A holiday in Sa Pa on a cool day of late autumn is always a good suggestion for visitors who love the exotic natural landscape of beautiful highland.
The wintry weather in Hanoi in late autumn seems to be not favourable but it is very ideal to travel to Sapa.
Sa Pa is a popular tourist attraction in Northern region with stunning natural scenery and unique cultural identity of ethnic minority groups, offering tourists wonderful experience and delightful exploration about the life of habitants on mountainous areas of Vietnam. For this reason, Sa Pa is always attractive to both domestic and international tourists.
Because of high terrain, the temperature in Sapa tends to be lower than in the plain that makes you feel like winter is coming to this land. However, this weather is the ideal time for tourists to enjoy fascinating natural scenery that the creator bestowed upon Northwest.
Stone Cathedral
O Quy Ho Pass
The famous attractions in Sa Pa such as Stone Cathedral, Silver Waterfall, Heaven Gate, O Quy Ho Pass…will definitely amaze tourists the first time traveling to Sa Pa.
For those who love to discover cultural values, Sa Pa is really a house abundant in strange things and unique features. Sa Pa is well-known not only for remarkable landscape but also for the diversity of various ethnic minority groups. Visiting a fair in Sa Pa, tourists will enjoy colourful traditional dress of ethnic girls from Black H’Mong, Red Dao, Tay, Giay, Xa Pho. Each ethnic group features a distinct characteristic of attire, lifestyle, custom, cultivation methods…, and specific cultural identities.
The most remarkable cultural feature in Sa Pa is the love market. Sa Pa’s love market is a traditional cultural identity of Mong and Dao ethnic people in Lao Cai in particular and Vietnam’s Northwest in general for a very long time.
The love market often opens every Sunday’s morning. Participating in the activity are different ethnic groups including Mong, Dao, Tay, Giay… who have to walk about 12 hours from their villages in Muong Hoa Valley downtown to be part of the biggest trade fair, and also to find their soul-mates. Because of the long and quite tiring journey, these ethnic people often travel from the previous day – Saturday, and spend the night in the town to wait for the busy Sunday.
Even though all the actual selling and purchasing activities only take place on Sunday, Saturday night is the most animating. The old enjoy happy moments with their friends, whereas the young take the chance to get acquainted with the opposite sex. They, male and female, are eager to participate in a number of traditional activities, i.e. singing, dancing, playing tug, pan-pipes, etc. After the night, many couples become closer, and both look forward to the next fair to meet each other again. Many of the couples can end up in happy weddings in the spring that comes next.
Especially, coming to Sa Pa this year, tourists will attend Sa Pa Street Festival entitled “Colorful Sa Pa” in November, Sa Pa’s town. The festival is one of the activities to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the Sa Pa tourism. This will be the first large-scale street festival in the resort town with many special activities.