After our picture adventure we headed to Sa Pa. Sa Pa is a small town high in the Vietnamese mountains in North West Vietnam. It is near the highest peak in South East Asia. This area of Vietnam is inhabited by minority groups of which we saw many H'mong. Our Sa Pa trip was to last four days and three nights.
The trip starts out at 8:00 PM when you board a train for Lao cao. You stay in a sleeper car. There are four bunks per room. They wake you up at 5:00 AM. Blurry eyed we found the way to our car the tour company had booked for us. The car makes it way up the mountain to the town of Sa Pa. They drop us off at the hotel around 6:00. We took some much needed showers and ate breakfast, part of the tour package. From there we headed down to the black H'mong village. What are black H'mong you ask? Check out the pictures for your answer. We hiked back out of the valley and had lunch at the Hotel. In the afternoon we headed up to the flower garden. It was beautiful but our view was obscured by the clouds.
The next day started a two day hike down the valley. Two members of the black H'mong followed us down to where we ate lunch. At the bottom they of course wanted us to buy something. My bought a belt she liked. After that we hiked to our home stay, so called because we stayed not at a hotel but at the home of some local H'mong people. Right before we got to the home stay we happened across a school where the children were practicing for their "independence day" celebration. They put on a dance. They were dancing to and English song. It all seemed very sureal. I filmed it and hope you enjoy.
The next morning when we woke up was beautiful. It had rained the night before and the clouds were wisping through the valley. We hiked furthur down the valley to another homestay. That night we visited a local mineral springs. We spent about and hour and a half there. It was wonderful.
On the last day we had to hike out of the valley to a waiting car. The car took us to to the silver waterfall. As it had rain the last couple days the waterfall had an unsually high amount of water for this time of year. From the waterfall we went back to the Hotel, took a shower, and headed back to the train station. The train left at 8:00 PM and we were once again kicked off the train at 5:00 AM in Hanoi. We headed back to our Hotel to collect our things. Then we headed off for our plane to Hue, My's hometown, which left at 10:00 AM.
W + M
