Contact · GMT+7

Write once, and get a usable answer back

Enquiries here run by email. This page says exactly what to put in the first message so that the reply contains an answer rather than a request for more information, when you will hear back, and what to do if something is going wrong while you are already travelling.

Plan my trip How to book

first reply, working hours: 12 h
no daylight saving: GMT+7
08:30 to 18:00: Mon - Sat

Four things to put in the first email

Most first enquiries take two rounds of email before anything useful can be said, and the second round is nearly always the same four questions. Sending them unprompted turns a three-day exchange into a single reply.

Dates, or a month

Exact dates get an exact answer: rail availability, the cable car operating window for those specific days, and the hotel rate for that week. A month alone still gets a usable answer, just a wider one.

How many travellers, and ages

Group size moves the per-person price more than anything else, and children have separate cable car, funicular and village entrance fares. Two adults and two children is a different quotation from four adults.

Which of the three tours

The three-day trip from Hanoi, the Fansipan cable car day, or the Cat Cat and Ta Van walk. If you do not know yet, say what you came for: altitude, villages, or both.

Anything that changes the plan

A knee that dislikes descent, somebody who cannot sleep on a moving train, a fear of heights on a cable car, a dietary requirement, a fixed flight out of Hanoi. These change the itinerary, not just the price.

Everything else can wait. Passport details are needed only once payment is made and tickets are being issued, which is set out on the how to book page.

Reaching us

Enquiries run by email. There is no published telephone line on this site, and the about page explains what else this company has not published yet and why.

Enquiries: info@traveltosapa.com

Write in English. These tours are guided in English and the correspondence works the same way; a message in another language will get a slower and worse answer than it deserves.

When you will hear back

Working hours are 08:30 to 18:00, Monday to Saturday, GMT+7. Vietnam does not observe daylight saving, so the offset is the same all year and the arithmetic below never changes.

First reply to an enquiryWithin 12 working hours

Written itinerary and quotationWithin 2 working days of the brief being complete

Reply to a confirmed travellerSame working day

SundayMessages are read, answers usually go out Monday

Document pack before travel7 days before the first travel date

A brief that arrives at 22:00 on a Friday in Europe lands mid-morning Saturday here, which means it is usually answered before the sender's weekend starts. A brief that arrives Saturday evening our time waits until Monday.

Already in Sa Pa, or on tonight's train

Two situations need different handling from an ordinary enquiry, and it is better to say what to do now than to discover it at 04:00 at Lao Cai station.

You are travelling on a trip we arranged. The document pack sent seven days before departure contains the guide's number, the driver's number and the meeting point. Those are the numbers to use while you are on the ground, not email. The pack is a single page; keep it on your phone and screenshot it, because mobile coverage in the Muong Hoa valley is patchy below Lao Chai.
You are in Sa Pa and want to add a guided day tomorrow. Email works, and a day tour at short notice is usually possible outside holiday weeks. Put SAME WEEK at the start of the subject line, say which hotel you are in, and send it during working hours if you can. A message sent at 23:00 for a 07:30 mountain start the next morning is unlikely to be answered in time.
You have a booking with another company and something has gone wrong. We cannot intervene in somebody else's booking, and pretending otherwise would waste hours you do not have. What we can usually do is tell you what your options actually are: which train services still have berths tonight, whether the cable car is running, and whether a guided day can be put together tomorrow.
Nobody met you at the station. Stay at the station meeting point rather than taking an unarranged vehicle, and use the numbers on the document pack. The Lao Cai to Sa Pa leg is 35 kilometres and about an hour, and the transfer is timed to your train rather than to a fixed clock, so a late service does not mean a missed pick-up.

What we cannot do by email

Three requests arrive regularly and get the same answer every time, so it is fairer to publish it.

Visa and entry advice. Entry requirements are yours to arrange and we do not advise on them. Getting it wrong on somebody else's behalf is not a risk worth taking with a trip.
Selling transport tickets on their own. Rail berths and coach seats are bought as part of a tour, in your names, and not sold separately.
Guaranteeing weather or a view. The cable car is suspended in high wind with no published threshold and cloud sits on the summit for much of the year. Any operator promising a clear summit morning is promising something nobody owns.

We will never ask for card details

Payment is by bank transfer against an invoice. No message from us will ever ask for card numbers, and the account name on your original quotation is the only one to pay into.

Working out the time difference

Sa Pa runs on GMT+7 all year. To convert, take your own UTC offset and subtract seven: when the working day opens here at 08:30 it is 01:30 UTC, and when it closes at 18:00 it is 11:00 UTC.

The practical consequence for travellers in Europe and the Americas is that a message written in your evening is read in our morning, and the reply is usually waiting when you wake up. For travellers in Australia and East Asia the overlap is most of the working day, which is why enquiries from those time zones tend to be settled in a single exchange.

Plan your trip

Four lines is enough to start

Dates or a month, how many travellers and their ages, which tour, and anything that changes the plan. First reply inside twelve working hours.

Send an enquiry

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Is there a phone number?

Not published on this site. Enquiries run by email, and travellers on a confirmed trip receive the guide's and driver's numbers in the document pack seven days before departure.

For anything before that stage, email during working hours is both faster and produces a written record of what was agreed, which matters more than it sounds when a quotation is being compared.

How quickly can you confirm a booking?

Feasibility comes back within twelve working hours and a full written itinerary within two working days of the brief being complete. Confirmation happens when the payment clears, which is usually the day after it is sent.

Inside two weeks of departure the whole sequence can be compressed into a day, subject to berths being available in the class you want.

Can we meet in person before booking?

There is no public office to visit, and the about page says so directly rather than implying a walk-in address exists.

Travellers already in Sa Pa who want to meet the guide before committing to a day tour can usually arrange it; ask in the enquiry and say which hotel you are in.

What if we need to change something after the itinerary is written?

Say so. Changes before payment cost nothing and are expected; most itineraries go through at least one revision, usually over which day the mountain falls on.

After payment, the constraint is the transport tickets, whose change terms belong to the carrier rather than to us. We tell you what those terms are before anything is bought.