Robyn Yong - Cyber Photo Album

Sapa is a beautiful, mountainous town in northern Vietnam along the border with China. The highest peak in Vietnam, Fansipan, is located here. It's also rich in cultural diversity with numerous hill tribe people and villages.

We arrived in an overnight train from Hanoi to Lao Cai Train Station. From there, we caught a bus and wound our way up the highland to Sapa town.


Sapa town gave us the feel of a ski resort - cool, relaxing and alpine-like. It reminded Daddy of Kathmanthu in Nepal.	The Sapa market was an interesting place - colorful and buzzling with life.

Robyn, Jin & Alvin - the trekking family

We took a short 3-hour 3-km hike from Sapa to Cat Cat Village on the first afternoon just to warm up to walking.

The air was cool and refreshing, the scenery of rolling hills and the vast expanse of nature and mountains before us was just breathtaking.

Then we went on a 2-day 15-kim trek to TaVan Village to really soak in the mountainous environment of the hills, paddies and the hill tribes.

The stepped terrain, painstakingly created by the locals here for farming, was picturesque.

Alvin, Jin and Roby kidnapped a local farmboy for photo taking...

Beautiful landscaping!

The hill tribes there include the Red Dzao people, the black H'mong people, and the Dzay people.

The trek was moderate except for some steep stretches of terrain to negoitate. Robyn covered the 15km like an adventurer.

This terrain is the best place to teach navigation - the contours are unmistakeable.

Robyn & Jin with our guide-cum-chef, Dung

Thanks to our competent guide, Dung, we learnt a great deal about the history and culture of this wonderful place. He's also a great chef so our tummies were also very happy.

Trekking through stunning landscape

	We came across many domesticated animals - the tough and hardy buffalo and the cutey duckling.

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