The Hmong women of Sapa are a strange breed of delightful entrepreneurs, possessed of ridiculous amounts of guile, persistence and charm when it comes to flogging you the many trinkets they carry around with them. This diminutive hardy beauty let me photograph her (for a small fee) against the exquisite backdrop of the rivuletted hillside of terraces and her proud and beautiful face led me to name her the ‘Queen of Sapa.’ I wager that not a single soul has left the town of Sapa without a bag of colourful and fairly useless trinkets which they were cleverly manipulated into buying.