Sapa, Vietnam June 2004

Even though I was born and raised in Vietnam, but I've never been to Sapa until our visit to Vietnam in 2004. Sapa is a mountain township in northwest Vietnam near the Chinese border. Fansipan mountain is located in this area, dubbed "the roof of Indochina", (3143m or ~10000ft). We took the overnight train from Hanoi departing at midnight and arriving in Lao Cai train station at aroun 6AM. After a short bus ride through the mountain pass, we arrived at our Hotel Victoria. The hotel is on the mountain side overlooking the valley. Sapa has gotten very popular with Western tourists, though the French came to this region during the colonial era as evidence by a roman catholic church in the middle of Sapa's main square. While dinning at the hotel we had conversations with tourists from New Zealand and Israel. The hotel was good standard for the this remote region. It included breakfast for less than $30/night. Though, it's probably much higher now.

The next morning we got up early for our guided trek through the valley. The trek was about 5 hours and our hired guide spoke English, he's a young man from the central province, which was a surprise for us because we expected someone indigenous to the area. However, he was a nice young man and knew enough about the area to keep us entertained.

The H'mong, Dao, Tay, Giay are 4 distinct minority groups in this area. They have their own colorful clothing. I remember seeing, black, hot pink and aqua green for each of the groups. They lived the same way for hundreds of years, other than tourism, their way of life remains the same today.

Sapa is one of those places that I would definitely return again. It's a place to get away from it all, though, I hope the influx of tourism hasn't ruined it.

United Award Travel Increase

United Airlines has recently announced the increase of miles required for award travel starting January 1, 2009. I have banked over 600,000 miles in my account, Anna has almost 400,000 miles and Alysia has over 200,000 miles. That's 1.2 Million miles, enough for 12 tickets in First Class on Star Alliance with the old plan. This new devaluation makes a big dent to our mileage accounts. We used to be able to redeem 60K miles for economy, 90K miles for Business and 120 miles for First class to Asia. Now, we'll have to shell out 65K, 125K and 145K respectively. Thumb down to United.

El Tamarindo, Mexico Oct. 2005

In October 2005, we went to Puerto Vallarta and drove for 3 hours down the Mexican Pacific coast to a jungle resort called El Tamarindo. It's nested inside 2,040 acre natural reserve. The property consists of 29 private villas, tennis courts and world class golf. We had a wonderful stay using Starwood points, the best use of our starpoints ever. Unfortunately, this property is no longer part of Starwood.