Best Things to do in Sapa Vietnam

Sapa sits at about 1,500 metres in the Hoang Lien Son mountains, 315 kilometres northwest of Hanoi, and it is the easiest place in Vietnam to walk into a landscape that looks nothing like the rest of the country. Terraced valleys, ethnic minority villages, and the highest mountain in Indochina, all within an hour of one small town.

If you only have two days, do three things: ride the cable car up Fansipan in the morning, walk a half day in Muong Hoa Valley with a local guide, and spend an evening in town. Everything else in this guide is worth adding if you have longer, and a few things are worth skipping even if you do.

Prices below are current for 2026 and quoted in Vietnamese dong first, because that is what you will pay at the gate. Dollar figures are converted at roughly 26,200 VND to the dollar and will drift.

Read also:

• Best Restaurants and Cafes in Sapa, Vietnam
• 11 Best Things to do in Ninh Binh, Vietnam
• 10 Must-Visit Museums in Hanoi, Vietnam
• 20 Best Things to do in Hoi An, Vietnam
• 7 Best Things to do in Dalat, Vietnam

What Sapa is, and what changed in 2025

Sapa is a highland market town in Lao Cai, close to the Chinese border, and ethnic minority communities make up most of the population of the surrounding valleys: Black H’mong, Red Dao, Tay, Giay and Xa Pho. It is cool year round, often fogged in, and the reason people come is what is outside the town rather than in it.

The French reached this valley in the early 1900s and developed it as a hill station in the 1920s, a cool-weather retreat for colonial administrators. What survives from that period is the stone church in the square, a ruined monastery out at Ta Phin, and a scattering of villa foundations. The old claim that hundreds of colonial villas still stand does not hold up; most were destroyed in the mid-century wars.

One practical change worth knowing about. On 1 July 2025 Vietnam abolished the district tier of local government nationwide and merged provinces from 63 down to 34. Sapa is no longer a district-level town (thi xa) and is now a ward, phuong Sa Pa, within Lao Cai province, which itself absorbed the former Yen Bai province. Sixteen local units around Sapa were consolidated into six.

For a traveller this matters in one narrow way: addresses. Older guides, hotel booking pages and some signage still use “Sapa district” and commune names that no longer exist officially, such as San Sa Ho or Hoang Lien. Nobody locally will be confused if you use the old names, but do not be surprised when a map app and a printed address disagree.

When to go

The terraces run on a farming calendar, not a tourist one, and the two windows people travel for are months apart.

• April to May, the watering season. The terraces are flooded before planting and turn into a staircase of mirrors reflecting sky and cloud. Quieter than autumn and the photographers’ second favourite window.
• Late August to mid October, the harvest. The fields go gold, with the peak usually in the first two weeks of September. This is the single most photographed fortnight of the Sapa year, and prices and crowds reflect that.
• September to November, the best trekking. Trails that were mud in summer have firmed up, skies are clearer and the air is cool enough for long days. October and November also give the best odds of a view from the Fansipan summit.
• June to August, the rainy season. Landslides and washed-out trails are common and this is the window to avoid if walking is the point of your trip.
• December to February, cold and quiet. Lows near 6 degrees, heavy morning fog, and on rare days a dusting of snow at altitude. Views are a lottery, but the town is at its most peaceful outside Christmas, New Year and Tet. Peach and plum blossom starts appearing from late January.

Worth knowing: if you have read about pink buckwheat fields and a Buckwheat Flower Festival in northwest Vietnam, that is Ha Giang, on the Dong Van limestone plateau, roughly a day’s travel east of here. It is not a Sapa season, and several older Sapa guides have quietly copied it across.

1. Trek the terraced valleys

This is the thing Sapa is actually for. Everything else here is a good day out; walking the valleys is the reason to make the trip at all.

You do not need to be a hiker. The classic routes drop from the ridge down to the valley floor on stone paths and farm tracks, through villages where the terraces are still worked by hand, and a half day is enough to understand the landscape in a way no viewpoint will give you.

Muong Hoa Valley, and the rock carvings most groups walk past

Muong Hoa is the main valley southeast of town, roughly 17 kilometres of terraces strung along the Muong Hoa river with eight villages on it. The standard walking line is Y Linh Ho, then Lao Chai, then Ta Van, with Giang Ta Chai further down. Half a day covers the first two; a full day gets you to Ta Van with time to stop.

About six kilometres from town, near where the trail meets the river, there is a scatter of large boulders that most groups pass without stopping. They are the Sa Pa ancient rock art site: more than a thousand carvings across upwards of two hundred stones, dated to the Bronze Age and so somewhere between two and three thousand years old. Terraced fields, stilt houses, human figures and symbols nobody has convincingly read. Ask your guide to point them out, because they are easy to mistake for ordinary rock.

Older guides describe this site as roughly a century old. That is the date a French researcher documented it in the 1920s, not the age of the carvings.

Which trek to book

• Half or full day in Muong Hoa. The default, and the right choice for most people. Compare options on the Muong Hoa Valley trek page.
• A general day trek. If you would rather let the operator pick the route to the conditions, look at Sapa day trek options.
• Two days with a village homestay. The version people remember, because you are in a village in the evening after the day groups have gone. See trekking and homestay trips.
• Into the national park. Higher, wilder forest rather than farmland. Compare Hoang Lien National Park treks.

Worth knowing: hire a guide from the villages rather than a driver from town. It is safer in fog, the money stays in the valley you are walking through, and the difference between a walk past someone’s house and a walk explained by someone who grew up in it is the whole experience. Expect to be joined by H’mong or Dao women selling textiles on the trail; buying is optional and a polite no is fine, but a firm one may be needed more than once.

2. Get to the top of Fansipan

Fansipan is 3,143 metres, the highest point in Vietnam and in mainland Southeast Asia, which is where the “Roof of Indochina” nickname comes from. It sits in the Hoang Lien Son range, the far southeastern end of the same collision that raised the Himalayas.

There are two ways up, and they are almost entirely different trips. See the Mt Fansipan page for everything bookable on the mountain in one place.

The cable car, and what a ticket actually costs

The Sun World Fansipan Legend cable car opened in 2016, covers about 6.3 kilometres and takes 15 to 20 minutes, with a vertical rise of 1,410 metres that held two Guinness records at the time. It is how the large majority of visitors now reach the top, and on a clear morning it is genuinely spectacular.

The pricing is where people get caught out, because the ride to the summit is sold in three separate legs.

• Cable car, return: 850,000 VND (about $32) per adult on weekdays and Sunday, 900,000 VND on Saturdays and public holidays. Some sellers instead charge the base fare plus a surcharge of 46,000 to 50,000 VND at the counter. Children 1.0 to 1.4 metres pay 550,000 VND; under 1 metre is free.
• Muong Hoa funicular, town to cable car station, return: about 200,000 VND. Four minutes instead of a 10 to 15 minute road transfer, with a valley view.
• Summit funicular: roughly 170,000 VND up and 150,000 VND down. Or climb the last 600 steps for nothing.
• A small local visitor fee: 10,000 VND for adults, 5,000 VND for children over 6.

Combination tickets bundling the cable car with the funiculars, and sometimes a buffet, run from roughly 1,320,000 VND. Whether a combo is worth it depends entirely on whether you intend to walk those 600 steps, so decide that before you buy.

Worth knowing: this is a morning trip, not an afternoon one. The complex runs roughly 7:30 to 17:30, but ticket counters typically close in the early to mid afternoon, and the cloud that gives you the famous sea-of-clouds view before 9am usually turns into a flat grey wall by lunchtime. Tickets are day-valid only, so do not buy in advance for a different date.

Compare cable car tickets and tours, or the full Sun World Fansipan Legend packages, before buying at the counter. Prices vary by seller more than you would expect.

Trekking to the summit, and the rule that changed

You can no longer trek Fansipan alone. A licensed guide and a permit are both required under Hoang Lien National Park rules, and rangers check at the Tram Ton and Sin Chai trailhead checkpoints. This is enforcement, not advice: the mountain has a real rescue and fatality history, and there is nowhere to go if you turn up without paperwork. The park entry fee is 150,000 VND per person, paid at the trailhead.

Any Sapa guide published before about 2024 that tells you to head off and find your own line up the mountain is out of date. Do not plan around it.

• Tram Ton route. The usual choice, starting near the top of O Quy Ho pass at around 1,850 to 1,900 metres, roughly 11 kilometres to the summit. Mixed forest path, steel ladders on the steep sections and rocky steps near the top.
• Sin Chai route. Shorter and more technical. For people who have done this kind of thing before.
• Cat Cat route. The steepest, with the main camp in Qua Thao forest at about 2,150 metres.

Most guided groups run it as two days with a night camped around 2,800 metres and a pre-dawn push for sunrise. Strong hikers do it in a single long day of eight to ten hours, and plenty of them walk up and ride the cable car down, which is a sensible way to save your knees. October to March gives the clearest skies.

Bring more layers than the forecast in town suggests. Wind chill at 3,143 metres catches out a lot of people who arrive in a thin jacket, and the guides all have the same story about it. Compare Fansipan summit treks, which normally include the guide, permit, camping gear and meals.

3. Drive the O Quy Ho pass

One road northwest out of town, Highway 4D, climbs to the highest mountain pass in Vietnam and collects most of Sapa’s roadside sights on the way. It is a half day, and it works by car, jeep or motorbike.

Silver Waterfall and Love Waterfall

Silver Waterfall (Thac Bac) is 12 to 13 kilometres out, drops more than 200 metres directly beside the road, and costs 20,000 VND for adults and 10,000 VND for children. Open roughly 8:30 to 17:00. There is a staircase alongside it. You will be damp before you leave the car park and finished in twenty minutes, which is exactly the right expectation to have. Fullest in the rainy months.

Love Waterfall (Thac Tinh Yeu) is about 14 kilometres out, inside Hoang Lien National Park, and costs roughly 70,000 to 75,000 VND for adults with a reduced child rate. From the gate a stone path follows the Golden Stream uphill through bamboo for 1.5 to 2 kilometres, around 25 to 30 minutes each way, before the valley narrows and a hundred-metre cascade comes down into a pool you can stand in. The traffic noise is gone within a minute of the gate.

Worth knowing: Love Waterfall costs three to four times what Silver does and is worth every dong of the difference. If you only stop at one, stop at this one. It is also the traditional trailhead for the Tram Ton route up Fansipan, so expect to share the car park with trekking groups early in the morning. For a wetter version, there are canyoning trips at Love Waterfall.

Heaven’s Gate and the glass bridge

The top of the pass, at around 2,000 metres, is called O Quy Ho or Tram Ton, and locally the King of the Passes. It marks the provincial boundary. On a clear day you look down the far side into Lai Chau; in bad weather you look at cloud, which has its own appeal. The single most reliable stretch for sunset light is late afternoon, roughly the half hour before the sun drops behind the ridge.

Just over the summit is the Rong May glass bridge, also sold as the Cloud Dragon Skywalk. A tunnel cut into the cliff leads to a glass elevator that climbs the open rock face, and the bridge itself is a glass-floored deck at roughly 2,200 metres. Tickets are 500,000 VND (about $19) for adults and 300,000 VND for children, including the lift both ways, and it runs from about 7:30 to 17:00.

Two things nobody mentions until you are standing at the gate. First, it is a thrill stop rather than a walk; you go up, you stand on air, and you come down. Second, it is not in Sapa or even in Lao Cai. The complex sits in Lai Chau province on the other side of the pass, which is why so many “Sapa tour” packages exclude the ticket and ask you to pay separately on arrival. Check what your booking actually covers before you go.

Most people run the waterfalls, the pass and the bridge as one half-day loop rather than separate trips. Compare glass bridge and Silver Waterfall tours, or hire a private car with a driver and set your own stops.

4. Visit the villages: Cat Cat and Ta Phin

Cat Cat, the easy one

Cat Cat is a Black H’mong village about 2 to 2.5 kilometres downhill from the stone church, which makes it the most accessible village in the region and by a wide margin the busiest. Entry is 150,000 VND for adults and 70,000 VND for children up to 1.3 metres, cash only at the gate, and it is open through the day from early morning.

Inside the ticket you get a stone-path loop down through the village, a 30-metre waterfall on the Muong Hoa stream about 800 metres in, the remains of a French colonial hydroelectric station, and weaving and silverwork you can watch and buy. There are usually traditional music performances too.

Worth knowing: Cat Cat is heavily developed for visitors and some of the “old” buildings are recent. That is a fair criticism and worth knowing in advance rather than discovering at the gate. Two fixes: arrive at 7 or 8am, before the tour groups at around 9:30, and treat it as a photogenic hour rather than a cultural deep dive. If you want the quieter version, walk in Muong Hoa to Lao Chai or Ta Van instead.

The walk down is pleasant and the walk back up is not. Most people arrange a motorbike back to town at the bottom, around 100,000 VND by taxi or a fraction of that by xe om.

Ta Phin, and the Red Dao herbal bath

Ta Phin sits in a wide valley 10 to 13 kilometres northeast of town, 20 to 45 minutes by road depending on where you start, on a completely different road from Muong Hoa. It is the stronghold of the Red Dao, recognisable by scarlet headdresses and dense indigo-and-red embroidery, alongside some Black H’mong households. There is no gate fee for the village itself.

Most people come for one thing. The Red Dao herbal bath is a genuine medicinal tradition, not a spa invention: dozens of forest plants, around ten of them considered essential, boiled down and poured dark and fragrant into a wooden tub. It is the single best thing to do after a long day of walking, and Ta Phin is where the practice comes from rather than a copy of it.

Two other stops are worth your time while you are out there.

• The ruined monastery. Built in 1942 and used by a community of nuns for only a few years before they left for Hanoi in 1945. It has been roofless and abandoned ever since, and the mossed stone walls have become one of the most photographed spots in the valley.
• Ta Phin cave. A limestone cave near the village with stalactites in shapes the local guides will name for you. It is unlit and the floor is uneven, so go with a local guide carrying a torch rather than on your phone light.

You can reach Ta Phin on a three to four hour trek from town, which is the better way to arrive, or ride out in half an hour. Both work as a half day. Look at day treks if you want to walk it.

5. Ride the passes by motorbike or jeep

The roads out of Sapa are some of the best riding in Vietnam, and on two wheels you get the terraces from above with nothing between you and them. This is also the section where the rules changed and most guides have not caught up.

Before you ride: the licence rules

Decree 168/2024 took effect on 1 January 2025 and raised traffic penalties sharply. Fines for riding without a valid licence went up by roughly a factor of ten, checkpoints verify foreigners far more often than they used to, and a bike can be impounded for a week or more. On a rental that is worse than it sounds, because you keep paying the shop’s daily rate while it sits in the compound.

Vietnam recognises International Driving Permits issued under the 1968 Vienna Convention, carried with your original national licence. The older 1949-format permit is not accepted. Several countries do not issue the 1968 format at all, so check with your own national motoring authority before you assume yours will work, and get the permit at home, because you cannot obtain one after you arrive. Riding without a valid licence can also void your travel insurance entirely.

Worth knowing: if you do not have the right permit, or you have never ridden in mountain fog, take a jeep or a car with a driver instead. You see the same road. Compare Sapa jeep tours or a private car tour. A guided motorbike tour where you ride pillion is the other way to get the experience without the licence problem.

The routes

• O Quy Ho pass. The obvious one and the best value for a half day. About 50 kilometres of switchbacks between Lao Cai and Lai Chau, deep valley on one side and cliff on the other, with the waterfalls and the glass bridge along the way.
• Muong Hum. A long day north through the hills on a road that climbs and drops repeatedly, past terraces with very few other vehicles on them. Time it for a Sunday and you can add the Muong Hum market, which is a good deal quieter than Bac Ha.
• North toward Y Ty and the border. The most remote option, a full day each way through Bat Xat toward the Chinese border, with terraced fields on the hillsides and very little tourism. For confident riders with time, not a casual afternoon.

Whichever you ride, the mountain weather is the real variable. Fog can close visibility to a few metres in minutes on these passes, and the drop is right there beside you. Wear a proper full-face helmet rather than the plastic shell that comes with the rental, and pack a layer more than you think you need.

6. Time a highland market right

The markets around Sapa rotate by day of the week, and which one you can see is decided entirely by your dates. This is worth checking before you book, because it is the one thing here you cannot rearrange.

Bac Ha, Sunday only

Bac Ha is the biggest and most colourful highland market in the region, and it runs on Sunday mornings only, starting at dawn and winding down between about noon and 2pm. Flower H’mong, Dao, Tay, Nung and Giay traders come in from the surrounding valleys on foot, by motorbike and on horseback.

Be honest with yourself about the distance. Bac Ha is roughly 100 kilometres from Sapa and the drive takes two and a half to three hours each way, sometimes more. It is a full day with an early start, and it is not, despite what a lot of guides imply, a market in Sapa. Older articles quoting 76 kilometres are simply wrong.

Worth knowing: the brocade section near the entrance is where the tour groups stop, and it is the most tourist-facing part. Walk past it toward the noise and you reach the livestock yard, where buffalo change hands with a handshake and a long pause. That part has not changed for the cameras and it is the reason to make the drive.

The rest of the week, and the markets in town

If Sunday does not fall in your dates, or Bac Ha sounds too crowded, the smaller markets trade with almost no visitors at all. They run in the morning, busiest between about 7 and 9am.

• Can Cau, Saturday, north of Bac Ha near the border and one of the most photogenic
• Coc Ly, Tuesday
• Cao Son and Sin Cheng, Wednesday
• Lung Khau Nhin, Thursday
• Muong Hum, Sunday, a solid alternative to Bac Ha with smaller crowds and a shorter drive

In town, the Sapa market trades every day and the night market near the church runs every evening, with quilts, embroidery and silver alongside a food section of grilled skewers, sticky rice cakes and roasted corn. Prices are tourist-facing and bargaining is expected, so walk the full length before committing to anything.

The Love Market happens on Saturday evenings in the square in front of the stone church. It began as a courtship gathering where young Dao and H’mong people met through music, and it is honest to say that is largely no longer what it is. Today it is a public cultural evening of live traditional music, food stalls and performance, open to everyone and aimed partly at visitors. Enjoyable on its own terms; just do not go expecting the thing the legend describes.

7. Walk the town: church, Ham Rong, museum

The stone church

Officially the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, Nha Tho Man Coi, and universally called the stone church. It stands in the middle of the square with Ham Rong rising behind it, covers roughly 6,000 square metres of grounds, and has a bell tower about 20 metres high. Entry is free.

It was built from locally quarried stone by French missionaries during the colonial period, though published dates disagree considerably. Different sources put the start at 1895 or 1902 and completion at 1926 or 1935, and the church has been restored several times after war damage and long neglect, which muddies the record further. Treat any single confident date you read about it with suspicion.

It is still an active parish. Sunday mass is worth attending quietly if you are up early, partly because you will hear H’mong melodies threaded through the liturgy. The square in front is the town’s gathering point and where the Saturday evening performances happen.

Ham Rong

Ham Rong, “dragon’s jaw”, is the hill directly behind the church, rising to roughly 1,800 to 1,850 metres. Entry is 70,000 VND for adults and 30,000 VND for children between 1 and 1.3 metres. Allow about two hours for the full ascent on stone staircases.

What you get is a landscaped hillside park rather than a mountain: orchid and peach gardens, a zodiac statue garden, and a series of viewpoints ending at a rock cleft called Heaven Gate, with Muong Hoa Valley, Ta Van and Cat Cat laid out below. Setting expectations properly, it is the easiest big view in Sapa and it is manicured, not wild.

Worth knowing: the whole point is the view, so this is the one attraction in Sapa to skip entirely on a fogged-in day. Check whether you can see the ridge from the square before you buy a ticket.

Sapa Culture Museum

A small two-storey wooden building at 02 Fansipan Street, built to echo a Tay stilt house, a short walk from the church. It opened in 2007 as a joint project between Lao Cai province and the Aquitaine region of France, holds around 200 objects, documents and photographs, and entry is free. Open roughly 7:30 to 11:30 and 13:30 to 17:00.

The main exhibition on the upper floor covers the H’mong, Red Dao, Tay, Giay, Ha Nhi and Xa Pho, how to tell the groups apart by dress, and where their villages sit on a map of the valleys. It takes about an hour.

Worth knowing: go here first, on your arrival afternoon, before you trek. An hour spent understanding who lives in these valleys makes the walking days considerably better, and almost nobody does it in that order. It is also the obvious rainy-morning fallback.

8. Eat what the highlands eat

Sapa food is simple, built for cold weather, and better than it looks. Four things are worth going out of your way for.

• Thang co. The signature H’mong dish, a stew simmered in a wide shallow pan from horse meat, offal and bones, more than a century old and still served at markets and fairs. It is strongly flavoured and it is not for everyone; be straightforward with yourself about that before ordering a full pot. Versions made with beef or buffalo are common and much easier for most visitors.
• Honey-grilled black chicken. Small H’mong-farmed birds, tough skin and dense flavourful meat, served with salt, pepper, lime and mint. The local favourite and the safest thing to order if you want one memorable meal.
• Grilled stream fish. Small fish, firm and sweet, not muddy, grilled whole. Ordered by the plate with beer or rice wine.
• Tao meo liqueur. Made from tao meo, the small tart wild apple that grows in these mountains, picked and fermented then steeped in rice wine for months. Amber, mildly sweet, tasting of caramel and apple. Sold everywhere by the litre and the standard thing to take home.

For grilled skewers, sticky rice cooked in bamboo and roasted corn, the night market near the church is where to eat rather than a restaurant. For a sit-down version of the dishes above, the restaurants along Cau May and Fansipan streets are the concentration, and A Phu Sa Pa is the long-standing name for thang co specifically. Prices move enough that quoting figures here would mislead you; a plate of grilled chicken or fish is inexpensive by any Western standard and the pot dishes are meant to be shared.

Getting to Sapa from Hanoi

Sapa is about 315 kilometres from Hanoi and there is no airport. Everything arrives by road, or by rail as far as Lao Cai and then by road.

By road, the faster option

Expressway most of the way, then the climb. Door to door it is five and a half to six hours, which is genuinely quicker than the train once you count the transfer at the other end.

• Day departures run roughly every one to two hours between about 6am and 5pm, in seat buses and limousine vans.
• Overnight sleeper buses leave from around 9pm to 11:30pm, with flat berths rather than reclining seats.
• Cabin buses are the premium end, with an enclosed berth, and cost noticeably more.

Book through a platform rather than at a shopfront. Klook and 12Go both list the operators on this route with reviews, show the seat map in English and take foreign cards, which matters because the good overnight services sell out on weekends and in harvest season.

By night train to Lao Cai

Sapa has no railway station. This is the single most common planning mistake on this route, and a surprising number of guides still imply a direct train exists. Trains run from Hanoi Railway Station to Lao Cai and terminate there. Sapa is about another hour up the mountain by road.

• The overnight services leave Hanoi between roughly 8:30pm and 10:40pm and reach Lao Cai between about 5:30am and 6:40am, so around eight hours on the rails. Trains SP1, SP3 and SP7 are the ones to look for.
• Cabin classes. A standard Vietnam Railways soft sleeper berth to Lao Cai runs around 515,000 VND (about $20). Private operators lease and refit carriages on the same trains, and those cost roughly 1,250,000 to 2,500,000 VND ($48 to $95). Names you will see include Chapa Express, Sapaly, Livitrans, King Express and Vic. Same tracks, same timetable, very different interiors.
• Lao Cai to Sapa. A shared shuttle is about 60,000 VND but waits to fill, which can cost you an hour. A private car is roughly 750,000 VND and leaves when you do.
• Coming back, there is a daytime departure around midday arriving Hanoi in the evening, and an overnight around 9:30pm arriving early morning. Leave Sapa at least two hours before your train to allow for fog on the pass.

Worth knowing: the train is the better night’s sleep and it saves you a hotel night, which is most of the argument for it. The bus is faster and cheaper. Book two to four weeks ahead for weekends and for the September harvest window. You can buy from Vietnam Railways directly or through 12Go, which is usually easier from abroad.

So which of these should you do?

Two days, first visit. Fansipan by cable car on the first clear morning, a half day in Muong Hoa with a village guide, the museum and the church in the gaps. That is the honest core of Sapa and everything else is an addition.

Three days or more, and you came to walk. A two-day trek with a homestay in Ta Van or Lao Chai, then the O Quy Ho pass on your last morning. Add the Red Dao herbal bath at Ta Phin on the evening you come off the trail; you will not regret it.

A Sunday in your dates. Bac Ha, with an early start and the whole day given to it. If three hours each way is too much, Muong Hum on the same day is the shorter version.

No motorbike licence, but you want the passes. A jeep or a private car with a driver. Same road, same views, none of the checkpoint risk.

Rain, or fog you cannot see through. The museum, the town market, the cable car if the summit forecast is better than the valley, and a herbal bath. Skip Ham Rong entirely; you are paying for a view that is not there.

Whatever you pick, book the long-distance leg from Hanoi before you arrive rather than on the day, and book the trek a day or two ahead rather than at a shopfront on arrival night. In September and on any weekend, the good guides and the good berths both go early.