Sa Pa

We parted ways with Jess & Jason in Cat Ba at the end of May, and caught a 12hr coach to Sa Pa, on Vietnam's northern border with China. On arrival, we checked into our hotel room to find there was no water coming out of any of the bathroom fittings. The receptionist used Google Translate to tell us that "our water is on fire, please understand." We did not understand.

The next morning we left our big bags in storage, and set out hiking into Muong Hoa valley. The locals strongly encourage you to hire a guide, but we decided to go it alone with AllTrails and Google Maps, which turned out to be 100% fine and saved us a load of money. In fact, it meant we got to enjoy a few extra kilometres of trail when we took wrong turns—great value! It's much more comfortable to hike in cool mountain weather again: turns out that we were sweating so much on walks in Malaysia and Thailand because of the heat, not awful cardio. Very validating.

We spent two nights in the village of Ta Van, hiking 24km among steep rice paddies, herds of buffalo, and mud slides, as well as encountering a bewildering array of creepy crawlies. Strange beetles, caterpillars, scorpions, wasps, flies... We even had to jump out of the way when a two-metre snake crossed the path right in front of us.

Many of the paths are still being rebuilt after damage from typhoon-induced floods in late 2024 (the costliest in Vietnam's history). We were also warned that Sa Pa weather can be hit-and-miss at this time of year, with dense fog obscuring the views. Luckily, we managed to do our hiking in what appears to be the only two-day window with perfect visibility for weeks. So we could cross the mud slides with full view of how far the drop would be 🥲

The clouds came back when we returned to Sa Pa (in the nick of time), so dense that we could see them rolling in through the café windows. Cars ten metres away were invisible apart from blurry headlights. We considered taking a cable car to the top of Fansipan, the tallest mountain in Southeast Asia, but figured the £40 pricetag was (like the mountain) a bit steep. If we wanted to look at a blank wall of fog, we could do that for free in town.

Before we left, we had the pleasant surprise of crossing paths again with Will and Margot, a French couple we met hiking in Sumatra back in February. They are also returning to Europe overland; our canaries in the coalmine for any difficult bits ahead.

Next stop, Hanoi 🚌 Czytaj więcej