We were supposed to see rice terraces, hills, lots of green and we were supposed to walk a lot. Instead, there was lots of coffee and even more rain.
We arrived in Sa Pa in the middle of the night by a sleeping bus. It was raining. We could sleep inside till 6am. At 6am it was raining a little less, but on our way to the hotel it started raining heavily. Few hours later we put on water shoes and went for a walk. Or swam. We swam for a coffee. The first coffee.
Sa Pa is a typical touristic town in the mountains. Everyone goes there for trekking and hike (or cable car) to Fansipan – the highest mountain in Vietnam and whole Indochina (3143m).
In Sa Pa temperatures are lower, hello mountains. After 30 degrees in Hanoi we were not so warmly welcomed by 14 degrees in Sa Pa. Despite rain and cool temperature we went for a walk. It would be a shame not to see anything. After a few kilometers we sat down under the roof on the restaurant’s terrace and just stared at whatever we could see in between clouds which were coming and going. It must be amazingly pretty when it’s not raining. Now, that I’m at home it looks pretty even in these pictures.
The road turned into river with water up to our ankles. We gave up and took a taxi back to Sa Pa. We went for a coffee hoping that next day would be nicer. In the middle of the night we saved our backpacks putting them as far away from the window as we could. In the morning half of the floor is wet. Apparently it wasn’t better. We went outside looking for a breakfast, disposable raincoat and coffee. And we spent the rest of the day drinking coffee and ginger tea till our bus to Hanoi in the afternoon.
What if the weather had been better? We would have had less coffees, but more trekking. Is there anything better than few hours of trekking through rice fields, which are amazingly green in October? We would have seen the mountains, maybe took a cable car to Fansipan (although my fear of heights wouldn’t be happy). Well, the weather in Sa Pa in October was supposed to be amazing.