Sapa & Mu Cang Chai Rice Fields - 4 Days

Your journey begins in Hanoi, where a private car and driver collect you and set out on the Noi Bai to Lao Cai expressway. This modern highway covers most of the roughly 320km to Sapa, sparing you the slow, winding roads that once made this trip an ordeal. The expressway ends at Lao Cai city in the valley, and from there the road climbs the final stretch up into the Hoang Lien Son mountains to Sapa, which sits at around 1,500m above sea level.

The early part of the drive crosses the lowlands and midland hills northwest of Hanoi. As you near Lao Cai the terrain changes: the road begins to climb, tea and forest replace paddy, and the first terraced slopes appear. The full journey takes roughly five and a half hours.

We use a private car rather than the overnight train for a reason. The train saves a night but arrives at Lao Cai in the dark, with nothing to see. By day you watch the country change from lowland to high mountain, and your driver can stop for photographs wherever the view deserves it. You reach Sapa rested, not stiff from a sleeper berth.