I slept soundly on the long road from Hanoi to Lao Cai, but I still felt the cold air of the coming New Year’s Day and the dark roads around 2-3 am. At 6 o’clock, I reached the centre of the town called Sa Pa, or Sapa Square. The place was busy early on with people trading or going to the fields. I arrived in Sapa on the 3rd day of the New Year, the weather was so cold that I had to wear many thick coats. We found a hotel near the town where there is a road leading to the Phien market of Sapa, the hotel where I stay has 6 floors and a terrace. From afar on the terrace, one can see the Hoang Lien Son mountain range, where Fansipan peak is known as the roof of Indochina including Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. At lunch, I had the opportunity to eat Con Sui, a dish similar to noodles, but not with broth but with a sweet, fragrant sauce. A bowl of effervescent cup will have noodles, crispy fries, pork belly and boiled egg. You just need to add more pepper and chili to make it more flavourful and then eat some fragrant mint, the very fragrant scent of mint with the salty taste of the broth, making you feel nostalgic when you come to Sapa. After a day of researching and exploring Sapa, I curled up on my bed with a light dinner with a unique dish, men mén, which is a traditional dish made from corn of the Mong people. From the ingredients to the processing of this delicious Sa Pa dish, everything is very feat. Plain corn grown on high hills, fragrant and flexible, after being harvested, it will be separated from seeds, ground into small pieces and then sieved finely. Early in the morning, I experienced sour pho, a different dish when there is no broth. Although it is a simple mixed noodle dish, it is a delicious dish in Sa Pa with typical mountain town flavor. The dish includes noodle soup, char siu, pickles, mango, roasted peanuts, herbs and a little fried onion. When I had enough energy, I started the journey to Fansipan. We were at Muong Hoa station to buy train tickets to take the cable car, only 30 dollars per person. After taking the train through each route, you will reach the cable car station, it only costs 5 dollars to buy a return ticket. After experiencing the three-wire cable car with the largest difference between the departure and arrival stations in the world: 1410m and the longest three-wire cable car in the world: 6292.5 meters, you will arrive at the destination station, where the cool climate is near. like the top of a mountain. Now there are only 600 steps left to reach the top, with the Ha Giang flagpole and the 3,147 meter landmark, a sacred and historical place because I experienced going in the spring, so there is absolutely no snow here.
