Sapa, tribe villages in the mountains

Hanoi might be a good example of how people live in Vietnam, but there are still tribes living in the highlands who are not checking their email every 5 minutes and doing hard labor by hand. To get to Sapa we had to use a night train, traveling up the mountains during night without any possibility of seeing anything. We might be saving a night at the hotel, but it would have been nice to see the passing nature outside the window.
Getting to the bus station was easy and people are super helpful - of course they return to be paid afterwards, which I would not mind if they had actually helped at all. We had a guy who took our tickets and walked up and showed us our cabin, then he asked for a few dollars because he had helped us carry the luggage. The problem was just that he had not, and after arguing a little, he left, cursing something if that is even possible in Vietnamese. Having recent train memories in the short term memory bank, I was expecting something like they had in China. Got a little disappointed, but actually it was quite ok. We got to share a 4 bed cabin the 3 of us, but since we had not given the porter any tips, the girls were afraid that the guy had told the conductors to give us special "treatment"
Woke up by knocking on the door, looked out and asked if this was our station. The conductor said 7 o'clock, it was now just 6. Ok, another hour, enough time to wake up properly. 10 minutes later the train stopped and everyone got out, turned out that this was Loc Cai and this was where we were getting off. Thanks conductor!
We stumbled out, almost awake and was waiting with another big group of tourists, who were going up to the Sapa village as well. They tried to squeeze 24 of us into a 15 seat bus. The ride up there was an hour in a small bus but with some really nice and curly hairpins and the driver drove as if he was a regular Top Gear viewer.
We checked into the hotel, which was kind of more like the expected standard, not too great. The package had 3 meals included a day, so we didn't have to worry about walking to the center part of the city which was about 15min away. After shower and breakfast, we went on a small hike which took us down the hillside to a small village with nice waterfall. Along the way there were countless booths selling all sorts of souvenirs which gets little tiring after a while. A lot of the things in the more advanced handcrafts stores, was definitely not homemade. Most of the things were either in sealed bags from a factory probably made the same place as those things that still had the "Made in China" sticker on the bottom. Come on, seriously?
The walk back up was definitely harder, but actually very nice to finally get some exercise again. But I think that it will take a lof of walks to get rid of the beer weight accumulated over the last few weeks.
The afternoon was spent exploring the city of Sapa, which is a sad example of a tourist trap. Souvenir shops, restaurants and hotels, that's it, it just serves as a base for tourists to come and check out the local tribes living in the mountains. Then they have tried to come up with some "famous" stuff that tourists can go and check out when they have some time off. Lots of markets selling things and hundreds of guys sitting on their mopeds offering rides to anywhere. In the evening we tried to find a bar to have a few beers, but all we found were empty restaurants... All in all not very appealing
We had to get up early the next morning to go on the hike that would take us through three different tribe villages. These guys really do live in the middle of nowhere and work hard. There were rice fields all over the valley with people harvesting the rice old fashioned way. Turned out it is not just show for the tourists. They cut the plants so that they are approximately 40cm, they then hit them hard against the sides of a big box so that the rice will fall off the plan. Looks like pretty hard work, especially when the view of rice fields is never ending.
We got to see how they run the schools in the small tribe villages, don't know how much of it was show and how much was real.
The trip was around 7 hours and downhill most of the way. The soil there contains a lot of clay, which I guess is good if growing rice. But clay gets really slippery when wet and if it had been raining, we were told to wear rubber boots - for 7 hours! There was no rain, the weather was really good, super hot though. The small 3-4 minutes climbs we had here and there really did take some effort due to the heat.
Back at the hotel after a shower and with a cold beer, I was looking at pictures from the 2 days in Sapa. I did not really regret going to Sapa, however there are 3-4 days hiking tours around the area as well, I am glad I did not book one of those. It was a little too artificial in a way, too much show and trying to sell stuff, in a begging way. Whenever someone pulled out some money to buy from a little cute girl, immediately the rumor spread and 20 seconds later there were 10 small girls even cuter, "buy from me too".
There is nothing interesting in Sapa itself, apart from the hiking/trekking in the area. The place could be useful in terms of crossing into Laos or China though, the Chinese border is only 35km away. Crossing into Laos would probably have been a good idea to do, as the Vietnamese visa only lasts 15 days for free, coming back in would give another 15 days. Next time...