You buy from me?

To Sapa then, the second leg in a three part dash around north Vietnam. I took an overnight soft-sleeper coach (4 berths) from Hanoi to Lao Cai which is nestled snugly right next to the Chinese border. The real reason I, and many westerners venture this far north though, is to visit Sapa which is about 40km from Lao Cai where the bus drivers here will spill blood - but curiously not drop their prices - to herd you on to their minibus.
Sapa is found high in the hills of northwest Vietnam which, for one thing, means that, for the first time on this trip, pretty much, I felt cold by night. Though the town itself is pretty unspectacular, its setting is nothing of the sort. The draw for most folk here are the quite incredible rice terraces which surround the town, lending the whole place a weirdly unnatural feel, but it is truly spectacular. It’s hard to describe the terraces exactly but it lends a strangely neat and ordered look to the countryside - nature’s very own version of the IKEA effect.
The fact that it’s harvest time and that the natives are busy carrying out the back-breaking tasks they do as routine, regardless of the fact that a bunch of westerners are pointing their cameras at them or not, adds to the colour, sound and atmosphere of the area right now. Much of the work is being carried out by the various hill tribes who inhabit these fields - the H’mong being the most evident to me - and almost all of them still wear their traditional clothing. Those who don‘t work in the fields spend their day in downtown Sapa chasing and charming tourists - more of the former than the latter it seems to me - selling hand-made trinkets and greeting everyone with the cry “You buy from me?”
I managed to take in a short hike through the terraces and through some of the traditional villages where the H’mong people who inhabit them are, by now, conditioned to the peering eyes and the clicking cameras of passing strangers. Stunning place.