The drizzle hit the instant I stepped out of the Delta Sapa Hotel, where I’m holed up for two nights before the sleeper bus drags me back to Hanoi. Sapa’s mountain mist is half fog, half rain—the kind that seeps through your jacket if you give it half a chance. Earlier, the hotel breakfast room […]

Read More A Morning in Sapa: Egg Coffee, Almond Croissants, and a Bracelet for the Road

I made it to Lao Chai after a 10 km slog with a party of about ten people down from Sapa led by our guide Su. This cluster of Black H’mong hamlets hugs the Muong Hoa Valley—locally called the Golden Stream—six to twelve kilometers southeast of town. My calves held up, but my left knee’s […]

Read More A Night in Lao Chai, Vietnam: What a Black H’mong Homestay Is Really Like

The bus now hums along like a soft cradle, rocking me gently in my little pod on the upper deck of this HK Open Tour sleeper. It’s no fancy limo, just a reliable Vietnamese workhorse run by a Hanoi outfit that gets backpackers up to the mountains without the usual aches. I’m stretched out in […]

Read More Rolling Easy: Sapa Vietnam and the top of Indochina

Hanoi – A City That Remembers I’ve been here for nearly two weeks, moving gently from one guided day to the next by My Lee, the Customer Service Manager at the La Beaute Boutique Hotel and Spa that makes it all happen It’s the tourist rhythm: arrive, join a group, listen, learn, and move on. […]

Read More Trip to Vietnam’s Ancient Heart: notes from a quiet older, wiser visitor