The Night Before:.

Day 1: Lao Cai-Sapa-Y Linh Ho-Lao Chai-Ta Van (B, L, D)

Picked up at Lao Cai Station upon your early arrival for over an hour drive uphill in a shared minivan to Sapa. After freshening up and Breakfast in a local restaurant you will enjoy a free walk around this charming town, paying a visit to Sapa market and the old cathedral where you can meet a lot of local ethnic minority peoples such as Black Hmong and Red Zao wearing their traditional colorful dresses selling their farming and gathering products and handicrafts for souvenir. Back to our Sapa office at about 10.30 and begin your exploration trip to Muong Hoa valley. You will follow the main road heading south for about an hour before turning right to a footpath downhill to Muong Hoa Valley. This part offers spectacular scenery of the highest part of Hoang Lien Son mountain range and on a nice day, Fansipan Peak can be seen. Crossing the river by a suspension bridge you will challenge your feet uphill to Y Linh Ho village. Here you will pay visiting to some Hmong families, watching them doing their daily work. After picnic Lunch, the trail continues up and downhill for about 2 hours as you reach Lao Chai, a large village of the Hmong, and then following the river bank to Ta Van of the Zay people. Paying to visit local homes, and village schools… you will enjoy your cultural discovery of local ethnic peoples as well as the breathtaking scenery of the Muong Hoa Valley. Settle down in Ta Van village for an overnight homestay.

• Breakfast Lunch and Dinner included

• Accommodation: Homestay in Ta Van Village  

Day 2: Ta Van – Giang Ta Chai – Sapa  (B, L, D)

Leaving Ta van village after breakfast, you will take the trail uphill, passing the fascinating terraced rice fields and some small hamlets of the Hmong before getting through a bamboo forest to a waterfall, enjoy a break for magnificent scenery and then continue walking for half an hour to Giang Ta Chai village of the Red Zao peoples which sits on the top of a hill and looks down Muong Hoa river. After spending time visiting the village, making friends with the Zao, and experiencing the hospitality you will cross the river by another suspension bridge and then uphill again to Hau Thao village where you will pay to visit a local handicraft center where Hmong and Zao women gather for exchanging experience and skill of making handicrafts. A late Lunch will be prepared here nearby this center and then you have time to relax as well as get acquainted with local schoolboys, girls, and their teachers as well.
Later a short drive will take you back to Sapa. Enjoy about two hours of free time in Sapa before transferring downhill to Lao Cai station to take the overnight train back to Hanoi, Have dinner before getting the train at 19h35

• Overnight on the train. Arrive in Hanoi early in the morning the next day. Back to your hotel on your own. (A morning taxi to the old quarter from the station usually costs 50,000VND).