Three Days in Sapa and One last stop in Hanoi

How do I even begin to describe Sapa? It is absolutely breathtaking. It is nothing I ever expected  to see or experience in Vietnam and as soon as I left I wanted to go back.  We couldn't stop taking pictures because every view was more beautiful than the next. We were surrounded by lush rice terraces, green mountains with hanging clouds and extremely friendly Hill tribe people (different minority ethnic groups living in Vietnam). I  felt like I could have been in the French or Swiss alps and even treated myself to some wine and cheese (which I've been missing terribly).

We took a night train there from Hanoi (right after we got back from our Castaway trip) and arrived early enough to have a full day to explore the city.  The first day we did a trek  to two nearby villages (the first one was called Cat cat village). It was fun to explore by ourselves without a tour group and we managed to go to some less touristy areas where we saw the Hill Tribe people's daily routine of harvesting rice (I will never look at rice the same-- it does not look like easy work!) We walked for about 4 to 5 hours and our feet were very tired afterwards so we treated ourselves to a $6 hour long foot massage and some wine :)

Local kids fishing in the water

The next two days we did an organized tour with a local company. We trekked with a Vietnamese tour guide named Quinn and 6 other westerners through the villages and rice patties and did a "homestay"   in the evening (essentially just staying a hotel in the village). Our tour guide and group was great and we had a local hill tribe woman named Jules following us around the first day. She was very sweet and helped me walk down some of the steeper hills but she also had a goal in mind-- get this tourists to purchase souvenirs from her. Since she was very nice and helpful I of course bought a small purse from her but we did find that some of the other women were a little too push when I came to their sales techniques.  On the first day we walked through 3 villages (Lao Chai, Tan Van, and Giang Ta Chai) and visited with 2 different minority peoples (the H'mong and the Dzay). On the 2nd day we treked through two more villages, walked through a bamboo forest and more rice paddies, and hung out at a waterfall. 

I could add dozens of more pictures because we have so many good ones  but I don't even know if the pictures  do it justice. Sapa was just absolutely wonderful. 

We took another night bus from Sapa back to Hanoi and had full day to kill in Hanoi (we scheduled a night bus for later that night to start taking us South). That day in Hanoi we went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex. We didn't actually go into the Mausoleum since it was a weekend and it was extra crowded-- this s one of the holiest sites for Vietnamese. . We decided to treat ourselves to a movie later in the day and saw StarTrek 3D (it was between that and fast and furious 6). Going to a Vietnamese cinema was a cultural experience in itself.