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- 26.4.2024
- ☀️ 30 °C
- Korkeus: 1 266 m
- VietnamTỉnh Lào CaiLo Sui TongSuối Hu22°19’42” N 103°50’5” E
Day 81
26. huhtikuuta, Vietnam ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C
Sapa & Cat Cat Village
After another much needed sleep, I ended up sleeping till past 10am which was much later than I had hoped to but I needed to. The plan was to meet up with Michelle from the Ha Giang Loop so I rushed to pack my bags to check out and then headed out. The plan was to rent a scooter and ride about so I walked to Mr Mung's Motorbike Rental, handed my passport over to a random lady on the side of the street and then voila, I had a scooter.
Michelle couldn't really ride a scooter so I was her easy driver for the day. She hopped on the back and our roles were set out - she had to direct and I had to drive. Fortunately for her, once we were out of Sapa it was just a straight road. Fansipan is the tallest mountain in Vietnam, so was a fairly prominent feature in the landscape. Unfortunately you either had to pay a guide to take you up, or pay for the cable cart and both were fairly expensive. Instead we decided to take the road that went around Fansipan to try and get some good views. Just like any range of mountains, they were beautiful and there were some nice spots to stop off on the way. The whole way was downhill so I could pretty much not use the throttle the entire way down (unless I got impatient).
Unfortunately the road was too big to do a full loop so when we got to the bottom of the long down slope, we turned around and headed back up. Our mission now was to find somewhere that sold food as I hadn't had any breakfast and it was now lunch time. You'd think this would be easy but most places on Google Maps didn't exist and most signs for restaurants seemed to be for decoration. We found a small place on the side of the road that I spotted on the way down and managed to order some food using Google Translate.
We made our way back up the hill which for our little scooter proved harder than coming down. We stopped a couple times on the way up, once for a waterfall which we decided against after a group said it wasn't worth it, and then a little further up at a mystery set of stairs. We parked up, climbed the stairs and Google translated the sign: "Chineese Doctor Cemetary". I went to and turn around but Michelle said we might aswell keep going, so we hung out at a cemetery for a while. Hopefully it wasn't as disrespectful as it might have felt. A small while later, we left the cemetery and kept going.
After trying to keep up with a motorcycle group and failing, we made our way back to Sapa. Having some more time in the day, we went to Cat Cat, a small H'mong village right next to Sapa. The road down was steep, busy, under construction, and for some reason, wet - meaning it was a not very nice drive down. We paid for entry, then parked up at the bottom of what we thought was a path up to a café. Unfortunately the café was one building over and this lead to an abandoned café fenced off to the main path. Luckily for us some kids showed us a way to get past the fence which seemed super dodgy looking but we went for it anyways.
The village itself had a really weird vibe. It seemed like it was meant to be a local authentic village but had been exploited into becoming a tourist hub meaning the culture was now focused on selling "handmade" things to tourists and having things for tourists to see and do. Tourists were also dressed up in the local colourful clothing in a theme park gimmicky kind of way. It really felt inauthentic and I wasn't enjoying a fan. What certainly didn't help was the music playing out of speakers all over, making it feel like a D tier Disney. We didn't explore everything but there was some nice bridges, a nice waterfall, as well as some goats and sheep in a pen. Around sunset the theme park - I mean the village was closing so we made our way back out and up the terrible road.
I dropped Michelle back at her homestay before I picked my bags up from mine and headed to my 2nd homestay in Sapa. I checked in for 2 nights as I still wasn't sure how long I wanted to stay for, then returned my bike to Mr Mung, and chilled for a bit at my new homestay. I met back up with Michelle in the evening at a restaurant that supposedly did decent Vegetarian food according to TripAdvisor. I enjoyed an okay Bun Cha before I headed back to the homestay. I had a shave and a shower then had an early night as I was still trying to recover from Ha Giang.Lue lisää
Matkaaja Class picture mate