After our visit to Cát Bà and Hạ Long Bay, we took one more excursion from Hà Nội. We visited the mountainous northern region of Sa Pa, home to the Mountain Hmong, with a side trip to Bắc Hà, home to the Flower Hmong. The various Hmong tribes are spread all throughout Southeast Asia, with a rich cultural heritage expressed primarily through textiles and clothes. If you know us you know that the textiles were the primary draw, although Sa Pa is also known for its verdant, natural beauty. This three-day trip was an easy call.

One of the appealing things about Sa Pa is that the Mountain Hmong town of Cat Cat Village sits right at the edge of the city. We chose the Cat Cat Hills Resort & Spa, which is right above the village, maybe a fifteen minute walk away. We picked it for its convenience, but it was uncharacteristic for us as it was a swanky resort, which is not our style. But for two nights we splurged, made easier by the fact that splurging was only $70/night.

The views from the hotel were spectacular, no matter which direction you looked.

The rice paddy was full of frogs, and the chorus at night was impressive. Here’s some soundtrack for you as you read.

Cat Cat Village

I’m sorry to report that the Cat Cat Village experience was underwhelming. We had read that it was a little touristy, but that undersold the reality by a fair margin. It was 100% touristy, like an EPCOT outpost.

Cat Cat was touted as a living Hmong village. The occupants ran shops with Hmong knickknacks, but there were also supposed to be makers within the village. So while we expected most of it would be tourist souvenirs, we also figured there would be treasures amongst the dross, like any Medina or central market.

Nope. Not a treasure to be found. 100% tourist crap. Our first tipoff should have been the approach. The walk to Cat Cat was pavéd with shops offering rentals of cheaply made Hmong outfits, so you could cosplay Hmong village life while touring Cat Cat and flooding Instagram.

There was an entrance fee to get into the village, which isn’t unusual here for tourist-focused locations. Mostly they’re in the 50k-100k Dong range ($2-$4 USD), but Cat Cat was a hefty 150k Dong/person, about $6.

You have to walk down the valley to get to the entrance, and then the village itself is further down the valley, down a winding set of stone stairs.

And that’s what there is. Just a whole bunch of stalls, manned by Hmong in traditional dress, all selling basically the same stuff. Like Colonial Williamsburg, with less give-a-fuck.

It’s fine that Cat Cat was a fail, as the tail end of this trip will be the Sunday market in Bắc Hà, which will be awash in traditional Hmong textiles and clothes. In the meantime, the views from Cat Cat are worth the visit, even if the shops are full of junk.

Thankfully, Sa Pa had more to offer than just Cat Cat Village. There were natural splendors a short ride from our hotel.

Love Waterfall

Day One was our brief Cat Cat visit (and an evening trip to the hotel’s spa for massages). Day Two we spent viewing nature. As much by car as possible.

I’ll confess that there are a handful of things I find so inherently amazing that I don’t require spectacular examples of their ilk to be awed in their presence. Fireworks. Caves. Waterfalls. Girls. They are my dancing bears, and even their most modest instances are guaranteed to set my heart aflutter.

The pictures I’d seen of Love Waterfall, however, strongly suggested that this bear could dance. On top of that, you can’t swing a cat in Sa Pa without hitting a magnificent vista, so we made Love Waterfall our first stop.

The money shots.

Obviously, still photos can’t do a waterfall justice, so…

The only negative about the experience was the distance. We’re up a mile high, going down into the valley and back up, a two mile roundtrip. I suppose the best kinds of fun do leave you panting, but still.

Heaven Gate

Heaven Gate is two schizophrenic attractions in one place. The first is the Heaven Gate itself, a breathtaking, panoramic view of the mountains from a mile-and-a-half up.

The other is O Quy Ho Fairy Valley, a weird collection of cheesy sculptures that you reach by a little train. It seems to be a specifically Vietnam thing, where they don’t trust you to be amazed by the natural beauty, so they slather these awesome locations with a treacly theme park fondant.

But even Heaven Gate wasn’t immune, as we discovered when we reached the peak. The gate itself was pretty cool.

But that clearly wasn’t going to be adequate for the short attention span tourists. So there was also this:

The lack of trust in visitors isn’t a Sa Pa thing. It’s a Vietnam thing. Tons of sites that should be more than enough on their own have been tarted up like a painted lady. It’s baffling.

Our final stop was supposed to be Silver Waterfall, but after two full miles at Love Waterfall and whatever we clocked going up and down Heaven Gate, we had nothing left in the tank. Which is sad, because it looked amazing from the road. But also, a long way off.

Places We Didn’t Go

Vietnam has a number of hot tourist destinations that have been designed to be hot tourist destinations. They’re larded up with constructs meant to induce Instagasms, totally obscuring whatever natural beauty prompted the Disneying in the first place. Sa Pa also has Moana, much like Fairy Valley, and we conscientiously objected. Despite being only about a half an hour walk from our hotel, it was a hard no. Here’s some scraped proof, from a travel site.

We also passed on visiting Fansipan, the roof of Indochina (so named because it’s Indochina’s highest peak). Not because it was overtly touristy, like Moana, but because the way to get there involved a suspension of disbelief neither of us could muster. Sa Pa itself is a full mile up, but the peak of Fansipan is a tick shy of two miles. Nearly the entire mile of that difference is negotiated by cable car.

No. Fucking. Way.

Seriously. I’ve had to be rescued from the tops of pyramids twice. No fucking way.

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that we also opted out of the Glass Bridge.

What is with these people?

Thankfully, Love Waterfall was swell, and we had Bắc Hà to look forward to.

Bắc Hà

The van we took to Sa Pa from Hà Nội was nice. New, comfortable, and full but not crowded. The van we took from Sa Pa to Bắc Hà was none of those things.

But we finally got to Bắc Hà, checked into our hotel, and had the evening to wander about. The market was the next day, with a reputed 5:00 AM start and a late morning finish. No way were we getting out by 5, but we made breakfast by seven and had plenty of time for the market. Our bus back to Hà Nội was at 3, so there was no time pressure.

Like many villages everywhere, Bắc Hà completely transforms on its weekly market day. Stalls take over the whole town, and vendors set up on the street wherever there’s room. People come from all over, and while we’d read that there was a strong tourist presence in the market, Bắc Hà is pretty out of the way. There were other Westerners for sure, but the overwhelming number of attendees were local.

But we’d come for the textiles and clothes. We’d read that the market was split into local and tourist goods, and that was true, but not how you’d expect. The locals favored inexpensive synthetic fabrics, while the tourists were drawn to natural fibers and antique pieces. We found the local clothes in outdoor stalls and the tourist products, the good stuff, in an enclosed space called the Brocade Market. Both were interesting, but we were drawn to the Brocade Market. We’re never attracted to the tourist goods, but that whole formula was flipped on its head in Bắc Hà.

The Brocade Market was the payoff, and made the whole trip to Sa Pa worth it. We could have spent hours there… and did.

Fun over, time to head out, where we stopped at this beautiful governor’s mansion on the way to pick up our luggage and head to the bus station.

The bus station offered up signage explaining the bus system’s dos and don’ts, which included this admonition:

It translates as: Refuse to transport wild animals. I certainly do, and I was relieved to learn that others would be following my lead. Although I’m not at all clear as to how they got a pangolin to model for them.

It’s worth noting that we could have done this whole circuit as a tour. Transport arranged, hotels booked, guides to walk us about and explain the quaint local customs. And, to be fair, the couple of group activities we’ve enjoyed on our travels have generally provided amiable companionship.

But we really don’t like being on someone else’s agenda, and the hassle of making all of our own arrangements and negotiating transport seem modest compared to the benefits. We’ll do tours where it’s impossible to make our own arrangements, like Hạ Long Bay, but otherwise I suspect we’ll stick to our rugged individualism.

I know you expect no less of us. Who wants to read about our experiences on packaged tours?