Sapa Town

Sa Pa is a town in the Hoàng Liên Son Mountains of northwestern Vietnam. A popular trekking base, it overlooks the terraced rice fields of the Muong Hoa Valley and is near the 3,143m-tall Phang Xi Pang peak, which is climbable via a steep, multiday guided walk. Hill tribes, such as the Hmong, Tay, and Dao, make up much of the town’s local population.

Sa Pa was a frontier township and capital of the former Sa Pa District in Lào Cai Province in northwest Vietnam. It was first inhabited by people about whom nothing is known. They left in the entire valley hundreds of petroglyphs, mostly composed of lines, which experts think date from the 15th century and represent local cadastres. Then came the highland minorities of the Hmong and Yao. The township is one of the ones of main markets in the area, where several ethnic minority groups such as Hmong, Dao (Yao), Giáy, Pho Lu, and Tày live. These are the four main minority groups still present in the Sa Pa district today. The Kinh (lowland Vietnamese) never originally colonized this highest of Việt Nam’s valleys, which lies in the shadow of Phan-Xi-Pǎng (Fansipan, 3143 m), the highest peak in the country.[3] Sa Pa is also home to more than 200 pieces of boulders with ancient engravings. The “Area of Old Carved Stone in Sapa” has been on the UNESCO tentative list since 1997