Luckydaisy's Buffalo House — Hotel in Ta Van Commune

I guess this place would be at the ‘lower end’ of the accommodation we stayed in on our 3 weeks in Lao and Vietnam. ||We stayed in what I guess is/was the bunkhouse just up the slope from the Buffalo bar and which is probably best suited and works well for a bunch of youthful hikers bunking up together. ||That said… our double room on the upper floor was perfectly OK. The en-suite bathroom and plumbing a touch ‘rustic’ and the gaps in the walls, wall to ceiling and ill fitting mesh on bathroom ‘window’ provided decent ventilation but also, I guess, access for mozzies when the season is right. We had a mozzie repellent plug in and didn’t have any trouble. ||Gee… that all sounds pretty dire. If you’re looking for a comfy hotel this is not the place for you but for a night or two roughing it… it’s fine. Even for a coup,e of nudging 70 year old travellers.||Positive points… really friendly staff, good food, decent drink AND they take cards which is really useful when the female member of the party has managed to spend all of our cash on souvenirs along the way. ||On that point… one, two or maybe more village ladies will latch onto you and walk seemingly crazy distances with you on the way to and from the village in the hope that you will buy their stuff. ||We’re pretty good at rebutting their entreaties, BUT… the paths to and from the village are pretty tricky. They are very good and willing to help us people with dodgy knees to negotiate the route. Then you, sort if feel obliged to buy from them. Difficult when you genuinely spent, almost, your last cash last night. ||Mmm long review… would I go to Lucky Daisy’s again.|In truth, I’m never likely to be in the area in the future but if I were a younger hiker looking for a basic but fun place to stay. Yup,...

My family of 3 stayed in one of the various houses that belong to Luckydaisy. It’s a villa some 50 metres up a very steep path. The villa is great, nicely decorated and fully equipped. I guess someone from Luckydaisy actually lives there, but rents it out Airbnb-style. At the time of our stay, there were a number of dutch and belgian families and we had a joint family dinner seated at a long table. Usually we don’t necessarily look up other dutch people on holiday, but this was gezellig. Unfortunately, it rained on the day we arrived, so the first trek we did was very wet, muddy and slippery. Fortunately for us My, our guide was great in helping us, as were 2 other ladies who tagged along to sell us local handicrafts but lent a hand as well. There are numerous girls and women who will try to sell you their goodies, but they are not too aggressive and it’s up to you if you want to buy something. Our guide recommended we buy from the women rather than the girls because the girls would use the money mostly for candy but the women use it to help their families. We had a set breakfast, lunch and dinner and they were fine and included in the trip we booked. Drinks are exclusive. The trip from Sapa to Tavan and back are adventures in themselves because of the many potholes and roadworks. Most of the staff don’t speak a lot of english, but will try to help you anyway and there is one lady (forgot her name, sorry) who speaks english very well and seems to run the whole place single handedly!...

Our home was Villa Mountain. The location of this homestay is not well placed regarding Sapa village. You need to drive around 30min. The most autonomous way to reaching the village is driving a moto but the road is not ideal, narrow and slippery paths. So the safest way will be to take a taxi with all the negotiations that implies each time. The breakfast is good but is quite late starting at 8 am, in Vietnam life is starting quite early and around 6pm is already night. The staff was nice but we had an issue the day of our arrival. We booked with the homestay a taxi for picking us up at 4 am when the bus was supposed to arrived. The bus arrived 1h late and when we arrived we were not able to find nobody so after 35min looking for this person, we decided to take another taxi for going to the homestay. The homestay pretends we paid for this service which was out of question but the day when we did the check out, they asked us for paying the half for a service we never used. For not keeping going with the discussion we paid, but we found and still find this UNACCEPTABLE. By the way, the service they proposed is more expensive than taking a taxi in the city, they sent us a taxi for 7 people when we were just 2, that is the explanation they gave us when we asked about the...