The most beautiful place in Vietnam? 🇻🇳 Hiking in the amazing Muong Hoa Valley (Sapa, near Hanoi)

Hi, we're Jordana and Grant from Shot in the Dark Travel. Come join us on our epic adventures around Southeast Asia. This time we're in Sapa in North Vietnam. We'll be exploring the Muong Hoa Valley, going on an incredible hike to Lao Chai village and we'll share our first impressions of Sapa. After a long and not particularly nice sleeper bus from Hanoi, we had a quick nap and then headed out to explore Sapa. So we have just had lunch. I wouldn't say it's anything remarkable, like it was all right but the view was good though. I wouldn't say like you must go to this place. It was like okay, I had the salmon and pak choy with like a mushroom sauce. Grant had like a club sandwich with chips but didn't eat any of his chips because we're trying to be healthy. Well apart from tea time so that's when we're gonna eat nice things but yeah we're gonna go for a late afternoon trek and hopefully it's not gonna rain because it's now starting to go cloudy even though it's glorious sunshine which is just our luck. We go for lunch when it's sunny and then we finish lunch and then it just starts raining so yeah it says it might rain for an hour. We're just testing out the drone because we had a little crash on Ha Long Bay and we really want to use it but obviously if it doesn't work then that's gonna be a bit of a an upsetting thing but yeah we're just gonna test the drone then we're gonna start our trek. I don't know if you can see it but it's working yeah hallelujah. So we're just on our trek now obviously we're falling over and obviously we're not on the very scenic route as of yet but Grant has just stood in concrete. There was a man filling a pothole in by just pouring wet concrete in and I was looking at the map to make sure we're going the right way and just stepped straight in the concrete. So yeah so that's how the trek's going so far. Hopefully it gets better from here. Are you still filming? Yeah. I don't want the concrete to dry on my trainers so I'm gonna try wipe it off. At a cliff edge that seems sensible. Bye husband everyone. Wiping concrete off his trainers with a leaf. Right come on. So we are walking from, we've walked maybe like an hour and a half from Sapphire. We kept getting distracted by things and we've not got as far as we thought. We're trying to head down to a couple of villages that are down this way and we just keep stopping to look at the views like how good are these views? They are just incredible aren't they? We've just passed some water buffalo as well. I've never been so close to water buffalo and they don't care about you all like they just walk past as if there's nothing. You're no one, you're nothing. It's just weird though because they're like it's quite a narrow path with like a cliff edge on one side and you're thinking if there's water buffalo goes a bit to the side like what do we do at this point? Do we jump out the way? Are we gonna fall down the cliff? But luckily they were just eating grass and they didn't care but yeah it's a bit weird. Yeah we're gonna try and finish this. We've not even got to the first village yet so I don't know if we're gonna make it to the second one but we'll see we'll see how we get on. Yeah there's a chance it might be dark by the time we get there so we might have to turn back but we'll see how it goes because the views just keep getting better and better so we just keep going. Although we're calling it a hike it's definitely for all abilities. The downhill walk was pretty relaxing and then we just taxied back up to Sapa at the end so don't let this put you off. There are lots of organized hikes around the valley with guides but we prefer to explore on our own. We just set off from Sapa town and headed for Lao Chai village using google maps. We've just got back from our walk and I think we maybe did too many like uh getting sidetracked. I was like oh let's go have a look at this and oh I'll get my drone out and oh let's go have a look in this cafe and then turned out we didn't get to the second village in time and we got to the first one and it was like pretty much dark already but it was still good. But the reason I'm now is we are going to Chicago pizza that is literally opposite because it's apparently the top rated restaurant in Sapa. Yeah oh number two yeah oh is it number two yeah which is really funny because it's just like pizza and pasta in like Vietnam and but yeah it's got it's got a bit chilly and Rhett's like laughing at me because I've put my coat on to go across the road. Like from the door exit in our hotel to getting inside Chicago town pizza I think it's about 12 steps and she's put a coat on to do those 12 steps. Although to be fair to Jordana I am now regretting not bringing anything warmer than a t-shirt. So when we came to Vietnam we were planning it and we looked at all the temperatures of the places we were going and we did we'd not heard of Sapa at this point so we didn't know we're going anywhere cold in the mountains so all I've got is basically shorts and t-shirts so I'm just very cold. And no rain jacket. No raincoat either so I literally don't have a single jacket, hoodie, jumper, coat, anything so I'm gonna be cold. Hi. Second trek of the day done. How did you get on with that one? Thanks. I feel like we made light work of that didn't we? That expedition. Good job you've got your big thick coat on. Shut up. So we've both gone for the classic Chicago crust pizza pie. This one's cheesier. I like that. The absolute cheek of it. This one looks better. I'm having it. Even though it's in front of me. Well actually you moved that out of the way. Good? Extremely cheesy but really nice. Right I'm not filming anymore I need to eat it myself. So we just thought we'd pop on here to kind of give an overview of our first 24 hours in Sapa. It has been really like beautiful like I must say I'm not shocked that everybody comes here and treks because the scenery and the trek itself is just like so so good like it was absolutely beautiful. First impressions really really impressed with Sapa. I think the only thing I would mention and I wouldn't say it's a negative because when it is to be expected that this happens but a lot of like the tribal women and tribal children from the villages they are very pushy when they're trying to sell you things or try and walk you on a tour that you probably don't really need a tour guide with. So but as long as you're polite and you've said no they get it after you've said it a couple of times. I can see it getting like a bit frustrating if it's constant but luckily we didn't really meet that many on our walk. Other than that I think yeah it's absolutely beautiful place. Yeah I think I've been pleasantly surprised by Sapa. I think we watched a lot of videos before we came and it looked nice and I feel like the places we found on our walk today when we walked in the Muang Hoa Valley the entire walk was just absolutely incredible like the views were so good and it was just so much fun exploring and I would say that's that's got to be a must do when you're in Sapa. I thought we'd found the hidden gem and then it turned out it was the number one thing to do on TripAdvisor in Sapa so it wasn't quite the hidden gem we thought we'd found but it was absolutely amazing and I think Sapa village, the town itself is like nice but it's just all the scenery and the surrounding hills and villages and the valley are so incredible that I can't wait to explore it more because there's so much I want to see while we're here. I'd say even though it was number one TripAdvisor we like maybe stumbled into two other groups of people doing the walk. The first 24 hours couldn't have gone better I'm so happy with Sapa so far and I'm glad we've got another three days here so I can't wait to see what we can get up to in the next three days. Definitely. So I hope you've liked this video remember to like and subscribe so you can see more content like this and you can see what we get up to in the rest of our time in Sapa.