Sapa is one of those places you want to visit but know will be flooded with tourists. When we arrived in the early hours everywhere was in darkness and the streets bereft of noise and motorbikes. By the time we left our room to go up to the roof area for breakfast chaos had returned. Bikes, cars and minibuses honked their way along the narrow streets. Women from the surrounding hill tribes were already hard at work trying to persuade the visitors to part with the...

We left Nong Khiew and headed up river on our privately commissioned boat to Mang Khua, our jumping off point of the Vietnamese border. We had intended taking the public boat but were initially told it wouldn't run because of the Laos new year, and then later that it may run but only if there were enough people. With the last day on our visa looming we couldn't afford to take the risk, so private boat it had to be. The journey was exquisite, through wooded valley...