Muong Hoa Valley is the view most people picture when they think of Sapa: layer after layer of rice terraces stepping down to a rushing stream, with wooden villages on the slopes and the Hoang Lien Son range, crowned by Fansipan, rising behind. The valley runs south-east from Sapa town for more than 15 km along the Muong Hoa stream, and the road down into it is one of the most beautiful drives in northern Vietnam.<\/p>\n
The terraces have been carved by hand over generations by Black Hmong, Giay and Red Dao communities. They are still farmed every year, so the valley changes colour with the rice season. Lao Chai, a Black Hmong village, and Ta Van, home of the Giay people, are the best-known villages on the valley floor, linked by an easy path along the fields.<\/p>\n
From about late April to early June the terraces are flooded for planting and reflect the sky like mirrors. In summer they turn a deep, bright green. By late August and September the rice ripens to gold, and the harvest is usually finished by early October. In winter the fields rest under mist, quiet and brown, with clearer air on cold sunny days.<\/p>\n
Scattered across the valley near Lao Chai and Hau Thao are around 200 large boulders carved with mysterious lines, circles, figures and what look like maps of terraces. Researchers have studied them since the early 20th century and still debate their age and meaning; the site is protected as a national historical relic.<\/p>\n
Our Muong Hoa Valley Jeep tour, the full-day jeep and motorbike tours and our Instagram tour with female riders all stop at a valley viewpoint, walk the easy path from Lao Chai to Ta Van and take a coffee by the stream before heading back up to town.<\/p>\n
Yes \u2013 it is the classic Sapa landscape, layer on layer of rice terraces stepping down to a stream with Fansipan behind. You do not have to trek: the road down the valley gives wonderful views from a jeep, and the easy Lao Chai\u2013Ta Van path along the fields is gentle. The valley changes colour with the season \u2013 mirror-like flooded terraces in late April to early June, deep green in summer, gold in September \u2013 and near Lao Chai you can see around 200 mysterious ancient carved stones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sapas ber\u00fchmtestes Bergtal: Endlose Reisterrassen, die sich stufenf\u00f6rmig zum M\u01b0\u1eddng-Hoa-Fluss hinabsenken, traditionelle D\u00f6rfer der Hmong und Giay und die m\u00e4chtige Kulisse des Fansipan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":101,"menu_order":1,"template":"","eta_destination":[10],"class_list":["post-161","eta_place","type-eta_place","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eta_place\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eta_place"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/eta_place"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eta_place\/161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eta_place\/161\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"eta_destination","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecotripasia.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/eta_destination?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}