Hanoi - Tracking in Beautiful Sapa Day 2

21-Nov-2017, Sapa - We woke up and had a great breakfast, and by 9am our guide fetch us from the hotel and off we went again to explore the mysterious Sapa valley. It was still misty, but it kinda added to the mystery of the whole place. Take for instant the photo above of a buffalo in the mist, kinda reminds me of those very typical painting of Vietnam or China where there is one lone buffalo in the rice fields. So beautiful. Like coming out of some poetry book or something. 

But coming back to reality, we actually have to pay an entrance fee to enter some of the villages in Sapa. Apparently these entrance fee was setup by the government, and it was supposed to help the villages. But it doesn't seems to be so effective as I heard this ticket booth itself was actually destroyed by the villages 3 times before and rebuild. Above is our guide purchasing the tickets for us, while I chatted with an aborigine lady who accompany me on our hike. I gave her a rose petal and she told me they use it to make tea to help with tummy upset. One piece of rose petal for information! Totally worth it. 

The village we hike through felt like they were from some Miyazaki anime. Lovely wood cottages, with overrun greeneries, and mist everywhere! I felt like I was in an anime itself. The air was so fresh, and I felt so free just walking around these beautiful villages. To some, all these maybe a bit too much for them, walking on a holiday in the mist on muddy ground? But to me, this is heavenly!

There was one section that has bamboo growing all over. Above is at the edge of where we walk pass just next to the small bamboo forest. It looked like something out of a Japan Kyoto travel broacher.

Here above is a better shot minus the two hikers :P 

We hiked over a lot of open spaces that also reminded me of the chalks of England. Above is overloading the rice fields on top of a slope.

And here are our two hikers walking through the rice terrance in the mist. It's such a National Geography kind of photo eh?

There were kids walking alone or with their friends up and down the muddy path, going home, going to school, going to the shops. Who knows. Can you imagine living here?

And narrow path that lead to more village houses, and little black pig just minding their own business look so cute in this shot! Yes. These are the best of Sapa for me, for this trip. No regret whatsoever that the mist was all over the place. It made it special, it made it our own special trip. Most people will only see the colourful valleys, but we saw the mysterious magical valley of Sapa, and we were very happy with it.