We took a brief detour from Hanoi to check out some of Vietnam’s highland minority villages. Most of these villages are outside of Sapa: a small town that sits high in the mountains overlooking the more fertile valleys below. The views from Sapa would be pretty spectacular… that is if the thick pea-soup-like fog ever lifted. I suppose that’s just the luck of the draw for showing up in northern Vietnam during the winter monsoon. Oh well.
Besides visiting minority villages, most people come to this area to see the spectacular rice terraces that are carved into the sides of the valley hills. These rice paddies are quite a thing to behold, as the sheer scale of the terraforming is incredible. There is not a square meter of arable land that is wasted, as the terraces climb hundreds of meters from the valley floor. What’s most impressive about this is that all of this work, the enormous engineering task, was performed without the aid of bulldozers or machinery: all of the digging and earth moving was done by hand: the product of hard working and ingenuity by the local farmers. Serious “wow-factor” around every turn.
Check out the photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Sapa
And here is where Sapa is in Vietnam (Click Here)
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