About Sapa Sisters
We’re Hmong trekking guides from Muong Hoa Valley, near the town Sapa. We grew up in these mountains and know the trails inside out. Our work is to guide people around this beautiful landscape and give them a good time.
We are a trekking company owned and led by Hmong women, and we are proud to run a business that pays every guide a fair salary and gives them room to grow in their own community. With help from our friends we have built something that supports us and our families, and that offers long-term employment and security.
How it all Started
Sapa Sisters was started in 2009 by six friends: Radek Stypczynski, a painter and visual artist from Poland/Sweden, Ylva Landoff Lindberg www.ylvalandofflindberg.com, also an artist, with four Hmong women Lang Yan, Lang Do, Chi, and Zao. Radek, having seen and heard firsthand the difficulties of young Hmong women, in particular, finding decent jobs and wages in Sapa began collaborating with the girls on a venture that could be self-sustaining and operated almost entirely independent of outside assistance.
The idea was simple: a Trekking company operated by the girls with no middle-man i.e. tourist operators or hotels; Radek would set up a website that could connect travellers with their guides as well as help communicate between travellers and guides as the women could not read or write English.
Radek tragically passed away in 2011, but his vision and mission, along with the founders of Sapa Sisters, continue to flourish. This Hmong-owned business remains dedicated to empowering the Sisters by providing a safe, self-sustained space to work and live. Since Radek’s passing, Ylva Landoff Lindberg and the Sapa Sisters team have kept the business growing by creating personalised trekking experiences for travellers in Vietnam’s northern mountains.
Being a Sapa Sister
Four of us have run this company since it started in 2009. We are all still guiding, and we still own it. We have grown since then, to around 30 full-time guides, with an office in Sapa, a booking team in Hanoi, and tours in Ha Giang as well as here.
Being a Sapa Sister is a real job. Those of us working full time are employed rather than casual labour. We earn well above what most work here pays, and we are enrolled in Vietnamese social insurance for a pension and medical care. Sapa Sisters pays taxes and works with the Vietnamese labour union.
The company does more than that. It lends us money interest-free to buy land or build a house, pays for advanced healthcare in Hanoi for us and our children, and covers legal fees in divorce cases, which matters in Hmong culture where women usually lose custody of their children. It also pays a bonus twice a year, at Tet and Lunar New Year, based on the days each of us has trekked.
None of this is charity. We built a company we believe in and want to work in. That is how we keep our best guides, and how it stays a good place to work.
