Sapa 3 Days Trekking Tour By Bus from Hanoi (2 Nights in Hotel)

If I could give this zero stars I would. I booked this tour last minute the night before and they contacted me letting me know the day of that even though I booked it , we might not be able to go due to room and car So we upgraded our room and the ride to a “limousine” and a higher star hotel. 7 am they pick us up and the “limousine” is TINY and cramped. Me and my boyfriend sit in the front cramped riding for 6 hours. With barley any space. When I say do NOT book this tour I mean it. They stuff you in a tiny VAN with no leg room and up charge you for it. If the tour is full do not give people the option to book just so you guys can upcharge them and have them ride UNCOMFORTABLY for 6 hours. Next we get to the hotel and we’re informed that the 3 of us will be staying in the same room.. with one bed and there’s an up charge if we want 2 rooms. So we pay the upcharge when we already paid for a upcharge to a “nicer” hotel. The hotel is nice but the food is bland. The first tour was okay.. it was cold and foggy so we could barley see anything. We get back to the hotel and the people we booked through inform us that there’s not a room at the hotel we’re staying at for tomorrow night and DOWNGRADE us to a tiny hotel room and ask us to pay again for an extra room when we PAID the upgrade price already for the hotel and limousine upgrade just so they can stick us in a tiny hotel and inform us that if we want to continue to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner that came with our package we booked we would have to walk to the old hotel we were staying at prior. The tours.. just so you know cat cat village is a place locals go to sell stuff and they are aggressive. It was so crowded and we were rushed from place To place. The next day we hiked the rice hills.. our tour guide ran into her village elders and asked them to come along to help us through the rice Fields just for them to ask us to buy things at the end of the tour. We felt like they had shaked us down and force us to buy stuff from them. They all work together to scam foreigners and make us feel bad. The rice field was a WASTE of time and money due to the weather we couldn’t see anything because of the fog and ruined our shoes .. at the end of the tour we discovered there was a route that we could of taken that wouldn’t have ruined our shoes and was safe but our tour guide mai took us the more dangerous and dirty way so that she and her elders could shake us down for over priced souvenirs . We decided not to even go on a hike the last day because we felt like we were scammed by our tour guide and didn’t feel comfortable. Long story short: this tour is a scam for more money and not worth even half what we paid. I wouldn’t let my worst enemy go through the head ache I’ve been through these three days. Book at your own risk but I would NEVER RECOMMEND TO ANYONE. The people of Sapa are not friendly and you are only a buck to them. The entire time I’ve been here I’ve felt uneasy and haven’t met one decent person. It’s a money grab scam and the people running this TripAdvisor is super unprofessional for allowing me to purchase just to force me to be up charged to a “higher” star hotel and ride when the hotel and ride are TERRIBLE. Before you decide to go to Sapa READ AND RESEARCH CAREFULLY. I speak the language and continuously felt harassed and scammed for more money. Take my advice if you’re going to go and just book a car and a hotel and explore yourself. These “tour guides “ take you to their villages and make you feel bad and forced to buy things from their people and judge and are rude to you if you don’t. This tour was literally hell.

Our guide Lu was very helpful. Fast paced trek but managed to cover a lot of different villages and sights. Food was good. We stayed in Sapa Vista hotel, food good but windows are not soundproof so a bit noisy. Bus is a sleeper bus, convenient hotel pickup.