Sa Pa is Vietnam's mountain town, about 1,600 metres up in the Hoang Lien range and built by the French to escape the delta heat. You come here to walk. Down the Muong Hoa valley through Hmong and Giay villages, up Fansipan by cable car or on foot, and out to the ethnic markets that run one day a week each. Give it three days.
The terraces are why people come and why the photographs never quite land: Muong Hoa is 15 kilometres of stepped hillside, and you have to walk into it. Sa Pa town itself is loud, half-built and useful. The valley starts 20 minutes below it.
Fansipan is 3,147 metres, the highest point in Indochina, and the Sun World cable car covers the last six kilometres of it in about 15 minutes. The summit is a spine of Buddhist statuary and, most days, cloud. Go on the first car: the mountain clears early and closes in by lunchtime.
The classic Sa Pa walk: roughly 12 kilometres down the valley through Y Linh Ho and Black Hmong Lao Chai to Giay Ta Van, with the terraces above you the whole way. It is a descent, not a climb. Hire a village guide in town rather than joining a coach group.
The largest ethnic-minority market in the northwest, 110 kilometres east of Sa Pa and worth the two-and-a-half-hour drive one morning a week. Flower Hmong dominate it, in the brightest dress in Vietnam. Trading opens around 7:30am and thins by early afternoon.
The nearest Hmong village to town, three kilometres down a stepped path, and now firmly a paid attraction: a ticket gate, staged dance, a waterfall and a great deal of rented costume. It works as a first walk and a way to read the valley's shape. For village life, go further out.
Dragon's Jaw rises straight out of the town centre, a laid-out path climbing through orchid beds and rock cuts to a viewpoint near 1,800 metres. It is the one place you see Sa Pa's own shape: town, valley and the Hoang Lien wall behind it.
The road west over Tram Ton tops out at 2,073 metres, the highest pass in Vietnam. The Sa Pa side is usually under cloud while the Lai Chau side is clear, which is the whole point of going. Heaven's Gate is the paid terrace at the summit.
Twelve kilometres northeast of town, Ta Phin is Red Dao country, and the bath is the reason to go: a wooden tub of forest herbs steeped hot, taken after a walk rather than instead of one. In the village it costs a fraction of the Sa Pa spa price.
A 200-metre fall straight off the road 12 kilometres west of town, with a staircase up one flank. It takes 20 minutes and costs almost nothing, which is the right expectation to arrive with. Flow is heaviest from May to August and thin by late winter.
Holy Rosary Church has stood on the square since 1895 and is the most intact thing the French left in these hills. On Saturday evenings the square fills with pipes, lip lutes and dancing, the old courtship market restaged for an audience but genuinely attended.
A funicular from the edge of town, through two tunnels to the Fansipan cable-car station, about four minutes with a window onto the valley. It is the better approach and it saves a taxi. Not compulsory: the cable-car base is a short drive from the square.
The classic descent through Hmong and Giay villages, and mostly downhill.
Two days up from Tram Ton with a night around 2,800 m. Go with a licensed guide.
Through the ticketed village, then on to a Black Hmong one nobody charges for.
Low, warm and far less walked, with a river to swim in at the end of it.
The top of Vietnam's highest road pass, at 2,073 m, and the cloud sea below it.
Two hundred metres of fall right beside the Lai Chau road. Twenty minutes, no more.
Cheese, cold cuts and wine on Muong Hoa. The best sandwich in the valley.
The railhead and the crossing to Hekou, an hour down the mountain from town.
The far side of O Quy Ho, where the cloud stops and Lai Chau opens out green.
The Hmong new-year rite, danced around a bamboo pole in the first lunar month.
Sun World's Tet programme on Fansipan, over days three to five of the lunar year.
The Giay spring rite for a good harvest, on the first dragon day after the full moon.
The summit gardens open their rose show from late April into the first days of May.
30 April and 1 May are the heaviest domestic weekend of the year. Book weeks ahead.
The terraces are flooded for planting from late May, and the whole valley turns to mirrors.
The terraces run gold from mid-September, which is the fortnight everyone comes for.
The town's winter programme runs from late autumn through to the lunar new year.
Hanoi's airport is where Sa Pa trips start, about 320 km southeast. There is no flight into the mountains, so every arrival is by road or by rail from Hanoi.
The default since the Noi Bai to Lao Cai expressway opened in 2014: five and a half to six hours from Hanoi, straight into Sa Pa town. Nine-seat vans cost more and stop less.
Sleepers leave Hanoi around 22:00 and reach Lao Cai near 06:00, then it is 35 km and about an hour up the mountain by bus or taxi. You sleep through it and arrive at dawn.
The centre is walkable and steep. For the valley, the villages and the passes it is a motorbike taxi, a rented bike or a car with a driver. Taxis wait around the church square.
Hmong hotpot of horse meat and offal, simmered with cardamom and star anise.
Hill pigs small enough to carry under one arm. Lean, and usually grilled.
Buffalo hung over the kitchen fire for a year, then torn into smoky strips.
Farmed in the cold streams below Tram Ton, served in a sour broth with greens.
Sticky rice packed into bamboo and roasted over coals until the tube chars.
The Hmong breed with black skin and bones, usually steamed with hill herbs.
Steamed maize meal, the Hmong staple, eaten in place of rice up the valley.
The night stalls by the church: pork, quail eggs, tofu and sweetcorn.
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