The central market in Sapa is where the hill-tribe communities come to trade, and it remains one of the most vivid concentrations of traditional dress and culture in the north of Vietnam. Black Hmong women in dark embroidered jackets, Red Dao in their elaborate red headdresses, Flower Hmong in brilliant multicoloured clothes — on market days the crowd is a festival of ethnic diversity.
The covered market runs daily but is most active on weekends when communities come in from the surrounding villages. The stalls sell vegetables, fresh meat, live poultry, silver jewellery, hand-woven textiles, and the indigo-dyed hemp cloth that Hmong communities have produced for centuries. The textile section is excellent and the quality is much higher than the mass-produced tourist goods sold from street stalls. Bargaining is expected but prices are already fair by Vietnamese standards.