous and willing to perhaps interact with the locals who you encounter during the hike. Otherwise, it may end up with a long day (because you get lost) or you won’t learn or appreciate the culture as much as you only see the scenery without talking to the people who live there.

A more popular option is to join a tour group led by a local guide. These are either offered by tour company/outfitters if you come to Sapa as part of such tour, or you can inquire some of the hotels in town who may have arrangements with local guides who can take guests on half day or full day hiking tour to the villages. In some cases, the route taken was chosen to be less strenuous for the guests (e.g. they would go downhill to the valley, and then the guests would be picked up by minivan to go back on the uphill part), and it would include a lunch break at the village in the middle.

During our visit to Sapa, we spent our first day there on a guided hike arranged by our hotel, Sapa Rooms. They hired local girls who are fluent in English to guide the tour groups. In our case, it ended up to be only four people, so it was still feeling like a private tour. That tour took pretty much a whole day, since it was at a leisurely pace and included lunch break in the middle. On the second day, we ended up going to another village on our own. So we experienced both options for hiking to the villages.

The photo below was taken during our first hike. This was around an area where we went down to the valley, and then had to go up a little bit on a narrow, muddy path. You can see here the line of hikers waiting to climb up.

Hiking in Sapa

Sapa Rooms Hotel

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Sapa Rooms is a boutique hotel in the resort town of Sapa in Northern Vietnam. We found Sapa Rooms on TripAdvisor. Aside from generally excellent reviews from the past guests, there were mentions about the emphasis from the owner and staff to be ‘ethically responsible’ and make positive impact to the local economy, so that was a good starting place to check it out.

I had an email correspondence with Pete, the owner/manager of the hote, to arrange our visit. He provided us with really good information about the hotel, transportation option from/to Hanoi, and the trekking tours we could take there. In the end, we decided to book the transportation from/to Hanoi (train tickets between Hanoi and Lao Cai, and passenger van transit between Lao Cai and Sapa) and the hotel rooms through them (plus the trekking tours arranged through their front desk once we got there). The cost for the transportation option might be a bit more expensive in comparison to what you could get if you do it yourself, but considering the potentially confusing process of getting train tickets at the station, and then getting a ride between Lao Cai and Sapa at early morning or early evening, it’s worth paying the extra cost.

The trip between Hanoi and Sapa was an interesting experience that I wrote about in the last few days. When we finally arrived in Sapa, the driver dropped us off at the hotel. Since we arrived before our room was ready for check in, we waited at the hotel’s lounge/restaurant area and were served complimentary breakfast.

Our room for the one night stay was a large suite with a king-sized and full-sized bed plus separate shower and bathroom — it was large enough for a family of 4-5 to stay. The room was very nicely decorated and very cozy, definitely perfect for resting after spending time outdoors trekking in cold and wet weather. We were able to freshen up at got a little rest before we continued on with the day.

The photo below was taken in our room. You can see the two beds inside the large but cozy room.

Sapa Rooms

Sapa

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Sapa is a town in the northwest region of Vietnam, close to the border of China. It’s about 350 km northwest from Hanoi. It’s up in the mountainous region in the Lao Cai province, so to get there from Hanoi typically travelers would take a train ride from Hanoi to the city of Lao Cai, then continue on with a drive to Sapa. The area became popular as a resort town for the French colonist given it’s cooler climate. Today it is becoming a popular tourist destination in Northern Vietnam since it is one place that you can see encounter several indigenous tribes in Vietnam (the Hmong, Dzao, Tai, and Giay) and also see the village life and the terraced rice fields. Mount Fansipan, the highest mountain peak in Indochina at more than 10,000 ft high, is also nearby, so it’s also a good place to go for hikers.

When we’re planning for the trip to Northern Vietnam, the idea to visit Sapa as part of the iterary came after talking with some friends who had been in the area and also watching Travel Channel program about Vietnam. I have a couple of friends who used to live in China, and one time they took the land route through Vietnam on the way to a conference in Thailand. During that trip, they went through Sapa, and they absolutely loved the place because it offered two things they loved, hiking the mountains and immersing themselves in indigenous cultures. Then as I looked for more information to learn about Vietnam, there was a featured program on the Travel Channel where one of its hosts, Samantha Brown, visited Vietnam. One of the experiences she had, visiting Sapa and staying with a local family. Kristi and I were both sold after that, as this would be a little ‘off the beaten path’ experience and it’s definitely unique during our Southeast Asia trip.

The photo below was taken during our hike. You can see the terraced rice fields down in the valley, seen from the mountain-side path we passed during our hike.

Terraced rice fields

Morning Drive to Sapa

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After few hours of sleeping in a tiny sleeper during the train ride between Hanoi and Lao Cai, we were woken up by the sound of the train stopping, followed by someone shouting outside. Then someone banged on our cabin’s door. When we opened the cabin’s door, we found out that we had arrived in Lao Cai, and the loud shout was to tell the passengers to get up, pack up their belongings, and leave the train. The time was around 4:30 am, so most of the passengers were still half awake. They slowly freshened up a little bit, gathered their belongings, and left the train.

It was still dark outside when we disembarked from the train. It was similar to the Hanoi Train station; we walked through a dimly-lit outdoor platform, pretty much following other passengers in front of us as noone really provided any direction other that we had to leave the train car (the lights inside the train car flickered several times as warning that they would be turning everything off soon, so we had better move out quickly).

We said goodbye to George and Gol, the couple who shared the cabin with us during the overnight train ride. Before we left Hanoi, Mr. Viet, the gentleman who arranged our travels between Hanoi and Sapa, told us that once we arrived at Lao Cai Train Station, on the way out we should look for a driver with a sign saying Sapa Rooms and my name written on it. As we reached the exit of the train station, sure enough, we saw someone with the sign. I used hand gestures to tell him that we’re the passengers he’s waiting for. He nodded and motioned to us to follow him to the parking lot. He had a minivan that was empty, and after loading our luggages, he asked us to get on the minivan. I was quite happy as everything seemed to work like clockwork. Or so I thought…

The driver then left us alone in his minivan to go back to the train station. We waited there for few minutes, until he came back with several more passengers (all foreign tourists) who had their luggages loaded and got on the minivan joining us. Then the driver left again… This happened for several times, until finally our minivan was fully loaded. So it seemed that even though the driver might be contracted by Sapa Rooms to pick us up, he was also trying to maximize his load by picking up other passengers there. This was the only means of transportation to get from Lao Cai to Sapa, so the demand for such service was pretty high especially everytime the train from Hanoi has just arrived.

It was already close to 6 am when we left Lao Cai. It was still dark outside, and it was quite foggy as well. The drive to Sapa took a little more than an hour, and it was pretty much an uphill climb all the way there. For the first half of the ride, it was still dark outside so we couldn’t tell what’s on the sides of the road, but what we could tell was that the fog was quite dense that the visibility was quite low. We could barely see any car or incoming traffic within 50 feet in front of us. But yet the driver was driving constantly at 60 km/h. Most passengers were pretty much going back to sleep on the drive there. I was awake by then, so I thought I tried to capture the experience by getting my camera out from my backpack. It was quite a challenge trying to get the camera out and changing lens to the one with the right aperture and focal length to use while being careful to prevent dropping the lens cap or anything else in the dark and crowded minivan cabin. I managed to take some shots; most of them ended up to be mostly dark scene, but they captured the moment of being in the dark, driving in a dense fog.

About halfway during the trip the sun came out and we could start seeing the scenery around us. The photo below was taken during the ride. It was my first glimpse of the mountainous region of Sapa that we’re about to visit. It could’ve been nice to see clear sky and the sun rising in the distance, but the clouds and fog slowly clearing up added a different dimension to the sense of place.

Morning drive to Sapa