On the road to Sapa.. Roses everywhere

First flight since the pandemic!! Me and my Vietnamese sister Ly flew from Da Nang where we live to Hanoi. At the airport in Hanoi, we waited for some more friends of Ly that were joining us from Ho Chi Minh city. Meanwhile, we had lunch and ate an overpriced Pho soup at the airport.

When the squad was complete, we all headed outside to take a minibus which took us to the bus stop where we had to take a sleepers bus which took us to Sapa, our final destination. When we arrived in Sapa it was already dark outside and there was a lot of mist covering the mountain city. I could see many ethnic children and elderly woman selling handmade souvenirs on the streets. Later that night I got approached by one older lady that sold me some bracelets. I was impressed by her English pronunciation; it was so good.

Our first sapa dinner place

The next day we went to the market which was across the street from our hotel. There we all ate Pho for breakfast. This time it was way more delicious than the one we had at the airport, luckily for us. After breakfast me and Ly rented a motorbike and headed into the mountain roads of Sapa. On the way we noticed a very cute coffeeshop were we decided to make a stop. We took many pictures here and enjoyed the sunshine. In the afternoon the weather changed a little bit and we had to deal with some rain on the way back to Sapa town.

Lunch time

When we got back to Sapa city center we gathered with the others to go to Cat Cat by motorbike. Cat Cat was super busy! We ended up driving all the way down and up again because we decided it's not worthy to pay the fee to enter the very commercialized village. On the way up it was very dangerous because there where to many vehicles on the road and some cars when they had to stop would roll back down making the way up super sketchy, but we made it back up.

After our Cat Cat adventure, we brought back the motorbikes and ordered a taxi to go to Ta Van. We stayed here for two nights with Giang a friend of Ly whom owned the homestay. It was very relaxing to stay at lazy crazy homestay, yes that is what it’s really called. When it was not too foggy, we had a really nice view overlooking the rice fields. Near the homestay there also was a stream, unfortunately it was too cold during the time we stayed there to go swimming. On our last night in Ta Van we visited a Spa located in the village where we took a warm herbal bath.

Then on the way back we somehow started talking about ghost, there were not too many light on the roads, so the way back was a little bit scary. During dinner Giang confirmed to us that there is indeed a ghost in the village. The bamboo ghost, it was supposed to be called. I was not sure if I should believe him or not because he was always teasing me and not the most serious persona, but his cover up story made me believe it. We went out one more time this night to visit the bar which Giang co owned and on the way it was pouring a little bit and off course Giang tried to scare us on the way to the bar.

The next day we headed back to Sapa to catch the bus back to Hanoi, but before that happened Giang suggested to cancel the taxi which already had arrived and let him and his friend take us back by motorbike to Sapa city. We payed the taxi and went by motorbike, I really wanted to drive but Giang didn’t let me… So on the back I went, then suddenly Giang turned into a smaller road on the right and started racing between the ricefields with me screaming MAMAAAA on the back! The road if you can even call it a road was so narrow, one small mistake and you would fall down into the mud or even worse down a hill. In the end it was scary but a lot of fun.