Trip to SaPA

I left my host family’s house at 5am to go to the Green Bus Station in Hanoi city centre. The bus was amazingly clean (every passenger had to take of the shoes before entering the bus) and stopped 2 times for a toilet/snack break.

After 6 hours we reached SaPa. SaPa is the capital of SaPa District and home to several ethnic minority groups such as H’mong, Dao and Tay. It is the highest of Vietnam’s valleys with the county’s highest mountain, Fansipan (3143m). The area is surrounded by a range of mountains, which is the eastern endpoint of the Himalayas.

I started walking to my homestay (Terraced H'Mong Homestay -> NEVER EVER STAY THERE) in Cat Cat Village. (entering the village costs 70.000 VND) On my way I met a lovely Vietnamese girl from the south of Vietnam and we explored the area together. After a while of sightseeing I was looking for my homestay, which was not easy to find. This was probably the first sign. The Vietnamese girl, Sinh, helped me find my homestay and with google maps and the help of locals I eventually reached the place.

When I arrived, the host was smoking something and told me I should wait until he is done. I sat down and after a few minutes he sat beside me. He was far too close in my comfort zone, which was weird since all Asian I had met always kept their distance. The part of his eyes which is supposed to be white was red and I asked a third time if I am allowed to check in now. I brought my bag upstairs and came back to the common area, where I joined two German girls and a French girl. We talked and played some games. The host started to get really weird and all of us felt extremely uncomfortable. He always interrupted our game and started talking stuff that made no sense at all. He left the place and after an hour or two he came back completely high and drunk. He started talking about how poor he is and that we should give him money and that he can do everything for us and all services are included. We started to get really afraid. I had booked only one night, but the others considered leaving the place earlier. We decided to go upstairs, put our mattresses together (because we were afraid this guy might come into the room in the middle of the night) and just try to get some rest. While the others were going upstairs to get their toothbrush, I was already brushing my teeth in the bathroom, where I was being watched by the creepy host. You can’t imagine how relieved I was when the others came back. We decided not to leave anyone alone anymore and went upstairs after we were all done. When we wanted to get changed we heard someone walking up the stairs. For no reason the host suddenly showed up in our room (well actually it was an attic with mattresses on the floor) We were all terrified and after one girl started crying due to all the cockroaches we decided to leave this place. Since we were terrified of that guy one of the German girls said: We are really sorry! We like this place a lot. You have been a great host so far and we would love to stay but we are just too afraid of those cockroaches. We really want to leave. Of course we are paying for the night.

He went completely nuts and shouted at us. He said to me that he knows me and that he promises me that if we see each other again he will not be nice. He threw the money at me and had a total insane facial expression. I didn’t even bother getting changed. I was in my pyjamas, ready to run though the rice paddies to hop into a taxi to get away from there. It took so much time until he let us go because he cancelled our reservations so that we cannot write a review on booking.com. Eventually, we were ready to run away. One of the German girls called a Grab (Asian version of Uber) and even though we did not know where we’d sleep and we went through the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night we felt so much safer. The grab picked us up and the driver could not speak English. However, by using google translator we managed to explain our situation and he brought us to a hotel. We had to spend quite a lot of money but we did not care at all. At around half past 2am we were showered and ready for bed.

The next morning I got up at 7am to start my trekking tour. After a turbulent night and only about 4 hours of sleep I was pretty tired. However, after our extremely motivated and enthusiastic tour guide arrived and I talked to the other people in the group I was not tired anymore. I was wondering why there were so many other locals besides our tour guide. When we reached a little bridge made out of three bamboo sticks I realised that they were there to help us passing the harder and more slippery parts of the path. Even some really small kids held our hands.

In one of the villages we stopped at one of the local restaurants to have lunch. Then we continued our trek until we reached the homestay where we got tea and a snack. We got changed and a few people and I went to a river. When we came back we had dinner and played card games until we fell into our beds.

View from the my bedroom in the homestay

The next morning started with banana pancakes. We started our second day of trekking and passed villages, rice paddies, mountains, buffalos, rivers and a waterfall. Our tour guide provided us with lots of information about the ethnic minority groups and their different cultures and habits. Again we stopped at a local restaurant to have lunch. All of the restaurants and our homestay had vegetarian options. After our batteries were recharged we continued our trek and walked to a bus stop where we were picked up and brought back to SaPa.

I checked in into my hostel, took a shower and met up with a few people from the trekking group to have dinner together. We got something to drink and sat down on a bench to enjoy our last night together.

Even though initially it looked like a horror trip, this trip turned out to be one of my favourite ones. I met so many lovely people and had great conversations and so much fun with them, I enjoyed delicious Vietnamese food, which was included in the price for the trek, and I could marvel at a stunning and unique landscape.

By the way: Never trust the weather forecast! I already wanted to cancel this trip because it was supposed to rain all day. It actually turned out to be sunny and hot with no rain at all.