(Irina) Our trip to Sa Pa was all about the "happy place."

As it turns out, the "happy place" refers to the bathroom (this is what all the guides call it), and as you read in Huey's posting, it wasn't so happy for him. All part of the experience, I guess. And here is what happens when Huey gets sick - I get to carry all the bags. View image

But aside from these intestinal troubles, the trip to Sa Pa and the trek through the neighboring villages was wonderful - beautiful scenery, peace and quiet, and great food. (FYI: we booked the trip through Handspan (a tour operator)and would recommend them.)

Sa Pa itself is an old French hillstation in the northwestern mountains, a couple of hours from the Chinese border. Nowadays it is a tourist town, catering mainly to Western tourists. We only passed through the town, where we met our guide who took us on a 5 hour trek through the mountains to a village where we stayed overnight. This part of the country is home to several different tribes, which are ethnically distinct from the Vietnamese. The different tribes dress differently, live differently, and do not intermarry, although they regularly mingle at markets and in the villages. Here is a picture of the Red Dao - so called because of the color of their headscarves: View image. The differences in the living condistions of the different tribes is noticeable. The Black Hmong and Red Dao houses, for example, consist of one empty room with a dirt floor. The Tay village we stayed at was definitely more prosperous, with large houses, concrete terraces, electricity (from generators) and other amenities. (Our house even had a satellite dish.) It was situated in a beautiful, green valley, with a wide, rock-strewn river. Here is a picture taken from the front terrace of the house: View image. While the Hmong villages were striking in their poverty, the Tay village had an idyllic air about it. (Which is not to say that life is easy there.) The impression was probably helped by the wonderful dinner our guide cooked and which we shared with the family who owned the house. Here is a picture of Nu cooking (on the right, with the pink clothes) and me and another one of the girls on the trip hungrily looking on: View image

And here are a couple of pictires we took along the hike: View image View image
(I am having some issues with uploading pictures. Hopefully, with a different computer, I will be able to upload more pictires.)

I have to go now because the Internet cafe is about to close. Will share more about our Sa Pa trip and the trip to Ha Long Bay in the next couple of days. Tomorrow, we are flying to Hue in the center of the country.