Sa Pa
Sa Pa, Vietnam – the land of Hmong people in colorful garb, rice paddy terraces for miles, and Vietnam’s tallest mountain known as the roof of Indochina, Fansipan. While Southeast Asia is known for it’s heat and humidity, Sa Pa is easily the coldest place we visited aside from one 14er in Borneo, Indonesia.
Sa Pa is full of character, stunning views, culture, history and delicious food. Enjoy the read!
Where to Sleep
Sapa Stunning View Hotel
Most places we visit, we simply show up to the town, walk around and ask for tours of the rooms, then pick the one that fits our feng shui style the best. Since we were taking a night bus from Hanoi to Sapa and weren’t sure what the town would be like in regards to hotel options. We decided to book ahead the night before from our comfy Hostel bunk.
(We’ve found Hostelworld & Trip Advisor to be very helpful, but there are always SO many more lodging options in towns that don’t show up on the internet and are quite lovely). After toggling back and forth between our options, we chose a $25/night Honeymoon Suite on the top floor of Stunning View Hotel. This place definitely lives up to it’s name!
There was a rooftop patio outside our bedroom door with sweeping views of Mount Fansipan and the rice patty fields. We took advantage of this for relaxing and staying in shape with our on the road HIIT workouts (talk about working out with a view! Makes the pain worth it.)
We enjoyed free breakfast both days of egg omelets, bread, fruit, and coffee. Simple, yet just what we need sometimes amidst a diet of Vietnamese foods! The hotel staff was friendly, helpful and even let us use the hotel desk computer to blog (for those of you that don’t know, I mostly write our posts from my phone – WordPress App is amazing!)
We got incredibly lucky our first 2 days in Sapa with gorgeous, sunny, and even hot weather (a rarity ’round these mountain areas). However, because it rains so much, bugs tend to search out shelter inside. And yes by bugs, I’m referring to the 1 cockroach we found that had crawled in the heated blanket stored in our wardrobe closet. We brushed it off as no biggy, as we had seen cockroaches by the dozen in the streets of Hanoi, but definitely proceeded with caution when going to the bathroom, climbing into bed and re-packing our bags upon departure!
Go Sapa Hostel
We still have many hostels ahead of us that we’ll sleep at, but this tranquil getaway hostel was our favorite thus far! It is perfectly nestled into the hillside above Sapa town and has gorgeous views of the mountains from the picturesque patio and dining area. Although the beds were so hard it felt like you were sleeping on the floor, the facilities were spotless and they gave you (in fact made you) wear little plastic sandals while walking around the hostel! Staff wasn’t too engaging which was different after staying at the hostels we did in Hanoi, but we’d go back in a heartbeat to Go Sapa! They also had birds in cages hanging in the common areas that did backflips – you could watch this for hours on end.
Where to Eat
Street Bar
After our first day on the bikes and a 4 hour ride that ended after dark, we pulled in to town ready for a good beverage and hearty meal to warm us up. (I also needed a drink or two after taking a minor spill on my bike). Although Sapa is a rural mountain town, we’ve realized that most restaurants and bars are pretty Westernized as the town grows in popularity for tourists. We stumbled on a small tiki-style bar, creatively called “Street Bar.” The woman running the place was blasting Bob Marley tunes. The strings of mini lantern lights and small tables made of petrified tree stumps created the perfect, cozy vibe we were in search of.
Conveniently it was happy hour so of course we ordered a couple rounds of beers and the second best mojito I’ve had in my life (aside from the pink mojito at Dow Jones in Barcelona).
Drinks led to dinner, which we ordered from the BBQ spot next door, and the nice woman brought our meal of grilled chicken and vegetables inside to our table.
This spot can easily be overlooked if you’re not searching for it, but a wonderful treat if you find yourself in the Sapa Region!
Sapa Bamboo Café
Sapa is the term used to encompass the downtown area, but also the incredible surrounding villages tucked in to the rice paddy fields along the mountainside. There are two main ways to see it all – you trek or you motorbike. We opted for the latter. We stumbled on Sapa Bamboo Café (they don’t have a website, but it’s located right next to Le Petit Gecko at 017 Xuan Vien Street) in Sapa’s City Center, which doubled as a tourist center and rented out bikes for 100,000 dong/day (approx. $5 USD).
The nice man working at the café was incredibly hospitable and friendly. He made us delicious fruit and cacao smoothies and vegetable spring rolls while we waited for our bikes to be delivered from the 3rd party motorbike company.
Vietnamese Hot Pot
Just across the road from the small town’s city center amphitheater where the locals gathered nightly to play hackey sack and a variety of other games, there was a restaurant “market” of sorts. You could walk through this market and peruse the menus as the restaurant patrons tried to usher you in, “eat here, eat here.” We found this to be a bit obnoxious, but hey, gotta get business somehow! After walking by 5 or so BBQ options (which we love but wanted something new), we settled for a Vietnamese Hot Pot which we had never experienced before. The ladies working showed us to a “table,” which was a lifted platform that had cushions to sit on – how cute!
We kicked off our shoes and sat cross-legged around the main eating square. Not sure of how this eating system worked, I looked around at other people dining and timidly asked the Caucasian people sitting next to us, “do you speak English? How does this work?” They couldn’t believe we’d never had a hot pot (apparently they’re a “hot” commodity in Asia, but were nonetheless very helpful in explaining how it works and how to order).
We started off with a couple Tiger Beers, a popular type of light ale in Asia. They dropped off the bottles at the table, then walked away without opening them for us but not to worry – Sean’s handy-dandy belt saved the day! Enjoying a couple of nice cold Bi-A’s (as they’re called in Vietnamese) is refreshing after a long day of being tourists!
We pointed to “bó” on the menu to the waitress. Soon, an older Vietnamese lady showed up at our little platform with a giant wok-like pot of broth and vegetables consisting of a medley of tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, greens, and tofu, yum!! Next, a plate of sliced raw beef was placed at our table, along with a heaping stack of weed-like greens and two packets of instant noodles. The waitress turned on the burner for us and wah-lah, we were in business! We loved the hot pot experience because we essentially got to cook ourselves (a rarity in our on-the-road lifestyle) and it was a unique setting. We definitely finished enough food that was meant for more than 2 people but it was so delicious! Scope it here:
Bia Ho’i 102
Conveniently named Bia (beer) Ho’i, this little hillside shack of a restaurant quickly became our favorite go-to restaurant. It might have been that it was located only a 2 minute walk away from our hostel, the authentic Vietnamese food for $2-$3 USD per person, the fact that the men of the family-owned restaurant invited Sean to drink beers with them for breakfast on Saturday morning, or the $3 personal mini kegs we ordered as a treat after Mt. Fansipan.
After eating at Bia Ho’i for three meals and ordering a fourth for takeaway, we developed a relationship with the family who ran the restaurant. Especially a lady named “thumb” who treated us as great friends every time we showed up, bellies hungry.
Whether we wanted breakfast, lunch or dinner, Bia Ho’i crushed the food game and overall experience every time. Sad to leave this place but moving on to find another hole in the wall gem!
Baguette et Chocolat
A sweet spot (literally), recommended by our favorite travel guide Lonely Planet, and a random Backpacker on the streets of Sapa. This little café was started in 1994 by a Vietnamese lady who wanted to teach Vietnamese youth to bake and work in restaurants. The proceeds from their sales help to educate these teenagers and help them get jobs in the hospitality field all over Vietnam. We treated ourselves one night to a sponge-like delicacy with chocolate and peanut flavors (still drooling over here!)
Riding Scooters in Sapa
Tram Ton Pass
This is the winding road between Sa Pa and Lai Chau, also the highest mountain pass in all of Vietnam! The views were incredible and we had never felt freer. We passed through many small towns along the way, saw a few breathtaking waterfalls (no, we didn’t go chasing them). One of our favorite parts were the animals wandering around on the side of the road: mountain buffalo, kittens, dogs, chickens and even wild horses too! (No pics, sorry, probably would have rode over the edge if we had tried to snap the Kodak moment).
Well, our second day on the bikes didn’t turn out as planned but we had an adventure and our first village experience. The plan was to ride to Lao Chai. About 5 kilometers into our ride, the battery on my automatic bike died (the downside of not riding a manual). Fortunately for us, we were right above the small town of Ta Van, and were able to coast the bike down to try and find help.
We didn’t get to finish our ride that day, we actually enjoyed ending up in a village, seeing the Hmong women cook, the children play in the streets, and the locals carry dead chickens upside down by their necks (yup). We met a girl about our age, Va, who spoke English fairly well and she was able to help translate for us to the best of her ability.
After 2 hours of hand signals, translations, buying an empty Viettel SIM card and a few 10,000 dong bi-a’s (beers), we decided to ride tandem on Sean’s bike back to downtown Sapa and tell the guy the bike was darn broke. At this point in the evening, it was around 6 pm and starting to get dark.
Village Girls Herding Buffalo
What else about Sapa?
For starters, sights like this became a normality:
Or this one of a pig, shortly after we heard it squealing bloody-murder as we were dining and went outside to watch it be slaughtered by the men, then blowtorched for an hour to preserve the meat inside. At least we know the food is fresh…? Talk about farm to table.
The Hmong Women & Children
5 years ago, Sapa visitors used to be able to get a unique experience with the Hmong villagers by trekking out in to the rice paddies with the Hmong women they met in town and staying in their homes to experience how they live. We’d describe Sapa as a little mountain town (kinda like a ski town back home), that is now overrun with tourists and sightseers. While we don’t blame them because the Sapa Sights are truly breathtaking, the unique homestay experience has become more catered to tourists and now geared towards making a prophet. We heard that most “homestays” are now rehearsed and unauthentic, so we decided not to go on one. But, here’s a picture of how the village women and children dress (yes, that’s a baby on the little girl’s back. Most likely her brother or sister).
Language Barriers & Misunderstandings
Sean handi-crafting our hike breakfast sandwich. We ordered a Bahn My Omelette (Bahn Mi Egg Sandwich is what we thought) and we were given eggs on a plate with a bread roll. Yes, they looked at us like we were crazy as we constructed a makeshift breakfast sammy.
Mt. Fansipan – One Day, No guide.
Stay tuned for a post on our Mt. Fansipan adventure of sneaking past rangers & all we experienced during our 16.2-mile trek through the Vietnamese jungle to the Roof of Indochina!
Have you been to Sa Pa before? What was your experience?! What other activities would you suggest? Let me know in the comments below!
