We were headed to Cat Cat Village.
First things first on our minds while we were there: Are there cats in Cat Cat village?
We weren’t sure, although Koia said there might be some people in the village that raised cats. This village was deep inside the valley, in the middle of all the rice farms. It was primarily meant for the ethnic people living in this region (Not actual Vietnamese) who had their own distinct cultures and ways of life. Our driver picked us up at the airport around this time and headed us all to the village after breakfast.
We drove right through the grassy cliffs and had a great view of the valley. As we headed towards Cat Cat village, we could see in the distance the cable cars we had ridden on to get to Mount Fansipan just the day before. Even from far away, it looked like the cable cars were stretching for at least ten miles. We headed downhill until we reached a parking lot near the village. From there, it was only a short-distance walk until we reached the village, which was a mostly downhill walk but with great views. We could see the whole village as we walked down the mountain. A river passed right through the middle, and around it were hundreds of tourists and the people who lived there, all talking as if there were some lively event happening right now. Maybe we got lucky.
The village itself was really nice- it was mostly made out of wooden houses and these old looking decorations, almost as if it had been there for decades. A lot of people in the area were dressed with traditional clothing. The middle of the village featured a stage and this huge mill wheel with a very ancient vibe to it. As we got closer, we hiked down the river towards the village and quickly discovered this place was packed with animals. We found a bunch of chickens right as we entered. As we went deeper into the village, we found live performances on the stage in the middle of the village, which were cultural songs in their language as well as at least a dozen dancers. A bunch of people stood in a shallow part of the river and took videos on their phones. I actually didn’t understand anything they said in the language (I still don’t know the language, but after approximately thirty seconds of research my best guess is Hmong, which is Laotian. That makes sense, because the part of Vietnam we’re in is only a few dozen miles from Laos’s border.)
We explored the village a little bit. We didn’t find a cat (surprising, we got scammed.) but found plenty of other things to do. I quickly discovered this place, despite its ancient feel, was very modernized and connected. This actually did make sense. I frankly wasn’t expecting to have any Internet in this part of Vietnam since a lot of it was impoverished, and it was even crazier to see all the village people walking around with these fancy looking phones- even better than the one I had at the time (during this trip, my phone was a hand-me-down from 2016. Casey’s was from 2013). We continued to walk through the village and found a number of notable structures – an interesting shaped tree that you could climb to reach this little balcony-sort of thing where me and Casey hung out for a while. There were plenty of people showing off their skills to the tourist using machines to make fabric or whatever else was popular.
Me, Casey, and Mia discovered a pathway towards the outside of the village and walked into the Vietnamese wilderness just to see what we could find. Unsurprisingly, Casey went way ahead of me and Mia while we just walked and looked around. The area was green in all directions- it was a lot cooler than most days since we were up in the mountains. It actually snows up here- if you look up online you’ll mostly see pictures of Sapa during the summer, but that’s far from the entirety of the truth. Eventually, we discovered this led to a waterfall and eventually had to turn back to get to the village.
We eventually left the village to get lunch. After lunch, many of us were tired, so it was decided that Koia and our grandparents could stay back at the hotel and relax while me, Casey, Mia, and our parents could continue looking around. Our next attraction was a place called Khu Du Lịch Cầu Kính Rồng Mây, but there’s no way I’m remembering that so let’s just call it the “Glass Bridge”.
The “Glass Bridge” actually was a bit of a distance away, so we had our driver drive us there and show us around. This Bridge was so far away that it was actually in a different province, so we had quite a bit of driving to get through. The views were pretty good, and the mountains were so tall I was questioning if Fansipan really was the tallest mountain. The skies were luckily a lot clearer today, so that was good for the view. Mia told me that the view here was so good that on good days (like this day) it was possible to see into three countries; China, Vietnam, and Laos. The glass bridge is exactly what it sounds like- a glass bridge. I pictured in my head a huge bridge going from one mountain over to another- I was surprised to not see a shiny ribbon in the sky as we got closer. It turned out the glass bridge actually was like this:
Thanks for the image, google.
So the view was pretty nice:
And it got a lot more interesting when we realized that if we laid on the ground, apparently we could give off the impression we were dying?
It also turned out there was more to do here than simply a glass bridge. There were also houses, buildings, and several other activities. There were a bunch of scary looking bridges you could walk over for a price that all looked extremely risky. Casey, inevitably, wanted to go on them right away, but there was no way our parents were paying for that. Instead, we went into the mountain and climbed up this rainbow colored staircase and explored the area around the top of the mountain. There was a huge spiral staircase not too far away but by far the most interesting thing was the pool.
The pool was probably one of the biggest I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t too deep, had an island in the middle, and plenty of weird structures around it. Trust me, the buildings you see in these photos are ten times bigger than they look. It didn’t take long for me, Casey, and Mia to find a boat at the edge of the pool with a rope on it, tied to the side. Of course all three of us went to untie it without anyone else’s permission, then we started walking it around the edge of the pool like it was a dog.
We walked the boat around the whole island and eventually came up with the idea to start riding it. Casey and Mia both got on and we took turns pulling the boat around the island until we were eventually spotted and told not to take the boat around, so that put an end to that. We ended up playing with the cats for the rest of the time before heading back to the glass bridge to relax and enjoy the view. We sat in this cafe and ordered some drinks, but Casey had other plans. As we sat down, we noticed a group of ladies walking around the glass bridge together wearing these bright pink shirts. And Casey immediately jumped up from his seat when he saw them and ran down to the bridge to talk to them.
“Yo,” He said as he approached them. They were all sitting in a circle now on the glass bridge to take photos. “Those are some fire shirts. Where can I cop one?”
No response. The ladies in pink shirts got up and looked for the next place to take their picture. They walked down the glass bridge, and Casey followed them. Everyone else laughed as he tried to talk to them. “Can I join y’all?” Casey asked again.
After another minute of no responses, Casey went back up to the cafe. “They said no,” He said sadly. “And I don’t get why. I just wanted to know where to cop those shirts!”
Once the rest of us finished our drinks, it was time to head back to the hotel. It was already getting late in the day by now and as we headed back out the bridge to the elevator we discovered… a group of ladies wearing purple shirts!
After Casey went to approach them (failing miserably), we all decided to go back to the hotel and meet with Koia, where we’d all have some dinner. We drove through the town again to this really luxurious restaurant and we sat down and ordered our food on the second story… yeah, you heard me right. This restaurant had a second story. Apparently there’s quite a few of these, but in America where I’m from they’re certainly not normal, so it was a bit of a surprise to find one of these.
Oh, and while we were also waiting for our food I found this:
I don’t know, it was just there and I was always thought it was funny.
As we ate, we discussed enthusiastically how we wanted to spend our night. Everyone had their own ideas- Casey wanted everyone to go to his bed (I don’t know either) and Koia wanted to visit the 18th floor of the hotel because apparently it was the “corpse room” that her left eye told her or something…
Because we couldn’t decide, we came up with a compromise. It was decided that Casey, Koia, me, and Mia would all have our own 30 minute increments to decide what to do, and that’s how we would spend the night, repeating the cycle until we had to go to bed.
We went back to the hotel in agreement. Casey went through his shift first. I don’t remember what we did during his shift, but I do remember Koia’s shift very vividly.
We went to the hotel’s elevator to get to the 18th floor, ready to enter the so-called “Corpse Floor”. I had no idea what was going to be on the floor, and I wasn’t even sure if this floor existed because there was nothing on the hotel’s floor list that talked about Floor 18. I just assumed that there really was going to be a “Corpse Room” that she kept talking about because I had no idea what that was in the first place (I still don’t, and given the world ‘corpse’ I’m not sure if I’d like to know)
The elevator began to move upwards at a sharp pace to the 18th floor, which was nearly at the top. And suddenly it was slowing down. As the door was about to open, I wondered what was on the other side like it was a mystery. It should have just been a regular floor, but I had no idea what a “Corpse Room” was so maybe it could be that? I have no idea what I was thinking- all I knew is I thought we were going into some kind of “special room” or special as Koia called it and we’d do whatever there was to do in there.
The doors opened, revealing pitch black on the other side. You couldn’t see a thing, other than the occasional lights deep down the hallway. Where were we? There was nothing here- it appeared to be just a bunch of hotel rooms, but I wasn’t sure. Was this the so-called Corpse Room? No one had any idea. Me, Casey, Koia, and Mia cautiously stepped out of the elevator and into the darkness, taking a scan around. There was nothing other than the hallway. We seemed to be alone, but I couldn’t check that for sure.
Suddenly, the elevator of the door began to close behind us, and all four of us, suddenly terrified out of our minds, raced back into the elevator and went back down to the 16th floor.
“What was that?” I asked, in disbelief. I didn’t know why, but I was scared. That place was so dark and quiet… like something else, supernatural was about to happen.
Things got even worse when Koia and Casey both claimed to have seen a person walking around the corner just before we all raced into the elevator. That put all of us in question. Were we even alone while we were up there like we had believed? Or was there something else, someone else…?
“Maybe we should go again and check,” Casey suggested. The rest of us agreed to go up for another expedition to see if there was anything really up there, and to uncover the truth about what that floor was for. We headed back up the elevator again, ready to figure things out. This time, we headed a little deeper into the darkness to really get a look around. But once again, we found nothing. We only took a few moments to scan before the elevator began to close again, starting a panic attack. We all raced in to the elevator so as not to be left up in the darkness alone.
We went to the 16th floor, near the kids zone and in the view of a security guard to discuss what we’d just seen.
“You know, a lot of the time there’s kids who run around thinking they know everything and end up not coming back,” Mia pointed out.
And then we started hypothesizing what this was for, and I’m gonna be honest-we were so paranoid the theories got extremely wild. The most memorable one from me was that our hotel was named KK Sapa, which for some reason sounded a lot like KKK??? I have no idea, that thought just came to me, but it scared me to my core. Everytime I heard a noise I was genuinely scared that something was out to get me, even though there were security guards and everything.
We decided to spend the rest of our time watching Oversimplified for the night, then going to bed early to get a good night’s rest. We were headed the next day out of Sapa to a completely new part of Vietnam. We were headed from the mountains to the ocean. We were headed to Ha Long Bay.
Also, that night I had to sleep with the lights on and woke up several times.