When it comes to traveling to Sapa, Cuong believes that many of you are familiar with some familiar villages of the ethnic people such as Cat Cat village, Ta Van village. However, Ta Phin village is less well known because it is one of the most remote tourist destinations in Sapa, at the foothills of the Hoang Lien Son range. Because of its remote location and less frequented by tourists than the above two villages, Ta Phin village still retains its wild landscape and indigenous peoples here still retain the most intense cultural identities. That’s why it motivates young people to travel and explore, right! Today, Cuong will review in detail the most interesting points in Ta Phin village for those who are preparing to travel to Sapa. I’m sure you won’t be able to find a more detailed and specific Ta Phin review of Cuong! Follow along with attention!
Where is Ta Phin village in Sapa?
Ta Phin village is about 12km from Sapa town, located to the northeast. This is the residence area of ​​the Dao and H’mong ethnic groups. Ta Phin village is near the limestone range, a branch of Hoang Lien Son, about 1km from the headquarters of the People’s Committee of Ta Phin commune.
Instructions on how to go to Ta Phin Sapa village
If you go to Ta Phin village from the center of Sapa town, you just need to follow the 4D highway for about 5km. Then, continue to turn left to the ticket gate of Ta Phin village. Here, you buy a ticket to visit the village. From here, you want to go to the top of the village, you have to go about 7km more.
Along the way to Ta Phin village, visitors will be captivated by the beautiful and peaceful natural scenery of the Northwest mountainous region with terraced fields spread across the hillsides and mountainsides. In the distance are pale green mountains, glimmering in the mist. Here and there are dotted with the stilt roofs of the ethnic people, the green corn fields.
Just to show you the poetic scenery, but actually, the road to Ta Phin village is also quite bumpy, you have to overcome the steep and winding roads, sometimes the road is so bumpy that your butt is always bouncing. there. There are roads that are steep and small enough for only one car to go, those traveling in the opposite direction have to lean close to the cliff to avoid each other. Therefore, Cuong recommends that if you want to visit Ta Phin village, ask the local motorbike taxi drivers to drive you from the center of Sapa town to your place. For those of you who want to rent a car to explore the village, following the Cuong road is quite difficult, it is easy to get lost because the road is very winding. But for you backpackers, every road is experienced, every road is completed, it’s okay! If you go by car, the car can now enter the center of Ta Phin commune.
Cost to visit Ta Phin Sapa village
As Cuong mentioned above, Ta Phin village has tickets to visit, but the price is very cheap, only 20k / person. Compared to the more touristy villages like Cat Cat village (50k/person) or Ta Van village (75k/person), this price is too soft.
For those who choose to take a motorbike taxi from the center of Sapa town to Ta Phin village, the price of a ride with Cuong to learn ranges from 120-150k. As for those who choose to take a taxi or rent a car to go to Ta Phin village, the price is about 500-700k/day.
Going to Ta Phin village, if you bring food and drink, it doesn’t cost you money to eat, but if you want to enjoy local cuisine, you can go to restaurants and roadside eateries. With only about 500k for a group of 4 friends, Cuong thinks it’s enough for us to have a hearty lunch with a plate of grilled pork belly, a plate of chicken and fried cabbage.
If you want to stay overnight in Ta Phin village to have a few days to visit, you can stay at homestays with a fairly cheap price of only 200k/night.
Totaling the above costs, Cuong thinks you will have a few days of fun and explore all places in Ta Phin village but only lose 1.2 million. In general, the cost of traveling to Sapa is quite cheap compared to other tourist destinations in the country.
What does Ta Phin Sapa village have that make visitors fall in love with it?
1. Terraced fields
Like many other villages of Sapa, the characteristic of field cultivation of the ethnic people in Ta Phin village is terraced fields. Curved terraced fields spread out in front of Cuong’s eyes like silk ribbons. The day Cuong visited Ta Phin village in Sapa was the right season when people poured water into the fields. Rows of terraced fields, layers and layers, are close together like silver streams, filled with water, reflecting the clouds in the sky and landscape. These are the farmers who are working hard.
Before Cuong’s eyes appeared a very different working and living scene that only the mountains and forests of the Northwest region had, an atmosphere of enthusiastic work mixed with peace and quiet in the landscape and the immense generosity of the mountains and forests. Standing on the hillside looking down at the terraced fields stretching down to the valley, Cuong seems to forget all the fatigue of daily life, forget all the worries and troubles, truly immerse in nature and find a new life. find peace of mind.
2. Ta Phin Cave
Those of you who like to explore caves like in Ha Long Bay or Trang An, Cuong believes that you will also enjoy exploring Ta Phin cave. Ta Phin cave is also known as Ti O Cam by locals, belongs to a mountain range in the same branch as Hoang Lien Son. The cave is about 5m high, about 3m wide.
From the entrance of the cave down to the depths of the earth, only one person can fit, you have to go about 30m more. The deeper you go, the more narrow the cave becomes. The feeling is a bit scary, but honestly, it is also full of excitement and adventure, you will not know what is waiting for you in the front until you encounter huge super-sized stalactites with enough different shapes. The cliffs on both sides have many gorges and mountains that go round and round but eventually return to the original cave entrance. Tourists walking along the path of the big cliff will feel the way up and down, where the cliff is wide, and the narrow place can only be passed by one person.
Following the path of the big wall, we feel like going up the cliff, the road is zigzag, when going up and down, there is a bulge, there is a rock like a young woman holding a child, another place is like a fairy. bathing naked, in some places like giant raspberries, in some places like smooth white columns falling from the roof, woven into a series of winding, undulating, jade-colored “lace”. That day, Cuong and his friends invited each other to explore this Ta Phin cave, walk together in the cave, look up at the rocks and imagine many different shapes. That experience made Cuong remember when he was a kid, he used to raise his head to watch the clouds fly in the sky and look out at clouds of all different shapes. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to return to my childhood like that.
Inside the cave, you can see stalactites hanging down in various shapes, bringing interesting associations. In a dim space, holding a lamp to find the mysteries in the cave is an unforgettable experience. Drops of water seep through the crevices of rocks and cliffs for thousands of years and then flow down, settling on the stalactites and then dripping. In the quiet space of the cave, the sound of small drops of water can be heard strangely.
Deep inside the cave, you will see a large rock lying slightly on the side, on the stone floor is imprinted with chicken feet, right at the top of the rock on the right there are also indentations like horseshoes. The opposite cliff has French inscriptions carved with hard objects, so far, even though covered by the dust of time, we can still read it. Cuong really thinks that Ta Phin cave has great historical, archaeological, research and tourism values, with great potential for exploitation in the future.
3. Ta Phin Monastery
Ta Phin Monastery was built in 1942. This was a place for Christian nuns to live for many years before leaving for Hanoi in 1945 due to the unstable security situation. Since then, the monastery has been abandoned as ruins, but because it was built with solid laterite, the walls and pillars still exist to this day and have become an extremely hot check-in point for young people.
The monastery consists of a west-facing horizontal house, a small staircase and an underground basement. In front of the building is a wide, long corridor that has been old over time. This horizontal house is the residence and living space of the nuns. In addition, to the right of the building is the storage of food, furniture, and the kitchen of the monastery. This monastery is now in serious disrepair. The entire roof has been lost, leaving only the ancient moss-covered walls.
The reason why this place attracts many young people flocking to take pictures is because Ta Phin Monastery evokes a feeling of nostalgia with its old mossy walls that go with the years. The feeling of taking photos at Ta Phin Monastery is like taking pictures in an old building in the West, because the monastery was built to serve nuns, so it has Western architecture. Come here to visit, Cuong guarantees that you will have so deep pictures in this ancient landscape tinged with sunshine. That day, while walking at Ta Phin Monastery, Cuong was indifferent to the verse he used to go to school on, “The old shelf of the castle of the shadow of the sun”, which is very suitable for that landscape.
4. Immerse yourself in the life imbued with ethnic identity
At the beginning of Ta Phin village, you will be greeted by gentle and friendly locals. They enthusiastically ask you, ask where you come from, ask where you want to go. Then they show you the way and also invite you to see what they sell, offer to buy this and that. Say this bracelet is beautiful to wear, this scarf suits you… Here and there, you see young Mong and Dao girls in colorful costumes smiling shyly at strangers.
There are saleswomen who are also quite old but also very funny, asking your age, asking where you are from, and then complimenting you on being beautiful, whatever on you is beautiful. If you go with your lover, you will be complimented on the two children who look alike, the two children are beautiful together… Simple sentences but not very fluent in Kinh language, their faces are so innocent and funny. I don’t know if they are telling the truth or complimenting me for fun so I can buy something, but being complimented on being pretty and complimenting her makes her nose and heart feel like she’s on a cloud.
The people here are very friendly. If you do not have a schedule and a place to stay, some people will show you the schedule of where to go to discover all the interesting places, the beautiful places of Ta Phin village are very detailed and even invite you to their house to eat and drink. rest again. It is also very interesting to stay at the local people’s house here, you will be able to cook together, listen to stories about the culture and life of the people here. Traveling but living with indigenous people, sitting by the fire to warm and dispel the cold of the highlands, sipping a cup of corn wine and listening to the village elders tell old stories is nothing better. none. Make sure that when you leave Ta Phin village down the mountain, you will become like the real Mong and Dao people.
The customs and practices of the Mong ethnic group are staged into performances for visitors to admire. These are wedding ceremonies, love songs, village worshiping ceremonies, term-resolution offerings, etc.
Coming here, almost every visitor is impressed with the beautiful Dao girls in colorful brocade traditional costumes. The main ethnic groups living in Ta Phin village are the H’mong and the Red Dao. Although living next to each other, you will still find that each ethnic group has its own unique cultural characteristics, not mixed. You will see that the Red Dao people are very different from the H’mong people in terms of house architecture, home decoration, writing, costumes, jewelry and especially customs and festivals.
Coming to this place, you will have the opportunity to learn about the daily life and customs and practices of the ethnic minorities such as Bai Tram dance rituals, catch three, wedding ceremonies, bell dancing, and Giao singing. In addition, the H’mong people also have a ceremony to relieve the term, eat an oath, worship the village and especially the Gau Tao festival. In festivals, there are customs that we have never seen before. That’s why so many tourists are excited to come here and discover a lot of new things.
Right in the center of Ta Phin village in Sapa is a community house with a recognizable bright red color that stands out in the surrounding landscape. This place has just been rebuilt with an architecture inspired by the traditional scarves of the Red Dao people. This is a common place for tourists and locals. Here, visitors will hear and understand more about the cultural life of the highland people. Hearing, knowing new things will surely be an interesting experience, right?
5. Brocade weaving village
For ethnic people here, brocade is not only used for daily life but also has a sacred meaning, a love souvenir or a dowry on the wedding day. For the H’Mong or Dao ethnic groups here, a girl must know how to embroider to get married. So from a young age, the girls have been taught to sew linen, weave cloth, rent flowers… Ta Phin brocade is also ordered by many places in the country to sell to customers and export to a number of markets such as the US, France, and knitting. Circuit…
Ta Phin brocade village is famous for its colorful and eye-catching products. These products are completely made from the skillful hands of Dao and Hmong women. The pattern lines are created on the products with diverse motifs such as birds, flowers, … bearing the nuances of the mountains and forests associated with the daily life of the people. You can easily find souvenirs so that when you return to the city, you will still remember the highland market in Sapa such as ethnic costumes, beautiful bracelets, bags, brocade scarves. …
When walking around the streets in Ta Phin village, you can easily see ethnic mothers and sisters leisurely sitting by the loom weaving brocade sheets with quick hands. Before that scene, you feel how peaceful it is in the mountains and forests.
In particular, Ta Phin village in Sapa is also famous for many other traditional craft villages. For example, silver inlay and forging. Therefore, visitors can buy unique silver jewelry products such as bracelets, rings, necklaces…
6. Silver mosaic craft
The Red Dao people in Ta Chai village, Ta Phin village have a famous silver inlay craft. The Mong, Tay, and Thai residents often buy silver inlaid items – jewelry of the Red Dao people. Materials for making jewelry are silver coins. Tools for making silver jewelry are mostly from kilns, from blowers to silver crucibles, casting molds and carving tools. In the life of the Red Dao people, the “value” of girls is reflected in silver jewelry.
7. Blacksmithing
This is a craft that still exists to this day of the Red Dao and Mong people. The production process is done by traditional crafts, building a kiln with earth, burning with charcoal, putting iron and steel into red heat, one person pulls the bellows, one person crushes it into necessary items for production and living. active.
8. The remedy for bathing the leaves of the Red Dao people is famous throughout the country
In addition to admiring the brocade products, visitors can also easily see the Dao girls wearing rattan baskets filled with leaves or the porches of the ethnic people drying with leaves. The Red Dao people have a very long tradition of bathing with tobacco leaves regularly, especially at the end of the year and the end of the month. The meaning is to wash away all the bad luck of the old year, to help the body feel refreshed and healthy to welcome the new year. This is quite similar to the Kinh people’s custom of bathing in coriander water at the end of the year!
These herbs are picked by people directly in the forest, washed, dried, when needed, boiled with warm water and then poured into the bath, foot bath, sauna are all very good. To get a quality bath, the Red Dao people can use 120 different tobacco leaves, at least more than 10 types of tobacco leaves. If you want to try this herb, you can take a bath right in the village with a very cheap price of only 150k/bath.
Wooden bath tub is a tub made from pomu tree, natural wood smell, fragrant with herbal medicine, bath water has a reddish brown color like Bordeaux wine. The warm, warm water makes anyone who has bathed must be enraptured and praised.
The use of this medicinal leaf bath has been proven very specifically by researchers at the University of Pharmacy. Bath leaves help increase vitality for men, help women have smooth, shiny skin, help the elderly improve sleep, help children increase resistance and rosy skin.
In particular, the remedy is also used to treat diseases such as muscle, bone, joint pain, flu, itching, constipation, boils, or to strengthen women after childbirth, for those who have just been ill. get up. Hard workers, tired after bathing, find their bodies relieved, their spirits refreshed, and their health restored.
The feeling of being immersed in warm water, the characteristic scent of tobacco, the feeling of fatigue of Cuong after a day of crossing the forest, crossing the pass, crossing the stream to Ta Phin village seem to have disappeared, every muscle fiber is smooth. Relax, the whole body is relaxed. After bathing, I feel so refreshed, friends, no wonder the traditional remedy for bathing with medicinal leaves of the Red Dao people is famous all the way to Hanoi with many herbal bath facilities. However, the most original is definitely in Ta Phin village, if you have the opportunity to visit Ta Phin village, why not try to bathe in the authentic herbal medicine of the Red Dao people?
9. What to eat in Ta Phin village?
In Ta Phin village, there are also special dishes with bold traditional flavors of the people here such as braised pork belly, fried chicken with lemongrass, pork soup cooked with bamboo shoots and crocodile. However, a friend traveling with Cuong doesn’t seem to be suitable for ethnic food. Fortunately, the Kuanguan has snacks to bring with him so he doesn’t get hungry. Some other friends who have traveled to Ta Phin village also commented that the food here is quite special, not really suitable for the taste of most Kinh people, and there are not many options, so you can bring your own food. Eat from Sapa town to still have a full meal but also save a good amount of money!
10. Where to stay in Ta Phin village?
Like many other villages in Sapa such as Cat Cat or Ta Van, Ta Phin now also has a number of homestays for tourists to rest in the center of the village. Cuong would like to introduce to you some well-equipped homestays in Ta Phin village. Make sure you have a good night’s sleep among the natural mountains!
Sapa homestay Ta May
Located right on the mountainside, this homestay has a terrace and a hot tub, built in the classical Dao style. Guests can dine at the restaurant. Alternatively, you can cook for yourself in the shared kitchen. Here, visitors can easily move to famous tourist destinations such as Sapa lake, Fansipan Legend cable car station…
Ta Phin stone Garden Ecological
This resort is built surrounded by lush greenery. This is a quiet getaway, ideal for those who want to dispel all the fatigue in life. The rooms are simply designed, with wooden floors, clothes racks, mosquito nets and balconies with romantic mountain views.
Imagine, waking up one morning, opening your eyes, you are surrounded by not the tall buildings close together in the city, but the green garden, listening to the sound of birds singing, the sound of flowing streams, Inhaling the scent of the domestic wind, what could be more refreshing, right?
Cuong’s experience when staying at a family of Red Dao people
While in Ta Phin village, Cuong stayed at the house of an ethnic sister, Ms. Phan Phan Chau in Team 4, Sa Seng village, Ta Phin, Sapa. Ms. Chau welcomed us with a bright, genuine, warm smile of the ethnic people. She invited us into her house, looking for ethnic clothes to wear, to prepare for a long day of following her up the mountain, climbing the steep and muddy 6km mountain road, to find 30 kinds of medicinal leaves to bathe.
Talking about local costumes, it seems crude, but it is extremely sophisticated. Ms. Chau told me that for her, learning to sew is even more difficult than learning to read. At the age of 7-8, she began to learn from her grandmother and mother, and then embroidered until the age of 18 when she got married. She started to learn to embroider from the sleeves to the back of the shirt, getting many pieces into one shirt, this process took about 4 months. Ms. Chau said that there are people who embroider for 2 years to get 1 piece, there are children who embroider for 2 months until the child is 5 years old. Each Red Dao woman will have about 2-3 sets. The year you are about to get married, you have to stay at home the whole year before to embroider for both husband and wife. The price of 1 set is about 6-8 million VND/set. Traditional clothes are worn during normal days to keep traditional national identity. Red shirt, pants and scarf to show the identity of the Red Dao people. Black clothes are dyed with Melaleuca trees,
The next day, we followed Chau up the mountain to find medicinal leaves in the traditional bathing remedy of the Red Dao people. Ms. Chau said, 11 buckets of bath water are tools to feed her family when the crop is not yet available. From early in the morning, Ms. Chau got up, wore a rattan basket to the mountain to pick medicine. From ancient times, the Red Dao people knew how to use 120 kinds of traditional medicinal leaves to make bath water, however, each family has different ways of using and combining them, Ms. Chau said. After crossing the forest and crossing the mountain, picking a basket full of about 30 kinds of leaves behind, we went down the mountain with Ms. Chau.
You see, in order to get a bucket of water to bathe us in, the Red Dao people had to cross streams and pass, travel tens of kilometers of forest roads every day to bring back tens of kilograms of medicinal leaves. The first time foreign guests bathed in the herbs of the local people were very excited, praising the natural medicines that make people feel refreshed and relaxed. Chau also humorously said: “The day she gave birth to her second child, after taking a bath with 2 pots of leaf water, 15 days later, she could carry her child to work in the fields. As strong as a buffalo.”
Source: Collected internet.