Sapa

We booked the overnight train to Sapa, which was very comfortable! Compared to our pervious experiences we actually felt a little too scruffy to be in the compartment! That soon passed. We arrived in Lao Chai train station and got the bus an hour and a half up to Sapa which is a mountain town where most of the trekking starts from. The next day we had arranged a two day, one night trek with a company called Sapa Sisters who are a group of local tribes women who have learnt English and trained to be guides. We went with this company as the money you pay goes directly into the local community instead of some random tour company. Our guide was called Pen from the Hmong tribe, she is 26 and has been married 10 years and has 3 children. She learnt English by selling things in the local market and talking to tourists as she never went to school. Pen and her family live 3 hours walk from Sapa high up in the mountains with no electricity, she takes her two eldest children to school every day which can take 2 hours depending on the weather.

On the first day we set off at 9am from the hostel. We had read on the reviews that it is common for local tribes woman to follow you on the trek so they can sell things to you from there wicker baskets they carry like rucksacks. On the first half of the trek it was a good job they were there as it had been raining and the paths were very muddy. They helped me along while Jamie took pictures of me from behind in the hope he'd catch a picture of me falling in the mud! I'm happy to say I didn't fall! The local ladies were very nice and chatty and had fantastic English. We walked through beautiful rice paddy fields and through local villages, it was stunning. At lunch time we stopped and the sales began! We bought something from each of our ladies that helped but it didn't stop there, there were loads of ladies there from different tribes selling allsorts and no matter how much you bought it was never enough! After lunch we were lucky enough not to have anyone else follow us. We continued our trek to the homestay. We were the only ones staying at the homestay, they were very friendly and the lady tried to get us drunk on rice wine, which obviously wasn't that bad!! The next day we set off again but unfortunately it rained all day so we didn't get off the beaten track as much as we'd had liked. In fact it rained so much we found out that after we left there was a big mud slide and 33 people died :(

We got back from the trek, had a lovely warm shower then set back off to Hanoi on the night train! We loved Sapa, it was definitely a highlight for us.

Things we learnt about Sapa

• There are lots of different tribes that all have their own language but they speak Vietnamese to each other.
• Some villages have had electricity for only 4 years.
• The Hmong ladies make their clothes from Hemp.
• The tribes ladies do all the hard work while the husbands stay at home and drink rice wine!
• The tribes ladies are real hustlers when it comes to selling their wares!